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Monday Genea-pourri, Week of May 5–11, 2025

My outside activities included two trips to the History Center, the meadow for phenology, the dentist, and train club for the monthly meeting.

Genealogy

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
At the History Center, I worked on accessions, making sure the details of pat accessions have been entered into PastPerfect. I’m about half done. At home, I continued adding details to the library database. I sent out the press release for the upcoming BCG-sponsored webinar.

I gave two presentations this week: vital records to the Oakland FamilySearch Center and about the BLM website to the Genealogy Society of Washington County. The writing group met and we talked about the places to submit stories to, such as local historical and genealogical society newsletters and journals.

Genealogy Meetings:   
Meetings this week: NGS Conference committee, APG-NorCal, and book club.

Genealogy Writing/Research:
I did some research into using AI for the transcription of a German-American church baptism record. I had no success with the handwritten document. I tried ChatGTP, Claude, Co-Pilot, and Transkribus. ChatGPT did the best but still missed some words and when I tried to get it to fix it, then hallucinated with extra stuff not in the document. AI is not quite there with Kurrent handwriting.

I worked on my research planning for the trip to Indianapolis, Jeffersonville, Louisville, and Frankfort. I’m contacting the libraries, historical societies, museums, and archives to make appointments. I’m also checking their website finding aids for items I want to view. At the KDLA in Frankfort, I see they have many microfilms of county records and I then check against the FamilySearch catalog to make sure they are not duplicates. No point wasting my time if I can view these at home (or FamilySearch Center, if locked). In doing this, I discovered some items using the full-text search at FamilySearch

Blog Posts Published:

At the Libraries: Planning a Research Trip to Indianapolis and Jeffersonville, Indiana
For the theme of “At the Library,” I researched the research repositories I will visit in Indianapolis and Jeffersonville, Indiana. This post was highlighted on Friday Family History Finds.

SNGF—Celebrate Mother’s Day – Show Us Some Photos
I found three photos of my mother as well as the link to some posts I have previously written.

Webinars/Courses Viewed

  • Finding Records You Didn’t Know Existed by Lisa Oberg (Kinseekers)
  • Using The Google Translate Extension and AI to Translate Foreign Languages by Natalie Webb (LFT Webinars)
  • Translating, Transcribing, and Summarizing Documents Using AI (LFT Webinars)
  • Using AI to Translate German Church Records (and more) into English by Geoff Rasmussen (LFT Webinars)

Other:
I have spent most days this week working in the yard, cleaning up old leaves and pulling weeds. I also met with a friend who is joining our German class and got her up to speed on the book we’re reading. 

I am reading: 

  • Dear Miss Perkins: The Story of Francis Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees From Nazi Germany by Rebecca Brenner Graham—FINISHED!
  • Asterix and the Griffin by Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad
  • Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark by David Safier (for German class—up to Chap 35)

Photos for this week.  Some shots from my garden.


Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives, but not so great at documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme.
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

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