If you’ve been following the saga of my research into Cynthia (Dillard) Royston’s father, you may be wondering if I’ve made any progress lately. I’m happy to report that, after four focused projects and taking a break for a few years, I have a new lead and am back on the quest. I’m tackling the Dillards again as part of the Research Like a Pro 11 Study Group and will share each step of the...
Ever had an unsuccessful research trip where you spent time and money traveling to a facility, only to leave feeling frustrated and empty-handed? This is the first full post in our Onsite Research series (introduced here), where we’re diving into how to prepare for an onsite research trip and the essential research planning that should be done in advance. The good news is that with proper preparation, you can avoid those disappointing experiences and make...
In this episode of the Research Like a Pro Genealogy podcast, Diana and Nicole explore using AI to find research questions and write objectives. They discuss how AI can analyze your family tree data and suggest potential research questions. Diana shares her experience using a GEDCOM file with a custom GPT to analyze her pedigree for the Isabella Weatherford project. She explains how to create a GEDCOM file and use the Family Tree Expert custom...
As genealogists, we often struggle to narrow down our research focus and formulate clear objectives. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a helpful tool in this process. Let’s explore how to use AI to find research questions and write objectives, using my Isabella Weatherford project as an example. In our recent Research Like a Pro with AI Workshop, I followed the RLP process and explored ways AI could help streamline tedious tasks as well as...
In this episode, we discuss breaking up complex research projects into phases. This is a great way to make progress on a research question that might otherwise seem daunting. We’ll talk about how to identify the mother of Elsie, a woman born in 1820, as an example of how to set up phases for research. We’ll also discuss how to determine which phases are necessary and how to write research objectives. We wrap it up...
Uniquely identifying a person who is only mentioned in three records can be challenging. The creation of a research objective requires that you identify the person uniquely in time and place. How then, do you define the research project? I encountered this challenge when beginning a project to study Sally Keaton. The only records I have for her include a court order printed in a newspaper and two documents in William Keaton’s estate packet. The...
Have you ever felt like you’ve been working on a research question for years, and are not even sure what progress you’ve made? To combat this feeling, we recommend breaking up complex research projects into phases. For instance, researching the mother of a female ancestor born in the early 1800s is unlikely to be completed within 20 hours. It will likely require several phases, each with its own objective. As professional genealogists, this is how...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about chapter 4 of Research Like a Pro with DNA – “Create a Research Objective.” We discuss how to find research questions in your tree, the limitations of different types of DNA for helping answer those questions, and how to form a written objective with unique identifiers. We also discuss phases of a project. Transcript Nicole (1s): This is Research Like A Pro. Episode 241 RLP with...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about research objectives. Learn about this first step in the research like a pro process. This is a replay of episode 113, with commentary at the beginning and end by Diana and Nicole. We talk about Diana’s experience discovering more about her 2nd great-grandmother, Nancy Briscoe as part of a 14 Day mini-Research Like a Pro challenge. Transcript Nicole (1s): This is a Research Like a Pro...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Diana’s experiment to see if doing surname searches at each DNA testing website could help her find matches about a research question. She then used the results of her searches to decide if she had enough matches to work on this research objective. Mary “Clemsy” Cline, born in 1818 in Missouri, is one of our brick walls. Diana talks about using the search features at AncestryDNA,...
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