We often have family stories that have been passed down through the generations to us. How much truth is in the story we may never know, but in the novel, The Thread Collectors by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman, we have an interesting example of weaving a tale from historical research and a thread of a story. The authors collaborated on this novel. Shaunna has African-American ancestry, and Alyson has Jewish ancestry. They combine...
On this Father’s Day, I’ve been reminiscing about my dad, Bobby Gene Shults. He was one of the “greatest generation” who served in World War II and went on to build a life and raise a family afterward. He wrote his own life history, which is filled with stories about the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and his adventures as a young boy in Texas, Oklahoma, and California. When we visited, he’d tell those stories...
Do you have any photos of family members by their cars? What can you add to a family’s story by analyzing the make, model, and price of the car? It turns out, this is another great use of artificial intelligence. For this 52 Ancestor blog post around the theme of “Wheels,” I chose a photo of my mother, Anna Mae Kelsey, where the family car is the backdrop. Using AI to help with the analysis,...
My second great-grandmother, Alice “Allie” (Frazier) Harris, was a special lady. I thought about her today, on Mother’s Day, as she was not only a mother and grandmother to her children and grandchildren but also to many others. She cared for her son-in-law’s baby sister after her mother died in childbirth and was recognized for her nurturing nature towards many in her community. Alice (Frazier) Harris Alice is my second-great-grandmother on my mother’s side. She...
When we discover that our ancestor was in an institution such as an asylum, prison, or workhouse, we can learn much about their experience by researching the institution. My 2nd great-grandmother, Sarah Jane (Miller) Creer, resided in the Boston Union Workhouse in Lincolnshire, England at the age of 10. Wanting to learn more about this specific workhouse, I queried AI and was pleased with the accurate and informative report created by Claude 3.7 Sonnet. AI...
Old family photos are great for telling our ancestors’ stories. I’m writing about my great-great-grandparents, Daniel O’Connell Elder and Jessie Estelle (Ross) Elder, and wanted to use some early photos of their family. One of their sons is my great-grandfather Charlie. Charlie had many siblings, but I only have a few photos showing them together; and none of them show all the siblings at once. The main problem was that most people in these old...
Ancestral homes are an important part of our family history. We can research the home’s architecture and records, such as city directories, taxes, maps, newspapers, and more. For this 52 Ancestor blog post theme of “Home Sweet Home,” I researched and wrote about the Spanish Fork home of my great-grandparents, Charles Cannon Creer and Mary Margaret Peterson. Charles built the home for his bride to move into upon their marriage on 23 March 1892, and...
Reading historical fiction based on fact allows us to follow an engaging story and learn history simultaneously. The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd fulfills both possibilities. Who was Eliza Lucas Pinckney, the woman the novel is based on? She is credited with learning to grow the difficult crop of indigo in South Carolina in the early 1700s, which was a challenging task, especially for a woman in Colonial America. We’re reading The Indigo Girl for...
During the last in-person class I taught at RootsTech, on Saturday afternoon, I asked attendees which tech announcements they were most excited about. The answers included Ancestry’s upcoming clustering tool, FamilySearch’s new catalog, Ancestry Networks, and the FamilySearch Together app. These are just a few of the many exciting announcements made at RootsTech 2025! It’s fun to see so many companies announce new technology that will help us with our genealogy research. Here are a...
Do you remember your first job outside the home? You may have flipped burgers, pumped gas, or babysat. Our ancestors also may have taken a job outside the home at some point. This would have brought challenges of answering to a boss, perhaps moving to a new location, and learning new skills. Learning about an ancestor’s first job can be a fun way to add context to their life. For this 52 ancestor post, I’m...
