My outside activities included presenting in person to the Davis Genealogy Club, visiting the History Center to attend the board meeting, and taking a trip to Fresno with APG NorCal members.
Genealogy
Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
I took minutes at the Contra Costa County
Historical Society’s board meeting and filed some items at the History Center
before the meeting.
I presented to the Davis Genealogy Club in Davis on land records and using the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website. I drove up and back and had no traffic. The group was very welcoming and seemed to enjoy the presentation, asking lots of questions.
Genealogy Meetings:
I attended the Certification Peer Group this week
and got caught up with Annette and Josh, after having missed several past
months.
Genealogy Writing/Research:
I attended the Artificial Intelligence course at
the Texas Institute of Genealogical Research (TIGR) and learned how AI can help
me with research and writing. I am not ready or willing for AI to do any
writing, but the platforms can perform some nice deep research on subjects such
as social history and research planning. I missed three sessions when I went up
to Davis, so I still need to watch those. I loved the class for the amount of
practice time we had and the sample prompts to use.
At the Fresno library, I found images of the brands that George E. Lancaster and Jess R Lancaster used on their ranch. I entered the information into RootsMagic and realized I had not researched Jess very much after he left his parents’ home. I spent Sunday afternoon searching on Ancestry and Newspapers.com, locating census, vital records, newspaper articles, and more.
I am also working on drafting a presentation for the Sacramento German Genealogy Society on land records, which will emphasize German immigrants. I need to locate German immigrant examples to use and create new screenshots.
Blog Posts Published:
Research
in Kentucky: Hoping to Find Lancaster, Neal, & Polly Families & their
Fan Club
For the theme of “fan club,” I wrote about my
research trip at the Shelbyville Library in Kentucky and how I found some
previous research on the Lancaster and Neal families in their surname files.
Artificial
Intelligence Helped Consolidate Multiple Blog Posts Into a Coherent Story
One of the tasks I tried in the TIGR class was to
analyze my writing by uploading nine posts I had written about my father-in-law’s
service during WWII. Then I had AI use that writing to create a logical story
from beginning to end. My posts were thematic and repetitive. I got a great
story from my own writing. Randy Seaver highlighted this post on his Best
of the Genea-Blogs.
SNGF:
Celebrate World Music Day
I wrote about some of
my favorite music and musical artists.
Webinars/Courses Viewed:
- Integrating AI into Genealogical Research and Writing, coordinated by Nicole Elder Dyer (TIGR)
- The One Place Study as a Research Tool by Denise E Cross (BCG/LFTWebinars)
- From Brick Walls to Breakthroughs: Researching Families with Impermanent Jobs (2 sessions) by Ursula Krause (German Genealogy Headquarters)
- Secrets for Success: How to Harness the Power of FamilySearch's Full-Text Search by Julia A. Anderson (LFT Webinars)
Other:
Because I was in an all-day institute course
Monday through Friday, I had few outside activities. There was no hike this
week since part of the group went up to Caples Lake for the week.
I am reading:
- A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor
by Harry Mazer—FINISHED!
- A Boy No More by Harry Mazer—FINISHED!
- Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of
Whiskeymaking by Henry G. Crowgey
- Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark by David Safier (for German class—up to Chap 35-We’re on hiatus for summer)
Photos for this week. I
took no photos this week except of pages from books I found at the Fresno
Library. Instead, here are shots of flowers I found in Kentucky.
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.
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