This podcast episode discusses visiting county courthouses for genealogical research. Diana shares her experience at the Chambers County Courthouse in Alabama, where she researched her ancestor, Thomas Beverly Royston. She explains the importance of preparing a research plan before visiting, including creating a timeline and identifying potential records. She also mentions learning about what records are available beforehand, either online or by contacting the courthouse. Diana describes the process of researching at the courthouse, such...
What can you find at the county courthouse? Records kept on the county level, such as deeds, mortgages, marriages, wills, guardianships, etc., are vital for our research. Although many of these items may be available online, some likely exist only at the courthouse. A trip to the courthouse may be in order if we want to perform reasonably exhaustive research. I recently visited Chambers County, Alabama, the residence of my ancestor, Thomas Beverly Royston, from...
In this episode of the Research Like a Pro Genealogy podcast, Diana and Nicole discuss the advancements in handwritten text recognition by large language models (LLMs), specifically Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Nicole shares her experience testing Claude’s transcription abilities with an 1829 North Carolina deed. She is impressed with the accuracy, noting that Claude even outperformed her manual transcription in some instances. Diana and Nicole then provide listeners with valuable tips for transcribing handwritten text using...
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...
Last week I wrote about the transfer of lands from the family of William Penn and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to original owners. These transfers resulted in what are known as “First Titles.” When one of these original owners sold their land to a buyer, the resulting document was a deed. Because our Pennsylvania German ancestors would have been involved in subsequent land transactions as they lived in and migrated through the state, it is...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about United States land records, specifically deeds. We talk about how to use the deed index and how important it is to learn how the index is organized. Whether it’s a direct, indirect, russell, or other index, you will want to know how to find your relative’s name in it. We also talk about our ancestor, Edward Raymond Kelsey, and how we found a deed for his...
Are you ready to make new discoveries in land records for your ancestors? In Part 1 of our series on land records, I shared several reasons to research the land. A land record may reveal the following: a family relationship, clues to past or present residence, associates, evidence of migration, and more. I also explained the differences between “state land states” and “federal land states” in the United States system of land distribution. We looked...
