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,...
Are you ready to tackle a DNA research project but you’re not sure what should be your focus? You could consider confirming one of your family lines or researching a hypothesized line. Before choosing a research objective, using the surname search features on the testing websites can help you determine which lines have pertinent DNA matches. If you are considering researching a brick wall ancestor, a surname search can determine if there is enough information...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Nicole’s research on Robert Daugherty and Sarah Taylor of Craven County, North Carolina and Warren County, Kentucky. We review the objective of the project, to find the children of Robert and Sarah, the timeline, and the locality research in Warren County, Kentucky. This was the first phase of a project to discover more about a cluster of DNA matches who seem to be connected to the...
