Not heading to Salt Lake City for RootsTech this year? Neither am I — but I’m still all in! 🙌
I’ll be participating in #NotAtRootsTech and taking advantage of everything the online experience offers — from general sessions and new feature announcements to class recordings, speaker syllabi, vendor
What are you supposed to do with 39,000 Relatives at RootsTech?
Instead of feeling overwhelmed, I made a plan.
This year I’m focusing on my 3rd and 4th cousins — the relatives most likely to connect to my active research questions and DNA matches. In the past, I copied names into a spreadsheet… an
Did AI make up the “65 tons of cargo” in my recent post about the 1878 Crawford migration to Dodge City?
A thoughtful reader asked that exact question — and it’s a good one.
Sixty-five tons sounds like an enormous amount of goods for one family moving from Indiana to Kansas. It would be easy to as
What did your ancestors actually experience — beyond the dates and places in your family tree?
For this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I explored that question using artificial intelligence. I chose the 1878 move of the James H. Crawford family from Warren County, Indiana, to Dodge City, Kans
AI Generated Biography
Have you tried Randy Seaver’s ABC Biography process? If not, it’s a creative and approachable way to transform research into stories your family will actually read and enjoy. I’ve used Randy’s method many times, and it has helped me move from facts to narrative in meaningful…
Friday Find
Probate Petition for Clayton H. Wells (1931, Eaton County, Michigan) Today’s Friday Find is a photocopy I received from a Michigan researcher — and it was well worth the wait. This petition for appointment of administrator, filed in March 1931 in Eaton County, Michigan, was created…
Say Their Names
As genealogists, we often remind ourselves that the societal norms of the past were very different from those of today. Even so, there are moments in our research that remain deeply uncomfortable. For me, that is especially true when working with deeds and wills that involve…
Combining AI tools
Do you use Ancestry hints? Do you take advantage of FamilySearch’s full-text search? Have you experimented with ChatGPT to help make sense of long, difficult documents? Have you ever wished there were a magic link that led directly from an ancestor to the full text of their…
Artie Briles in Song and Audio Overview
As I continue telling the story of Frances Artlissa Ricketts Briles, known to family as Artie, this post explores her life through two additional formats: song and audio overview. Both were created from the same carefully researched narrative, but each…
Monday’s Diggings
As a retiree immersed in genealogy, I’m slowly working my way through decades of photocopies that once filled my research notebooks. Many of these treasures were gathered long before digitized records were just a click away. Today, much of that same material is readily available…
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun
Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It’s Saturday Night again — Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission — and execute it with precision. What are your major genealogy challenges — the family mysteries you haven’t been able to…
Biography: Francis Artlissa Ricketts
Do you consider yourself a leader or a follower when it comes to using artificial intelligence in your genealogy research? I’m aware of several early leaders in this space, but I’ll admit that I sometimes find their prompts and workflows difficult to follow.…
Friday Find
As I continue working my way through my WELLS notebook, I thought I’d not only share the next record but also explain the why behind these Friday Find posts. While my long-term goal is to reduce the amount of paper in my files, the process is about much more than decluttering. Each…
Using WikiTree’s Free Pages
Do you create or connect profiles on WikiTree? If so, have you ever found that the key evidence supporting a relationship is buried deep inside a legal document—a will, deed, or probate record that’s far too long to neatly fit into a profile? While it can be tempting to…
Piecing together a family
Have you uncovered a will that outlines descendants, including grandchildren, but can't find the family on FamilySearch? That was my experience recently while researching descendants of Jeremiah Browning. According to Jeremiah's will, he had a daughter, Cassandra who was…
DNA and Trees: Accuracy Matters
I think we can all agree that having a family tree connected to our DNA results is important. But just as important—if not more so—is the accuracy of that tree. I recently wrote about my Browning line and the efforts of a profile manager who is working to prevent…
Monday’s Diggings
Have you ever been fortunate enough to have family members help with your genealogy research? I was—and I don’t take that lightly. Long before online databases and digitized records, my parents willingly did genealogy research as they traveled around the country. They visited…
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun
Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 1) It's Valentine's Day - a day for lovers! We all have hundreds of love stories in our…
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day 1973 marked the beginning of a lifelong journey with my husband, Michael Philbrick. On that day, Mike proposed—setting in motion a partnership that has shaped both our personal and professional lives. We were married the following year, in 1974, after graduating…
Friday Find
Wells–Doolittle Marriage Today’s Friday Find comes from my WELLS notebook and features the marriage record of Nancy Wells and James Doolittle. The paper copy of this record has been in my files for years, originally shared with me by a Michigan researcher. Until recently, however, it…
