Artificial Intelligence – Family Locket

What Genealogists Are Saying About AI Transcription of Foreign-Language Documents

May 3, 2026

If you’ve ever stared at a page of Kurrent script or a faded colonial Spanish church record and wished for a little help, you’re not alone. As you know, handwritten text recognition is one of my favorite topics—but I mostly research documents created in English, so when it comes to foreign-language records, I wanted to learn from all of you. I asked in the April 6 Family Locket newsletter: Have you been using AI to...

Meet Leo: The Handwritten Text Recognition Platform Built for Researchers

Apr 6, 2026

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Leo, a groundbreaking handwritten text recognition (HTR) platform with its creator, Jon Cooper. Jon gave me a hands-on demonstration, using a variety of documents that I selected specifically to see how Leo handled some common challenges genealogists face in their research. Go to the end to see the video! This blog post was written with the assistance of AI based on the transcript of the video. The Origins...

AI Handwritten Text Recognition Tools at the RootsTech Expo Hall

Mar 8, 2026

At RootsTech, someone I spoke with mentioned choosing a theme ahead of time to help narrow down classes and Expo hall experiences — what a great idea! Her focus was DNA and AI. Looking back, mine was clearly AI Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) tools, which happened to be the topic of the class I taught in person and the common thread running through all the booths I visited. (Last year, in 2025, I taught about this...

Agentic Browsers and Native Integrations: Inside the New Edition of Research Like a Pro with AI

Mar 4, 2026

I’m excited to share that we have updated our Research Like a Pro with AI genealogy workbook! This second edition has all the latest updates in how artificial intelligence can be used for genealogical research and writing. What took the longest to update was understanding ALL the new features released by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Perplexity in the last year. The pace this technology is advancing is astonishing. Comparison Report: Research Like a Pro with...

From Spreadsheet to Research Report: Using Claude’s Custom Skills for Genealogy

Feb 21, 2026

Claude.ai has been one of my favorite apps for genealogical writing for the past couple years. When I first started experimenting with Claude, I was curious if it could transform my spreadsheet research log into a research report. The process proved more challenging than I expected, requiring numerous chain-of-thought prompts and a good deal of fine-tuning. In April of 2024, I tested this task with a research log I created several years ago about Baldy...

Testing AI’s Ability to Map Historical Land Records: ChatGPT Compared to DeedMapper

Feb 13, 2026

About a year or two ago, I asked ChatGPT to convert a metes and bounds land description into a land plat drawing. It was not able to do so correctly. Yetserday, I tried again and the results were astounding! I compared three scenarios: ChatGPT 5.2 Auto with a short, simple prompt ChatGPT 5.2 Auto with a longer meta and chain-of-thought prompt ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking with a short, simple prompt I used a deed I...

Using AI as Your Genealogical Deed Abstracting Partner: A Case Study

Dec 19, 2025

A good case study can give us excellent ideas for tackling our challenging research. Enjoy this blog post by one of our Family Locket team members, Jill, who shares her success using AI as an assistant. by Jill Leonard Nock, AG® Historical deed research can be simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. The thrill of discovery often comes after hours of deciphering 18th- or 19th-century handwriting, tracking chains of title, and piecing together family relationships. But what if...

Disappearing Act: John Royston Apprentice (1750 – after 1814)

Sep 28, 2025

Ancestors who tend to disappear can leave interesting records that provide more information about them than we often find in the usual census or deed. Such is the case of John Royston, who ran away from his employer when he was a 19-year-old apprentice in Virginia. I discovered this record in the early stages of my research, and upon revisiting it, I utilized AI to enhance my understanding of the context and gain further insight...

High-Quality Handwritten Text Recognition with Gemini 2.5 Pro in Google AI Studio

Jul 22, 2025

Today I pasted three screenshots of a 1791 South Carolina deed into Google AI Studio, and the resulting transcription was so good, I almost didn’t have to change anything. The deed spanned three pages, so I simply took three screenshots and pasted them one at a time into the same conversation, with the prompt to “transcribe and keep line breaks.” Google AI Studio is a free tool for anyone to try Google’s AI model, Gemini....

AI-Assisted Genealogy: Decoding the 1819 Weatherford Assault Case in Frontier Arkansas

May 21, 2025

Court records can be challenging to research for a number of reasons: difficulty finding them, transcribing them, and understanding them. With new artificial intelligence tools at our disposal, we now have an assistant that can tackle each of these challenges. My recent project to discover the father of Henderson Weatherford led me to the Lawrence County, Arkansas, court records. Transcribing and interpreting them gave me insight into a previously unknown Weatherford individual who might be...

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What Genealogists Are Saying About AI Transcription of Foreign-Language Documents

Meet Leo: The Handwritten Text Recognition Platform Built for Researchers

AI Handwritten Text Recognition Tools at the RootsTech Expo Hall

Agentic Browsers and Native Integrations: Inside the New Edition of Research Like a Pro with AI

From Spreadsheet to Research Report: Using Claude’s Custom Skills for Genealogy

Testing AI’s Ability to Map Historical Land Records: ChatGPT Compared to DeedMapper

Using AI as Your Genealogical Deed Abstracting Partner: A Case Study

Disappearing Act: John Royston Apprentice (1750 – after 1814)

High-Quality Handwritten Text Recognition with Gemini 2.5 Pro in Google AI Studio

AI-Assisted Genealogy: Decoding the 1819 Weatherford Assault Case in Frontier Arkansas

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