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 is to:  1)  Do you know what activities one of your ancestors/relatives engaged in?  How much detail do you know about those activities? 2)  Use the FREE artificial intelligence tool  Google Gemini 3  to describe what your ancestor or relative experienced in his/her activities (e.g., military service, a ship they migrated on, an occupation, an office they held, etc.).  Here's mine: I started out stating the following to Google Gemini 3: “My father-in-law was landing gear specialist during WWII in the Army Air Forces in England, stationed at Burtonwood. What would his job have been like?” The AI answer is this: That is a fascinating bit of family history. Being a landing gear specialist at RAF Burtonwood during WWII meant your father-in-law was at the absolu...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment tonight from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:  1)  What are your major genealogy challenges - the family mysteries that you haven't been able to crack to date?  2)  Tell us about five of your real genealogy challenges with a short paragraph, and link to blog posts if you have written about them. Here's mine: 1. I would like to know the origins of Samuel Johnston and his wife Elizabeth McCormack , both of South Carolina. I have them firmly in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, and many of their children were born in the 1840s somewhere in Alabama. The issues are I have no idea where in South Carolina they came from, Johnston is a common name, and South Carolina didn’t require marriage registrations until the 20th Century. I have written about them here and here . 2. I would like to know the origins and parents o...

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)  It's Valentine's Day - a day for lovers! We all have hundreds of love stories in our ancestry. 2)  What was the great love story of the ancestors in your family Tree?  What wedding had a great story in it?  Choose one ancestral couple. Share how they met (if known), when and where they married. Note how long they were married. Highlight something that suggests affection or partnership. Here's mine: I have written about my parents a few times before. My paternal grandparents split up after 15 years or so. My maternal grandparents had issues but stayed married until my grandfather died. My grandmother lived another 40 years. I shall write instead of my husband’s parents: George Joseph Gorrell and Thelma Marie Nilsen. They married on 6 October ...

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...