I’ve combined Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 ancestors in 52 weeks challenge, and Steve Little’s The 2025 AI Genealogy Do-Over, to create a unique 52 AI ancestors in 52 weeks party!

52 AI Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 51: Musical

Introduction

Some families have musicians. Others have musical moments. This week’s theme, Musical, invited us to recall the songs, sounds, and dance steps that echo through our family history.

Our family didn’t pass down a violin or leave behind a trail of concert programs – but they did pass down a story. Or at least, part of one.

Rose Elizabeth Carey met Edward Joseph Anderson at a dance hall. That much is certain. The rest? Well, that’s where the fun begins.

The Discussion

Here’s what we know for sure, according to family records:

• Rose Carey was born in Harlem (in upper Manhattan) in 1916, worked at Western Union, and married Edward Anderson in 1939.
• Edward “Ed” Anderson, a Staten Island-born accountant, was methodical, soft-spoken, and a baseball fanatic. After he grew up in a Staten Island orphanage, he moved to Manhattan, likely for work.
• They met at a dance hall, likely in Manhattan, sometime in the late 1930s. Dance halls in NYC were especially vibrant spaces for working-class people to socialize, particularly young women like these two.

And that’s it. No song titles. No saved stubs. No love letters with lipstick kisses. Just a setting, and an invitation to imagine.

So let’s imagine:

It’s Saturday night. The dance floor is full. A swing band plays something peppy: maybe Benny Goodman, maybe Glenn Miller. A pretty young woman steps onto the floor. She’s got a confident smile and the kind of red lipstick that holds up through laughter. That’s Rose.

Across the room, a tall man with serious eyes and polished shoes watches. That’s Ed.

Maybe he doesn’t dance much. Maybe she dances with everyone. Maybe the music carries them both.

“Would you like to dance?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”

In our version of the story, they dance until the band plays a slow number: “Stardust”, let’s say, and they don’t even notice the room around them anymore. Just each other.

Did it really happen that way? Probably not. But the truth – they met at a dance – is an invitation to color in the rest.

Figure 1 An AI-generated image seeded with a wedding photo of my grandparents.

How AI Can Help

AI didn’t give me this memory, but it gave me the tools to shape it into a story.

Using AI tools like ChatGPT, you can:

• Turn a one-sentence family fact into a vivid blog post.
• Imagine period-appropriate music or fashion from a given date.
• Research common songs at 1930s dance halls in Manhattan.
• Even generate images or playlists to accompany the story.

It’s not about rewriting history, it’s about making it easier to picture, and more fun to tell.

Challenge for Readers

This week, try one of these:

• Find a family couple whose meeting story you’ve never fully explored. What setting were they in? What music might’ve been playing?
• Pick a decade and imagine the soundtrack your ancestor would’ve heard most often. Were they swing? Gospel? Polka? Protest folk?
• Call an older relative and ask if they remember dancing—and to what. Sometimes the best stories aren’t about songs, but about who sang them.

For More Information

• American Popular Music in the 1930s – Library of Congress
• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
• My previous post about Edward Anderson

Next Week’s Topic (last one!): “Memorable”

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.