Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy

Brian

Stuck on a family history brick wall? It's time to add the most powerful tool to your genealogy toolkit: Artificial Intelligence. Welcome to Ancestors and Algorithms, the definitive guide to revolutionizing your family tree research with AI. Forget the hype and confusion. This isn't just another podcast about AI; this is your hands-on, step-by-step masterclass using AI. Each week, host and researcher Brian demystifies the technology and shows you exactly how to apply AI tools to find ancestors, analyze records, and solve your toughest genealogy puzzles. We explore the incredible promise of AI while navigating its perils with an honest, practical approach. Learn to use AI as your personal research assistant—not a replacement for your own critical thinking. Join us to learn how to: Break through brick walls using AI-driven analysis and data correlation.Transcribe old, hard-to-read documents, letters, and census records in minutes.Use ChatGPT, Gemini, and other Generative AI to draft biographies, summarize findings, and organize your research.Analyze DNA matches and historical records to uncover hidden family connections.Master prompts that get you accurate results and avoid AI "hallucinations."Discover the latest AI tech and digital tools for genealogists before anyone else.Whether you're a beginner genealogist or a seasoned family historian, if you're ready to upgrade your research skills, this podcast is for you. Hit Follow now and turn AI into your ultimate secret weapon for uncovering your ancestry.

  1. 5 days ago

    Ep. 54: The Marine They Couldn't Bring Home - WWII DNA Identification & AI Genealogy Research

    A Marine killed at Tarawa in 1943 was declared non-recoverable in 1949, but DNA proved eighty-one years later he had actually been buried within days. It was the paperwork that failed him, not the men who buried him. This episode is for you if you've hit a record whose final-sounding language you never verified, if your family tree has a WWII, Korean, or Vietnam War service member whose fate was never fully confirmed, or if you want to see Gemini Notebook, Claude, and Perplexity with the Comet browser used together on one real research problem, start to finish. What you'll learn: - How to test a record's administrative language instead of accepting it at face value - How to correlate a personal service record against unit-level records to find a documented historical pattern - How modern military DNA identification actually works, and who in a family is a valid reference sample - How the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and its partner History Flight are still identifying WWII remains today Frequently Asked Questions What does "non-recoverable" mean on a WWII military record? Non-recoverable is an official U.S. military case designation meaning remains could not be located or matched to a name. It does not mean no burial or recovery effort ever occurred, though families have long read it that way. How does DNA identify unidentified WWII remains? The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency primarily uses mitochondrial DNA, passed from a mother to all her children but carried forward only by daughters, combined with anthropological and dental analysis, to match remains against a family reference sample. Can AI tools like Claude and Gemini Notebook actually help with genealogy research? Yes. In this episode, Gemini Notebook builds a citation-backed timeline from uploaded military documents, Claude compares conflicting records to explain a contradiction, and Perplexity, using Comet, verifies the theory against current, sourced information. Why did so many Marines killed at Tarawa remain unaccounted for? Wartime construction on the tiny island of Betio disrupted cemetery markers before a full recovery could be completed in 1946. Excavations beginning around 2015 have since located dozens of graves the original recovery never found. Were Marine Corps personnel records affected by the 1973 National Personnel Records Center fire? No. That fire destroyed a majority of Army and Air Force personnel files from the affected decades, but Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard records were stored separately and were largely spared. How can I find out if a missing WWII relative has been identified? Check DPAA's free "Our Missing" search tool and "Recently Accounted For" list at dpaa.mil, or ABMC's free Burials and Memorializations database at abmc.gov, which adds a bronze rosette next to a name once DPAA confirms an identification. Australian listeners: the Army's Unrecovered War Casualties unit covers more than 30,000 missing Australians from the World Wars. UK listeners: the Ministry of Defence's Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre, the War Detectives, does the same for missing British service members. This is an Unexpected Discovery episode. The family's eighty-one-year fear that nothing had ever been recovered turned out to be wrong, though the paperwork failure behind it is real and still affects hundreds of similar cases today. A Companion Guide with twelve advanced AI prompts, a full document-comparison workflow, and a GPS Research Checklist built specifically for military identification cases is available at ancestorsandai.com. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

  2. 1 Sept

    Ep. 53: The Recording I Almost Didn't Make

    A family told the same story about a 1948 move for nearly eighty years. One recorded interview and three AI tools changed that. Effie Napier is eighty-eight, and by her family's account, the last person alive who actually remembers why they left the West Virginia coal fields for Dayton, Ohio. The story everyone told was simple: better money, a fresh start. It's the version repeated at every reunion. Then her grandson sat down with a recorder and one question built from an actual document instead of a guess. What came back wasn't the story anyone expected, including Effie, who had quietly carried the real reason alone for most of her life. This episode (using a composite case built from the kind of families and records this show sees constantly) walks through the full technique end to end: researching a relative's world with Perplexity before writing a single question, turning that research into interview questions with Claude specific enough to unlock a real memory instead of a rehearsed one, and recording, transcribing, and fact-checking the interview with Gemini Notebook, including the two-hundred-megabyte file limit that can ruin an afternoon if you don't know about it going in. This is for you if you have a living relative who remembers something your documents never will, and you want an actual method for capturing it before it's gone, not only a recorder and good intentions. FAQ What AI tools are used in this episode? Perplexity with Comet for historical research, Claude for building interview questions from documented facts, and Gemini Notebook for transcribing and analyzing the recorded interview. Is NotebookLM the same as Gemini Notebook? Yes. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on July 16, 2026. It is the same product, the same notebooks, and the same underlying tool, only a new name and logo. How large can an audio file be for Gemini Notebook? The limit is two hundred megabytes per file, not a fixed number of minutes. A typical compressed recording (MP3 or M4A) can run several hours and stay under that limit. The same length recorded as an uncompressed WAV file can exceed two hundred megabytes in under thirty minutes. What questions should I ask when interviewing an elderly relative? Specific questions built from documented facts, not general prompts like "tell me about your childhood." A question tied to a real date, document, or event produces a far more detailed and useful answer. For Australian and UK listeners: the same technique applies to any internal migration story in your own family history, whether your research draws on Trove, ScotlandsPeople, or The National Archives. Honest outcome, by the show's own Genealogical Proof Standard scoring: an unexpected discovery. The facts of the timeline confirmed cleanly. What they confirmed underneath the timeline was harder and more human than anyone went looking for. The free episode covers the full technique start to finish. The Companion Guide adds twelve advanced prompts for building a repeatable oral history research practice, including how to cross-reference multiple interviews and prepare your findings for your family tree software. Find both at ancestorsandai.com. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

  3. 25 Aug

    Ep. 52: The Parish That Wouldn't Take Him Back - English Poor Law Records

    In 1836, a Yorkshire parish legally removed a laborer to a village he'd probably never lived in, over his father's old apprenticeship. This episode uses Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT to trace an English settlement dispute through parish chest records most genealogists never open. This episode is for you if: - You have English ancestors and don't know where to start before 1837 - You've heard the term "parish chest" and want to know what's actually in one - You want to see Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT used for real genealogy research, not generic AI tips - You're trying to understand English Poor Law, settlement, and removal records What you'll learn: - Why the GRO index cannot help you before July 1, 1837, and what to search instead - What a settlement examination and removal order actually are, and why parishes created them - How Gemini via Google AI Studio transcribes period handwriting, and which free model to pick - Why an 1836 case used a 174-year-old legal mechanism most people assume ended with Victorian workhouse reform - How to use ChatGPT for archive research strategy, not just brainstorming FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Does the GRO index have birth records for someone born before 1837? No. Civil registration in England and Wales began on July 1, 1837, so anyone born earlier has no GRO birth record at all. Parish baptism registers are the correct record type before that date. What is a settlement examination in English genealogy? A settlement examination was a formal, sworn interview conducted by parish officials to determine which parish was legally responsible for a person if they became poor. The mechanism was created by the Settlement Act of 1662, not the older 1601 Poor Relief Act many people assume covers it. Did settlement and removal records stop after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834? No. The 1834 Act reorganized day-to-day poor relief into larger Poor Law Unions, but which parish was legally responsible for a specific person stayed a parish-by-parish decision until 1865. An 1836 removal order still came from an individual parish, not a Union. Can Gemini transcribe old handwritten genealogy documents for free? Yes. Gemini 3 Flash, free through Google AI Studio, performs close to human-level accuracy on legible nineteenth-century handwriting. Current testing shows the free Flash model holding up as well as, or sometimes better than, the paid Gemini Pro tier for this specific task. Can ChatGPT's free tier build a custom GPT in 2026? No. As of 2026, creating and publishing a custom GPT requires a paid ChatGPT plan. The free tier still supports unlimited text conversations, enough for research strategy and archive brainstorming. What was the Dewsbury Poor Law Union? Formed in January of 1837, the Dewsbury Poor Law Union grouped the parishes of Dewsbury, Batley, Mirfield, Thornhill, West Ardsley, and part of Birstal for administering relief under the new system. UK listeners, this one is your home turf: search the GRO's own index at gro.gov.uk, and check whether The National Archives or your county record office holds parish chest material for your ancestor's parish. Australian listeners with English-origin ancestors, Trove is worth checking for newspaper mentions of arrivals from a specific parish. This is an Unexpected Discovery, not a full breakthrough, and we say so plainly: the trail goes cold after 1836, and we don't know what happened to Amos next. Sometimes the honest answer to a four-generation mystery is smaller than the mystery itself, and that's still a real result. Want the twelve-prompt Advanced version, the exact workflow for tracing a settlement dispute through parish chest material, and a GPS Checklist for English civil and parish records? The Companion Guide has it all, plus every episode, at ancestorsandai.com. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

  4. 18 Aug

    Ep. 51: The Jewish Shtetl No Map Remembers

    A Jewish ancestor's hometown was spelled three different ways across three documents. A 1985 algorithm and three AI tools narrowed it down. This episode shows exactly how, and exactly where the method stops working. This episode is for you if you are researching Eastern European Jewish ancestors, if a hometown name on an old document does not match any map you can find, or if you want to see how Claude, Gemini, and NotebookLM actually perform on real historical documents rather than a marketing demo. You will learn: How the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex system, built in 1985 specifically for Eastern European Jewish names, still powers the free JewishGen Communities Database todayWhy Ellis Island inspectors did not change immigrants' names, and where name changes actually happened insteadHow to use Gemini via Google AI Studio to transcribe messy historical handwriting, and how to read its uncertainty flagsHow to use Claude to weigh competing candidate towns against the evidence, and what it takes to turn a strong guess into a confirmed factHow to use NotebookLM to correlate multiple documents with citations, and why that matters when no single source closes the gapFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex? Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex is a phonetic name-matching system built in 1985 by Gary Mokotoff and Randy Daitch specifically to handle the spelling variation common in Eastern European Jewish surnames and place names. It still powers JewishGen's free Communities Database today. Did immigration officials at Ellis Island change immigrants' names? No. Ellis Island inspectors worked from passenger manifests already prepared by the shipping line in Europe and did not write names down for the first time. When a name changed, it typically happened later, at the hands of the immigrant or a naturalization clerk. How accurate is Gemini at transcribing old handwritten documents? As of August 2026, independent testing on eighteenth and nineteenth century English-language handwriting has measured Gemini's character error rate at around one to two percent. Early Russian-language testing has been promising too, though not yet benchmarked as rigorously. What is the JewishGen Communities Database? It is a free, Soundex-searchable database that lets researchers search for a place name phonetically rather than by exact spelling, then filter results by province and by historical Jewish population, useful when a name has been transliterated inconsistently across records. Can AI tools confirm an ancestor's exact hometown? Not always, and this episode is honest about that. AI tools can narrow a list of real candidates and help weigh which one is best supported by the evidence, but confirming an exact match usually still requires a document that names the specific family in connection to that place. What AI tools are featured in this episode? Claude, for comparing and reasoning across multiple transcribed documents. Gemini via Google AI Studio, for handwriting transcription. NotebookLM, for source-grounded correlation across every document gathered, each claim cited to its source. For my Australian and UK listeners: this same wave of Eastern European Jewish emigration built major communities in Melbourne, Sydney, and London's East End. The same free Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex search works from anywhere in the world, and the National Archives of Australia and The National Archives in the UK are essential next steps once a place name is narrowed down. An honest note on the outcome: this is a Brick Wall episode. The leading candidate town is well supported but not confirmed, and the episode says so plainly rather than dressing up a strong guess as solved. For a deeper walkthrough of this exact technique, including additional advanced prompts and record-collection guidance for Eastern European Jewish research, the Companion Guide for this episode is available at ancestorsandai.com. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

  5. 11 Aug

    Ep. 50: Can the New Genealogy AI Crack Hazel's Wall? | FamilySearch AI Research Assistant vs Ancestry AncestryAI and Get Ideas, Tested

    Episode 50, The AI Lab: Brian tests four AI features built directly into FamilySearch and Ancestry, using a five-question trust rubric built live with Claude, to find out which ones you can actually trust with your family tree. One of the four had not even shipped yet when this episode was first outlined, which becomes part of the story you'll hear. THIS EPISODE IS FOR YOU IF YOU HAVE SEARCHED: Is FamilySearch's AI Research Assistant accurate? Can you trust AncestryAI's AI Stories feature? What is Ancestry's new Get Ideas tool? Should I use AI on my family tree? How do I know if a genealogy AI answer is wrong? Is Ancestry's AI free or does it need a subscription? Does FamilySearch's AI work outside the United States? What's the difference between FamilySearch Simple Search and the AI Research Assistant? WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: How to build a five-question trust rubric you can run against any AI research assistant, present or future, in under two minutes.How to catch a confidently wrong AI answer before it gets written into your tree, using the same method that caught a false claim in this episode.Why FamilySearch's AI Research Assistant is not yet available in every country, confirmed directly from FamilySearch's own support team, and what to do if you're one of the researchers it hasn't reached yet.What a real, documented AI mixup on another genealogist's own family tree can teach you before the same thing happens on yours.How to tell the difference between an AI tool that shows its sources and one that only sounds like it does.THE FOUR AI FEATURES TESTED: FamilySearch's Simple Search, a free natural-language search experiment currently in FamilySearch Labs. FamilySearch's AI Research Assistant, which scans your existing tree and hints for possible missing relatives, and flags them right on your homepage. Ancestry's AncestryAI, which turns a single record into a narrated, AI-written story, still labeled beta. Ancestry's Get Ideas, a brand-new beta feature, launched in late June 2026, that suggests what to research next based on a person's existing records and family connections. IN THIS EPISODE: Brian opens by revisiting Hazel Kirby, a research problem introduced in Episode 49 that was never fully solved: a woman who appears once in a 1920 Chicago city directory, working and living independently, then vanishes from the record for twenty years. Before touching any AI tool, he builds a five-question trust rubric live with Claude. He then runs FamilySearch's Simple Search and AI Research Assistant against Hazel's case, followed by Ancestry's AncestryAI and its newly launched Get Ideas feature, scoring each one against the same five questions. Along the way, he uses Perplexity to verify what's actually changed about these tools since the episode was first outlined, and cites a real, documented AI error from another genealogist's own research to show the risk is not hypothetical. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FROM THIS EPISODE: Is FamilySearch's AI Research Assistant free? Yes. All of FamilySearch's tools, including this one, are free, the same as the rest of the site. Is FamilySearch's AI Research Assistant available worldwide? Not yet. FamilySearch's own support team has confirmed there is no release date yet for the UK, with the feature currently centered on the US and Canada. Is Ancestry's AncestryAI free? The lighter context questions and the record summarizer are part of the standard Ancestry experience; the deeper AI Stories audio narration requires an active subscription. Can AI on genealogy sites be wrong? Yes, and this episode shows exactly how, using both a constructed test case and a real, documented example from a working genealogist's own research. What is the Genealogical Proof Standard? A five-element professional framework genealogists use to evaluate evidence. This episode maps a simplified version of it onto AI tool testing, and the full five-element checklist is in the Companion Guide. What is Ancestry's Get Ideas feature? A beta tool, launched June 29, 2026, accessed through a sparkle icon on an ancestor's profile page. It reviews a person's existing records and family connections and suggests research directions, tags, and timeline descriptions. Does FamilySearch's AI ever get things wrong? Yes. This episode is upfront about real, documented community reports of the AI Research Assistant suggesting incorrect family matches, alongside the ways it gets things right. What tools does Ancestors and Algorithms use most often? Claude for reasoning and document analysis, Perplexity and Comet for current web research, Gemini for handwriting transcription, ChatGPT for brainstorming, and NotebookLM for source-grounded organization, rotated episode to episode based on what the research task actually needs. THE HONEST OUTCOME: Hazel Kirby's brick wall from Episode 49 is still not fully solved. One tool surfaces a real, sourced, still-unconfirmed lead worth chasing next season, a possible 1926 Cook County marriage record. Another states a false claim about her death with total confidence, the same kind of error genealogist Randy Seaver independently caught and published about his own family tree months before this episode was recorded. You will hear exactly how to tell a trustworthy AI answer from a dangerous one, on any tool, at any time, including ones that do not exist yet. RESEARCHING FROM AUSTRALIA OR THE UK? This episode covers whether FamilySearch's and Ancestry's AI features are actually live in your account yet, plus how to run the same five-question trust test against your own country's major archives, including Trove, the National Archives of Australia, and ScotlandsPeople. GO DEEPER WITH THE COMPANION GUIDE: This free episode stands entirely on its own. For listeners who want to take it further, the Companion Guide includes a printable version of the five-question trust rubric, five intermediate prompts for Patreon members built around the exact obstacles you'll hit trying these tools on your own research, and twelve advanced prompts for stress-testing any platform AI feature against the full Genealogical Proof Standard, twenty prompts in total built from this single episode. Full show notes, the Companion Guide, our private community, and every past episode live at ancestorsandai.com. ABOUT ANCESTORS AND ALGORITHMS: Ancestors and Algorithms is a weekly podcast where family history meets artificial intelligence, hosted by Brian. Every episode pairs a real genealogy research problem with copy-paste AI prompts you can use immediately, built around the professional Genealogical Proof Standard, with an honest mix of breakthroughs and brick walls. New to the show? Start with any episode; each one stands completely on its own. The Golden Rule of this show, and the whole point of today's episode: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

  6. 4 Aug

    Ep. 49: The Research Assistant That Remembers (AI for Genealogy)

    Ancestors and Algorithms Episode 49, "The Research Assistant That Remembers," teaches genealogists how to build a persistent AI research assistant across three free tools: Claude Projects, Gemini Gems, and ChatGPT Custom Instructions, so you stop re-explaining your family history case to a brand new chat every single session. Host Brian walks through the exact custom instructions he wrote into each AI tool, with the Genealogical Proof Standard's Golden Rule, AI is your research assistant, not your researcher, written directly into the assistant's own settings instead of repeated by hand every time you sit down to research. He tests the build against a constructed case designed to stress it: a Chicago city directory entry from 1920, then twenty years of silence, then a reappearance in 1940 under a possibly different surname. This episode is for you if you have ever: Retyped the same family background into a new AI chat every time you sat down to research your family treeWondered whether Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT can actually remember a genealogy case between sessionsSearched for how to build an AI research assistant for family history using free toolsWanted a real, tested answer on Claude Projects, Gemini Gems, or ChatGPT Custom Instructions for genealogy research, not only a feature listAsked whether AI tools for genealogy actually hold up, or only sound convincing In this episode, you will learn: How to write AI assistant instructions that hold up under real pressure, not only instructions that sound carefulHow to test whether your AI research assistant is actually following its own guardrails, instead of only agreeing that it willContext loading, tool chaining, multi-document comparison, and verification choreography, four techniques used across a genuine multi-tool workflowWhich free tier limits actually apply to Claude Projects, Gemini Gems, and ChatGPT Custom Instructions as of this recording, and how to work within themHow the Genealogical Proof Standard's five elements, reasonably exhaustive research, source citations, analysis and correlation, resolution of conflicting evidence, and a soundly reasoned written conclusion, show up naturally in an AI-assisted research session For Australian listeners, this same persistent-assistant technique applies directly to convict and immigration research through Findmypast. For UK listeners, it applies to government and military records through The National Archives, or to Scottish lines through ScotlandsPeople. The tool does not care which country's archives it is helping you organize. This is an honest Partial Answer episode, one of the outcome types this show tracks openly alongside Full Breakthroughs, Unexpected Discoveries, and Brick Walls. The AI assistant technique itself is fully validated and ready to build today, for free, in about fifteen minutes. The twenty-year gap in the case built to test it stays open on purpose, because Ancestors and Algorithms does not manufacture a clean ending the evidence has not actually earned. Brian brings over a decade of hands-on genealogy research experience and more than a thousand hours of direct AI tool use to every episode, translating AI capability into research methodology genealogists can trust and verify for themselves. The free episode stands on its own with everything you need to start today. For the exact instructions used in all three tools, word for word, plus advanced prompts for stress-testing your own assistant's guardrails and confirming it holds the line under real pressure, the Companion Guide is available at ancestorsandai.com. Genealogy meets artificial intelligence, every week, on Ancestors and Algorithms: AI genealogy tools, family history research, Claude for genealogy, Gemini for genealogy, ChatGPT for genealogy, and practical AI-assisted family tree research for genealogists at every level. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

  7. 28 Jul

    Ep. 48: Also Known As - French Canadian Genealogy, Quebec Dit Names & AI Tools

    A Quebec family's baptismal records begin abruptly in 1850, though family memory said they were French Canadian for generations before that. The answer is a dit name: Quebec's centuries-old tradition of alternate family surnames, in which a family could be baptized under one name and married under another, and it is hiding more genealogy brick walls than most researchers realize. This episode of Ancestors and Algorithms, a genealogy and artificial intelligence podcast, follows a real French Canadian research case rooted in Nicolet County, Quebec, and the mill town of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, home to some of the nearly one million French Canadians who crossed the border for work by 1930. Host Brian uses Claude AI, Gemini via AI Studio, and NotebookLM, alongside FamilySearch's newly expanded French language full text search, to trace a surname that hides an entirely different baptismal name underneath it: Pepin. This episode is for you if: - You have French Canadian, Quebecois, Franco-American, or Acadian ancestry and have hit a wall in Catholic parish registers - You want to know what a "dit name" is and how it can make a well-documented family look invisible in vital records - You are curious how AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini can be used responsibly in family history research: to search, transcribe, and organize faster, not to invent an answer - You are researching Quebec notarial records, marriage contracts, the Drouin Collection, or the PRDH for the first time - You have ever traced a family from Quebec into a New England mill town, a "Little Canada" neighborhood, and lost the thread at the border You'll learn how to spot a suspiciously clean starting date in a parish register before assuming a family arrived from elsewhere, how Quebec's dit name tradition works and where to check it for free, how a notarial marriage contract can name a hidden family connection a parish baptism never would, and how AI-powered full text search can surface a document even when it is filed under a completely different surname than the one you are searching. For listeners in Australia and the UK: this episode's approach to a naming-convention brick wall applies directly to your own family history research too, whether that means convict-era name variants searchable through Trove, or Scottish surname and sept patterns searchable through ScotlandsPeople and The National Archives. Honest outcome: this one is a partial answer, not a full breakthrough. We confirm the family's real, much deeper roots in Quebec and solve the naming mystery behind the missing baptisms, but we do not yet know why this specific family adopted the nickname they did, or which parish in France their line sailed from before New France began. For the full episode transcript, a deeper Companion Guide with advanced AI prompts and a GPS research checklist built around this exact case, and more free genealogy and AI research content, visit ancestorsandai.com. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

  8. 21 Jul

    Ep. 47: The Pardon on the Wall - An Australian Convict Ancestor Uncovered with AI

    A family believed their ancestor arrived in Australia a free man in the 1830s. A 190-year-old government pardon said otherwise, and nobody had ever read past the word "Pardon" printed across the top of it. In this episode of Ancestors and Algorithms, host Brian uses AI genealogy tools to work a full case study built around Australian convict records, a first for this show. More than 76,000 convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, between 1804 and 1853, and this episode walks through exactly how to search that archive when a family's own story about "how we got here" turns out to be the wrong question. When a thorough search for a free settler's arrival turns up nothing at all, widening that same search into convict records instead surfaces a transportation record tied to England's 1830 Captain Swing riots, when agricultural laborers across more than thirty English counties rose up against the threshing machines replacing their winter wages with silence. Hampshire's own reckoning came at a Special Commission convened in Winchester's Great Hall that December, organized under the Duke of Wellington himself, and it turns a private family shame into something else entirely. This episode is for you if: You have, or suspect you have, a convict ancestor somewhere in an Australian family treeYou want to see NotebookLM, Perplexity with the Comet browser, and Claude used together on one real, multi-step genealogy investigation, prompts and allYour own research touches Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania, Hampshire, England, or the Swing Riots of 1830You have ever hit a dead-end search and wondered whether you were searching the right record category to begin withWhat you'll learn: How to search Libraries Tasmania's free Tasmanian Names Index for convict conduct records, indents, and permission-to-marry registersThe real difference between a Ticket of Leave, a Conditional Pardon, and a Free Pardon, and why mixing them up can misstate exactly how free your ancestor actually wasHow to use AI to correlate one individual's record against a larger, documented historical event instead of treating it as an isolated incidentWhy "reasonably exhaustive research," one of the five elements of the Genealogical Proof Standard, means searching the record category your family's own story quietly ruled outFor Australian researchers, this episode centers on Libraries Tasmania's convict archive and Trove, the National Library of Australia's digitized newspaper collection. For UK researchers, it covers the National Archives' criminal registers and the Home Office correspondence generated by the Swing Riots themselves, the same paperwork that put a nineteen-year-old farm laborer on a convict ship out of Portsmouth. The honest outcome: this is a Pivot episode. The original question, which ship carried a free settler to Australia, never gets answered, because that ship never existed. What the research turns up instead is richer: a real, documented historical movement, a family myth two centuries in the making, and a pardon dated February 3rd, 1836, that the family had been misreading since the day it was framed. For most of Australian history, a convict ancestor was a source of shame, edited quietly out of the family story rather than framed on a wall. Since the country's Bicentenary, that has shifted for many families toward something closer to pride, and this episode sits right in that turn. As always on this show: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Every record and historical detail in this episode, from the ship Eliza to the Hampshire Special Commission, has been independently verified. A Companion Guide with advanced prompts, workflows, and a GPS research checklist for this episode is available for members at ancestorsandai.com, along with every past episode, our private community, and The Research Lab. Connect with Ancestors and Algorithms: 📧 Email: ancestorsandai@gmail.com 🌐 Website: https://ancestorsandai.com/ 📘 Facebook Group: Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy - www.facebook.com/groups/ancestorsandalgorithms/ Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Join our Facebook group to share your AI genealogy breakthroughs, ask questions, and connect with fellow family historians who are embracing the future of genealogy research! New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss the latest AI tools and techniques for family history research.

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Stuck on a family history brick wall? It's time to add the most powerful tool to your genealogy toolkit: Artificial Intelligence. Welcome to Ancestors and Algorithms, the definitive guide to revolutionizing your family tree research with AI. Forget the hype and confusion. This isn't just another podcast about AI; this is your hands-on, step-by-step masterclass using AI. Each week, host and researcher Brian demystifies the technology and shows you exactly how to apply AI tools to find ancestors, analyze records, and solve your toughest genealogy puzzles. We explore the incredible promise of AI while navigating its perils with an honest, practical approach. Learn to use AI as your personal research assistant—not a replacement for your own critical thinking. Join us to learn how to: Break through brick walls using AI-driven analysis and data correlation.Transcribe old, hard-to-read documents, letters, and census records in minutes.Use ChatGPT, Gemini, and other Generative AI to draft biographies, summarize findings, and organize your research.Analyze DNA matches and historical records to uncover hidden family connections.Master prompts that get you accurate results and avoid AI "hallucinations."Discover the latest AI tech and digital tools for genealogists before anyone else.Whether you're a beginner genealogist or a seasoned family historian, if you're ready to upgrade your research skills, this podcast is for you. Hit Follow now and turn AI into your ultimate secret weapon for uncovering your ancestry.

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