Diana and Nicole discuss BanyanDNA, a tool for analyzing complex family relationships in genetic genealogy. Leah Larkin introduced BanyanDNA in December 2023, highlighting its unique ability to identify unknown ancestors and alert users to discrepancies in family trees. Diana shares her experience with her own family tree, where her great-grandparents’ siblings married each other, creating double cousins. She builds a tree using BanyanDNA, adding DNA matches from various test-takers, and finds the horizontal tree orientation...
This blog post completes our five-part series on records in England besides the usual baptisms, marriages, and burials. In part one, we looked at the parish chest; in part two, tax records; in part three, wills and probate; and in part four court records. Part five deals with Manor rolls – what they are and how to find them. Part 5. Manor Rolls You’ll find that as you research further back in time, fewer and...
In this episode, Diana and Nicole discuss finding immigration records for ancestors arriving in the United States after 1906. They provide a timeline of important immigration laws and their impacts, such as the 1906 establishment of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, the 1917 Immigration Act, the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, the 1924 National Origins Act, the 1945 War Brides Act, the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act, and the 1965...
If you’ve taken a DNA test and want to contribute to the genetic genealogy research on your ancestors, adding your DNA information to the collaborative WikiTree is an excellent place to start. Rest assured, you won’t be uploading any raw DNA. You’ll simply add your haplogroup if you took the Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA tests. For autosomal DNA, you’ll note where you have tested – Ancestry, FamilyTree DNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage, or Living DNA. This will...
Research in England typically uses baptisms, marriages, and burial records, but other records can shed light on our ancestors. In part one, we looked at the parish chest; in part two, tax records; and in part three, wills and probate. In part four of this series, we will explore court records and how to locate them. Part 4. Court Records A well-known, though often underused, resource for British genealogy is court records. The courts weren’t...
Would you like to automate the transcription of handwritten documents? Or quickly search for a particular name in a large probate or pension application file? Transkribus is an innovative platform that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to make deciphering old handwriting faster. Whether you’re tracing your family tree or researching historical figures, Transkribus can save you countless hours by automatically transcribing handwritten documents into searchable text. In this blog post, we’ll explore how...
In this episode of Research Like a Pro, Diana and Nicole explore the use of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and WikiTree in genealogical research. They explain that mtDNA is inherited from our mothers, with only females passing it on, and how it differs from autosomal DNA by coming from a distant maternal ancestor. They discuss how mtDNA testing reveals haplogroups, genetic population groups with a common ancestor, and share their personal testing experiences with 23andMe, FamilyTree...
Our five-part blog series continues by examining another record type to consider when baptisms, marriages, and burial records can’t be discovered for our ancestors. In part one we looked at the parish chest, in part two, tax records, and this blog post will focus on wills and probate. Wills & Probate Another resource beyond the parish is probate records. Wills are incredibly useful in that they often name the surviving family members (i.e., heirs) of...
Handwritten text recognition by large language models (LLMs) has become much better with the latest releases of ChatGPT 4o and Claude 3. 5 Sonnet. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the smartest LLM available today. See Anita Kirkovska, “Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4o,” vellum (https://www.vellum.ai/blog/claude-3-5-sonnet-vs-gpt4o). I decided to test Claude 3.5 Sonnet with one of my favorite tasks – handwritten text recognition, a challenging task for LLMs. To test the capabilities of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, I created a...
In this podcast episode, Diana and Nicole discuss the use of Generative AI in scholarly and genealogical writing, emphasizing the importance of transparency in disclosing AI assistance. They talk about editorial guidelines from scholarly journals and the Association of Computational Linguistics, which suggest clear declarations of AI’s involvement in literature searches, drafting, and idea generation. Key points include recommendations for crediting AI-generated content not as authors but by detailing the AI’s role. They also explore...
