Researching a new locality is always exciting. Finding the extant records and learning the background of the area sets the stage for the research phase. My latest project on finding the father of Cynthia (Dillard) Royston involves research in a new area of Georgia. Using AI to help create the locality guide for Cass County, Georgia, speeded up this part of the Research Like a Pro process and gave me good insights.

Research Objective

I settled on Cass County, Georgia, as the location to target for this project because I had recently found new records for her husband, Thomas B. Royston, in the area about the time of their marriage. My research objective clearly pinpoints this location.

Discover a candidate for Cynthia (Dillard) Royston’s father residing in Cass County, Georgia, during the 1830s. Cynthia was born about 1815 in Georgia and died on 22 August 1882 in Collin County, Texas. Cynthia married Thomas B. Royston about 1833 or 1834, possibly in Cass County, Georgia.

Narrowing the Time Frame

An essential step in creating a locality guide is focusing on the specific years that will impact the research. I generally use a span of several years before the ancestor arrived in the area and several years after they left. In the case of Cynthia, I knew Cass County, Georgia, wasn’t formed until 1832, so I wanted a guide focused on the county’s beginning to 1860, at least twenty years after Cynthia and Thomas migrated west to Alabama.

In the map below, you see Cass County in the northwestern corner of Georgia. Thomas and family moved across the border to DeKalb County, Alabama, by 1837, so the Roystons didn’t stay long in the area. However, perhaps Cynthia’s Dillard family did.

Querying AI

Using the Deep Research capabilities of the large language models (LLMs)  saved time and provided a good foundation to start my guide. My process is to query each model, then choose the one that I like the best as my main guide and copy and paste sections from the other model’s guides as needed. I still find it fascinating how similar, yet different, the results are with the identical query.

I have a Claude project titled “Locality Guides” that has my template in the project knowledge. My project instructions give specifics about how I want Claude to create the guide. I also used these instructions for the other LLMs and gave each my locality guide template.

You are an expert genealogist. I am creating a locality guide to be used in research. I want to learn about a specific location for my research project. Search your knowledge and identify online and offline research for my specific county. Provide details about the various sections of the locality guide template provided in the project knowledge.

Provide links to sources whenever possible. Structure the format, preserving the given categories and using bulleted topics in Markdown.

How did each LLM do with the query?

Claude: Claude 4.5 Sonnet used its reasoning model to search and think through the various sections of the guide. The output was an Artifact that opened to the side of the main chat. Copying that into a Google Doc provided eight pages of succinct information with links. It used twenty-five unique sources.

Perplexity: Nicole has created a Locality Guide Space, which is Perplexity’s term for a project, where you can provide custom instructions and the locality guide template to use.  Perplexity created the guide based on twenty unique sources using its deep research capabilities. It took several minutes to complete as it searched and thought about each section. I copied the six-page guide into a Google Doc and added a link to the specific chat so I could continue if I decided it would be necessary.

ChatGPT: Using the Deep Research feature of ChatGPT, the AI provided 213 pages when copied into my Google Doc, which is a bit overwhelming. Since it worked off of my template, it imported the headings, so I could easily click on a heading in the outline to review a section.

Gemini: Deep research in Gemini provided thirty-two pages of information with endnotes of the works cited.

My biggest challenge when working with locality guides from multiple AI models is correlating the answers. I want something succinct but complete, but I also want access to the more in-depth treatment that some of the models provided. I settled on creating a project in Claude and adding the locality guides from all four AI models. Now I can ask Claude any question about locality, and it will search the guides for an answer!

Learning about Record Loss and a Name Change

I tried out my new Cass County Project and asked Claude to provide a summary about any record loss the county had experienced based on the four guides I had linked to as project knowledge. Claude replied with the following.

Major Record Loss Event: November 5, 1864
The most significant record loss for Cass County occurred when Union forces burned the courthouse in Cassville on November 5, 1864 during the Civil War.

Records Saved
Fortunately, many county records survived thanks to heroic efforts by Cass County Clerk Tom Word (also referred to as Thomas A. Word). According to local tradition, Word loaded vital record books into a buggy/wagon and fled just ahead of the flames. The following bound volumes were preserved:

Deed books – continuous from the 1830s with no known volume gaps
Marriage registers – most marriages from 1833 onward survived (Book B starts around 1837)
Probate/Estate books – Will Book A covering the 1830s-1850s survived
Court minutes – Superior Court minutes survived
These saved volumes were later used in Cartersville to continue the record series.

Tracking down the source of the story about county clerk, Tom Word, led me to the article “History of Cassville,” on the Cassville Historical Society website. The story cited a news article by Joe Mahan, “Cassville Destroyed Seventy-Five years Ago,” in The Tribune News, of Cartersville, Georgia, on Thursday, November 2, 1939.

This was a fascinating detail, as I had noticed that the FamilySearch Catalog listed many records that date from the 1830s, leading me to believe that the record loss wasn’t catastrophic. This is another example of studying the actual record loss, as just because the courthouse was destroyed, it doesn’t mean all the records are gone. However, it does mean that some records were likely lost.

Another interesting fact about Cass County is the name change to Bartow. This is significant because the early record books all use Cass County in the titles but the records are listed under Bartow County.

Querying my Claude project about the name change gave me the following information.

Name Change from Cass to Bartow

Date of Change: December 6, 1861

Reason for the Name Change:

Cass County was renamed to Bartow County during the Civil War due to political considerations related to the man for whom it was originally named. The county had been named after General Lewis Cass (1782–1866), who served as U.S. Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson and had advocated for the removal of the Cherokee Indians, which is why Georgia initially honored him with the county’s name.

However, by 1861, Lewis Cass held Union sympathies during the Civil War. Due to these Unionist leanings and amid sectional tensions, Georgia chose to rename the county to honor Colonel Francis S. Bartow of the Confederate Army. Colonel Bartow was killed in 1861 at the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) and was the first prominent Georgian to die in the Civil War, making him a Southern hero.

Important Note: Colonel Francis S. Bartow had no direct connection to the geographic area aside from being honored as a Confederate martyr.

Sources

This information is documented in:

1. Georgia Legislative Acts of 1861 – The December 6, 1861 act that states “Cass is hereby renamed Bartow” can be found in the published Georgia Laws 1861 volume
2. Digital Library of Georgia’s (DLG) Georgia Legislative Documents collection (1799-1999) – searchable for “Cass County” references
3. Referenced in multiple guides as the official legislative change during the Civil War period.

1832 Cherokee and Gold Lottery

The Georgia land lottery records are essential to understand since this was how the state distributed its land starting in 1805. I hypothesized that Cynthia’s father was likely drawn to the area because of the lottery. Asking Claude to summarize the 1832 lottery from my Cass County Locality Guide Project resulted in the following.

Summary

The 1832 Cherokee Land Lottery was the largest and most significant of Georgia’s land lotteries, distributing former Cherokee Nation lands in northwest Georgia to state citizens. Over 85,000 people competed for 18,309 land lots in this lottery, which carved Cass County into parcels typically consisting of 160-acre land lots and 40-acre gold lots in areas of the gold region. The lottery drawing took place in 1832, with results published in 1838 by James F. Smith in his book “The Cherokee Land Lottery.” Winners (called “drawers”) received the right to claim specific lots identified by district, section, and lot number. Many lottery winners were speculators who never moved to the area and quickly sold their lots to others.

After winning in the lottery, individuals had to pay a grant fee to the state of Georgia by 1838 to receive an official land grant—essentially the state’s deed transferring ownership. Those who failed to pay by the deadline forfeited their lots, which the state subsequently sold through county land sales in the late 1830s and early 1840s. The lottery system replaced any federal land patent process, as Georgia controlled all land distribution in this region. This land distribution method attracted settlers primarily from Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and Mississippi, including Revolutionary War veterans (identified by “R.S.” after their names in lottery records). The lottery fundamentally shaped Cass County’s settlement patterns and early population growth during the 1830s.

Timeline

• 1830 – Cherokee territory placed under Georgia jurisdiction
• 1832 – Cherokee Land Lottery conducted; lottery drawing held
• December 3, 1832 – Cass County created from Cherokee County
• 1833 – White settlers began arriving; Cassville surveyed and established as county seat
• 1835 – Treaty of New Echota signed, finalizing Cherokee removal terms
• 1838 – Land lottery results published by James F. Smith; grant fee deadline (lots forfeited if unpaid)
• 1838-1839 – Cherokee removal completed via Trail of Tears
• Late 1830s-1841 – State sold forfeited lottery lots through county land sales

Sources

From Cass County, Georgia (1832–1870) Locality Guide – ChatGPT:

• James F. Smith’s “The Cherokee Land Lottery” (published 1838)
• Georgia Archives Virtual Vault – Land Lottery Grant Books section
• Georgia Archives “Georgia 1832 Cherokee Drawers and Grant” database

From Cass County, Georgia Locality Guide – Claude:

• FamilySearch Wiki – Cass County, Georgia: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Cass_County,_Georgia_Genealogy
• RAOGK 1832 Cherokee Land Lottery Guide: https://raogk.org/georgia/ga-land-lottery/
• Georgia Archives Land Lottery Research: https://www.georgiaarchives.org/research/1832_land_lottery
• New Georgia Encyclopedia (referenced for district information)

Maps

A locality guide needs good links to maps, and in this instance, I found I needed to curate my own list with some of the ideas garnered from each AI model.

Map List from my Cass/Bartow County Locality Guide

My completed guide in Google Docs has sixteen pages compiled by me and AI as my assistant. At the beginning, I linked to the complete guides that each AI model created, and I now have a Claude project with each of those guides linked as project knowledge. I can do a quick query about any question I might have as I work on my project.

Researching the locality has given me a good idea of the available records and the history of Cass County that will impact the research.

Best of luck in all your genealogical endeavors!