Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: January 10, 2026

/ jannetjeb

I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: January 10, 2026

Prompt:

“1) Do you have Research Notes for some of your ancestors in a number of sources and papers, or perhaps in a Person Note or Research Note in your desktop family tree program, and dread trying to put them into a coherent genealogical sketch or research note?  

2) This week, take all of the Research Notes you have for one person in your tree and put them all in one word processor document. Organize them if you want – you don’t have to.  Make a PDF file of your new word processor document and name it.  

3) Go to your favorite LLM (you know, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or any other LLM), load the document, and ask the LLM to “Please organize the research notes in the attached document for [your ancestor’s name, birth and death year] and create an engaging biography about him and his family. Do not use any information other than what is provided.”

2) Tell us about your experiment in condensing your notes and creating a biography of an ancestor”

Introduction

Not too long ago, a cousin asked me to document her relationship to a second cousin of hers, Grace, so my cousin could visit Grace in a nursing home. I happily did the research and the writeup and provided a report to her. This report was the basis for this week’s prompt.

Discussion

I first took a course in Empowering Genealogists with Artificial Intelligence back in October 2023, and we have come a very long way in the two years since. Using this week’s prompt and my existing research report, ChatGPT 5.2 produced a surprisingly strong and coherent write-up.

Early large language models were notorious for hallucinating – and still will if left without guardrails – but this one was explicitly instructed to rely only on the facts provided. It followed that instruction carefully. In addition to the requested biography, the LLM also produced:

  • Organized research notes
  • Identity and name variations
  • Core facts such as birth, residences, and marriage
  • Family relationships
  • A list of key sources referenced

What impressed me most, though, was that it went a step further and suggested possible next steps for refining the work, without being prompted to do so. Those suggestions included (and the first clearly reflects prior conversations I’ve had with it):

  • Refining the biography to match a sixth-generation narrative style (as used in my Ancestors Book)
  • Adding Evidence Explained–style source citations inline
  • Creating a one-page family sketch or relationship explanation suitable for an appendix or proof summary

Seeing this level of structured analysis and forward-looking support makes me seriously consider whether running our work through an AI, carefully and thoughtfully, could become a regular way to identify gaps or next research opportunities.

Challenge

So rather than just talking about the possibilities, this week’s challenge invites you to try the experiment yourself.

Try it and see what you think!

Want to Learn More?

Old documents being entered into a computer

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

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