My Trails into the Past

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings:  1)  Have you researched the ancestors of your spouse (or significant other)?  Please list the names and vital records data for your spouse/SO's grandparents and great-grandparents like in an Ahnentafel Report. 2)  Have you written genealogical sketches and/or biographies for each of them?  Here's mine: I am on the California Zephyr traveling across Nevada, logging in when we get to a big city where there is cell service. Let’s start with part 2 first. Yes, I have written about my husband’s family. I wrote a three-generation book about his Nilsen family who immigrated from Sweden, and a three-generation Kinship Determination Project (KDP) about his Lundquist family for my initial BCG certification. I also write posts about them regularly on my blog. Here is the ahnenta...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings :  1)  What genealogy fun have you had this past month?  What is your genealogy research highlight of the past month?  It could be attending or watching a webinar or local genealogy society meeting,  it could be finding a new ancestor, or it could be reading a new genealogy book, or anything else that you have enjoyed. Here's mine: This past month, I have been working on a month-long project concerning my 2x-great-grandparents, Peter H. Hutson and his wife, Sarah H. Selman, who married in 1879. Their families lived in Texas in Cherokee, Leon, and Comanche Counties. I have been collecting whatever documents I can find using traditional searches in records and through the catalog, and also using full-text search. Some of Leon and Cherokee Counties’ records are availa...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:  1)  Do you have Research Notes for some of your ancestors in a number of sources and papers, or perhaps in a Person Note or Research Note in your desktop family tree program, and dread trying to put them into a coherent genealogical sketch or research note?   2)  This week, take all of the Research Notes you have for one person in your tree and put them all in one word processor document. Organize them if you want - you don't have to.  Make a PDF file of your new word processor document and name it.   3)  Go to your favorite LLM (you know, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or any other LLM), load the document, and ask the LLM to "Please organize the research notes in the attached document for [your ancestor's name, birth and death year] and c...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!   Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has our first assignment for the new year. 1)  What are your genealogy goals for 2026?  Consider genealogy research, education, organizing, service, writing, and whatever else you care to share . Here’s mine: I delayed working on this because I just bet this would be the theme for today’s assignment. I have reviewed last year’s goals here: Revisiting my 2025 Genealogy Goals . This is always a good start, as we often have left over goals we did not finish. This year, I am going to break up my goals into different categories: Education, Organizing, Research, and Writing. Education Under Education, I have signed up many of the upcoming Legacy Family Tree Webinars . I do not always watch them live, except the BCG-sponsored ones, because I am usually busy when they first air. I started a Wednesday Webinar meme this past year, where I tak...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings : Join in, accept the mission, and execute it with precision. Here's your chance to sit on Genea-Santa's lap (virtually) and tell him about your Christmases past. Rev up the old thinking cap and cue up the Mission Impossible music - your mission, should you decide to accept it - keeping with the Christmas theme - is: 1)   Today's challenge is to share memories of December holiday gatherings and celebrations with your families (as a child, a young adult, a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a nibling, a cousin, an in-law)!   2)  Pick two or three questions from the list in my blog post:   Ask AI Gemini:  "What questions can I write about concerning family gatherings and celebrations during the December holidays?"   This is a new list of q...

Calling All Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings , is to: 1)  Larry Smith invented six-word memoirs (see  https://www.sixwordmemoirs.com/ ).   2)  How do you want to be remembered?  What is most important to you?  What six-word memoirs would you write?   3)  Write at least one on any subject, and the sky is no limit. Here's mine: A part of me didn’t want to do this. It sounded too much like writing poetry, and I don’t like poetry. But then I thought, what the heck, I’ll give it a try. Baseball, tennis, soccer: sports I love. Train watching, train riding, utter joy. Bird watching, binoculars in hand. Lookout! Wildflowers on hikes, pictures to make. Researching is fun, writing is hard. Teaching genealogy brings knowledge to all. I guess those aren’t too bad. I couldn’t figure out how to ...

Calling All Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings ’ assignment tonight is to: 1)  Who is Number 100 in your Ahnentafel list? Tell us about him.  {If you don't have a #100, use another number]. 2)  How do you descend from #100? Here's mine: My tree is unusual, as I have my daughter in the number one spot.  So, #100 is Christoph Siewert , my paternal 3rd-great-grandfather (her maternal 4th-great-grandfather). I don’t know much about him. He was born about 1766 in Posen, Prussia. He married Anna Mariana Ewald on 14 January 1811. He died on 3 February 1841. I know this information because a cousin hired a researcher in Poland. However, he doesn’t remember the researcher’s name, nor have any information about where this information came from. So, I can’t write specific citations to the church, only to the research notes given to me by my cousin. The lineage:  #100 – Christoph S...

Calling All Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1 )  Review the last three or four "Best of the Genea-Blogs" posts (see    https://www.geneamusings.com/search/label/BestofGeneaBlogs ).  2)  Pick one of the articles listed that either helped you with your research or your writing, and/or that touched your emotions, and/or that you are really impressed by. 3)  Tell us which article you picked (and link to it), and why you chose that article, and how it helped, touched, or impressed you. Here’s mine: James Tanner’s post from Genealogy’s Star titled “Why are you stressing over an end-of-line?” touched me. It’s true that at some point in our research, records will not be available for many reasons, and we will not be able to go any further back. Saying it lets us let it go. He told us to “start researching other p...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  You were born and given a forename (first name and middle name(?)) and a surname on your birth certificate. What were they? 2)  How many persons are on the  FamilySearch Family Tree  (with an exact search for a birth name) with your first and, separately, your surname? Are there any other persons with your complete first-middle-surname? 3)  How many matches do you have when you search the  FamilySearch Historical Records   (with an exact search for a name)  with your first name, and separately, with your surname?  Are there any other persons with your complete  first-middle -surname? 4)  How many people are in the  Public Ancestry Member Tree collection   (with an exact search for a name) with your first ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings , is to: 1) Think about your most memorable Hallowe'en - was it when you were a child (candy, games, carnivals), a teenager (tricks and treats), or an adult (perhaps a party)? Here's mine: Two memories came up on Facebook where I had posted photos. The first one pertained to one of the Hallowe’en parties my parents would host sometime before the actual day. This shot is my favorite as it looks like a ghost popped into the photo. The second photo is of my daughters wearing the costumes I made that year. We attended a Hallowe’en party and won the best costumes award. Copyright © 2011-2025 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  Select an ancestor, and a genealogical sketch (or research notes, or a timeline, or Ancestry Member Tree profile, etc.) for that ancestor, and create a PDF of the sketch/notes/timeline/AMT Facts page/etc.   2)  Go to one of the FREE AI Large Language Models (LLM) like  ChatGPT ,  Claude ,  Gemini ,  Grok , etc., and write a prompt (create your own, or modify mine below) for the LLM to create a biography of that ancestor in, say 500 words.  If you want something longer, ask for more words. Here’s mine: Off the bat, I prefer to write my own ancestor biographical sketch, but I will give it a try with ChatGPT and Claude and compare the two. I will use the same prompts as Randy. ChatGPT "You are an expert genealogist. Please create a draft biography w...