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

Visualizing the Work of John T. West

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: February 28, 2026

Prompt: “Do you know what activities one of your ancestors/relatives engaged in?  How much detail do you know about those activities? Use the FREE artificial intelligence tool Google Gemini 3 to describe what your ancestor or relative experienced in his/her activities (e.g., military service, a ship they migrated on, an occupation, an office they held, etc.). Share your ancestor/relative’s activity of interest and description of their experiences”

Introduction

My ancestor John Thomas West (1830–1924) wore many hats during his long life, including service in the Civil War. But today I want to focus on something quieter and just as important: how he provided for his family when he was home, in Liberty Center, Henry County, Ohio.

Discussion

I went to Gemini.google.com and gave it the prompt, using the role-goal-text-task-flask setup that Steve Little taught me back in 2023:

ROLE: You are a genealogist writing a family history book.

GOAL: You are trying to bring my ancestor to life for the reader.

TEXT: My ancestor was usually described as a stair builder, although sometimes as a carpenter. I do see that he must have done some farming, I suppose carpentry in a small town does not feed the large family.

TASK: Tell the reader about his occupation(s) and how he provided for his family.

FLASK: Format as a couple of paragraphs of text at a high school reading level.

What it gave me was a general explanation of my ancestor’s work, so in the spirit of refining prompts, I added:

Please format it like a third-person addition to a biography.

It didn’t do well with the third-person, staying in the second person, so I tried again.

Please put this in the third person: “John” rather than “your ancestor”

And it did but was very sparse – until I realized my mistake!

Oh dear. I forgot to tell you who we are talking about. It’s John T. West (1830-1924), who lived in Maryland, Virginia, and Philadelphia, before settling in rural Ohio with his young family.

It did a very nice writeup, but in true LLM fashion, it offered more:

Since he lived through the Civil War era and moved West, would you like me to research the specific architectural styles popular in Ohio during that time to see what his stairs might have looked like?

I accepted.

The final result was very pleasing.

To truly understand John T. West (1830–1924), one must look at the physical world he built. Living nearly a century, John witnessed the evolution of America from a collection of rural homesteads to an industrial power. When he moved his young family from the established architectural hubs of Maryland, Virginia, and Philadelphia to the developing landscapes of rural Ohio, he brought with him a level of sophistication rarely seen in the countryside. While many men of the era were general carpenters, John’s specialized designation as a stair builder marked him as a master of “finish work.” In a time before power tools, constructing a staircase was the ultimate test of a woodworker’s skill, requiring a deep understanding of practical geometry to calculate the precise “rise and run” of every step.

In the expanding towns of Ohio, a grand staircase was a status symbol, and John was the architect of that elegance. He likely spent his winters in a wood-heated shop, meticulously hand-carving balusters or steaming wood to bend it into the graceful curves of a continuous handrail. However, the life of a craftsman in a small town was often “feast or famine.” To ensure his large family remained secure, John anchored his life to the seasons. When the spring thaw arrived, he traded his fine chisels for a plow. This blend of artistry and agriculture was a necessity; the Ohio soil provided the food for his table, while his specialized commissions in Maryland or Philadelphia-style joinery provided the “hard currency” for taxes and supplies. John West lived his life between two worlds—the precision of the craftsman’s square and the grit of the family farm.

I found this description fascinating. While it’s not a source in itself, it helped me visualize what John’s work may have looked like and how his carpentry and farming likely fit together in daily life.

Challenge

Do the same with an ancestor or relative of yours (review the prompt at the top), and refine the results at least once! That helps to “train” the AI to better serve you.

Want to Learn More?

Gemini, in the same conversation, recommended these:

For a beginner looking to master these techniques, the best resources are the official “Playbooks” and interactive guides created by the companies that build the AI models. They are designed to be clear, practical, and full of “before and after” examples.

Here are some sources I recommend:

1. The Prompt Engineering Guide This is widely considered the “encyclopedia” of prompting. It is open-source and incredibly beginner-friendly. https://www.promptingguide.ai/

2. Anthropic’s Interactive Tutorial (GitHub) Anthropic (the makers of Claude) has a highly praised, step-by-step tutorial that feels more like a mini-course than a dry document. https://github.com/anthropics/prompt-eng-interactive-tutorial

3. OpenAI’s Strategy Guide OpenAI provides a very concise “Best Practices” list that is perfect for a quick start. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering

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.