Month: December 2023

Think innovation in family history and you think MyHeritage.  Only there can you animate photos, have a life story narrated with DeepStory, and see an ancestor as they might have been with AI Time Machine™.

Just released in BETA, MyHeritage introduces AI Record Finder™ and Ai Biography™

AI Record Finder™ searches historical records using a chat interface. It starts by asking for basic information “Please provide the first and last name of the person you are looking for, along with any additional details to help locate relevant genealogy records.” It will show sources for records that might be relevant, such as MyHeritage Family Tree, FamilySearch Family Tree, England & Wales, Birth Index, 1837-2005, or Famous People Throughout History. It then requests further input “To narrow down these results and provide more precise information, please specify any additional details such as the names of his spouse or children, specific dates of events, or locations where he may have lived or worked.” It keeps asking for further information.

You will then be ready to try AI Biography™ which uses data from MyHeritage and content generated by OpenAI. There are several parts to the biography report starting with a listing of birth, death, marriage, parents, siblings, spouse, children. That’s followed by a biography text, historical context, last name origins, consistency issues and citations.

I had the opportunity to test it using a person I’ve researched in depth, Ezekiel Stone Wiggins.  The text reads well, just don’t expect the exact truth. I found OpenAI hallucinations —  added were a government appointment, a distortion of his interests and a child. It even gave her a name — Lillian Maude

Such flights of fancy are common with OpenAI. Get around it by conversing — asking for the evidence, “what is the evidence that he had a child?”. The reply “The records do not explicitly mention children for Ezekiel Stone Wiggins.” It then advises on how to search for this (mythical) child.

It’s worth experimenting. While the cup is more than half full the contents are not to be swallowed whole.

Read more on this MyHeritage blog post and give it a try.

This year YouTube hasn’t produced any updated version of I’ve Got a Little List … well … not one I can understand!  Instead here’s a pre-war version with a few variations on the familiar lyrics.

I’ve Got A Little List – Larry Clinton and His Orchestra 1939

Thanks to gail benjafield for the suggestion.

 

Thanks to Margaret MacDermaid for the suggestion.

War diary from 1939 with posters and Christmas cards

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Dress code: How a Winnipeg codebreaker cracked one of the ‘world’s top unsolved messages’

Free Irish Genealogy eBooks

Ireland’s Christmas traditions

How the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food

How the Christmas royal broadcast evolved – from the first reluctant monarch to an enduring queen and a new king

Victorian Britain had its own anti-vxxers – and they helped bring down a government

BOOKS THAT SOUND INTERESTING

The Fraud by Zadie Smith review: a dazzling depiction of Victorian colonial England (available at OPL)
Weird Medieval Guys: this deeply researched book takes you on a romp through the Middle Ages (not available at OPL)

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Barbara May Di Mambro, Brenda Turner, Christine Jackson, Denis Bourque, gail benjafield, Helen Gillespie, Margaret MacDermaid, Nick Mcdonald, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown. Wayne Shepheard

 

In the FMP last record update of 2023, are monumental inscriptions from Yorkshire, Lincolnshire workhouse guardians’ minutes, and 18th-century school records from the UK’s first free school for deaf children. That’s over 18,500 English records in total.

Yorkshire Monumental Inscriptions
Find 8,273 transcriptions to the over 318,000 records in the existing collection of monumental inscriptions from Yorkshire;  from 1807 up to 2022.

Lincolnshire, Workhouse Guardians’ Minutes
Poor Law relief applications as recorded by the guardians who administered each case are in this 9,354 item collection from Lincolnshire between 1837 and 1901.

Though the information included varies slightly, each record typically contains a full name, residence, date of birth, status, and event date. There are transcriptions and images available, so consult the original record to glean all the details. Within the documents attached to each record, you may be able to see the rates that were paid, as well as more biographical details and notes about the case.

London, Asylum for the Deaf & Dumb Pupils 1792-1859
New this week are 899 records from the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb – the first free public institution in England to offer education to deaf children from poor families. These transcriptions span almost 70 years, from 1792 to 1859.

The information recorded changed significantly over time. For some pupils, only very brief detail is included.

This lecture from Gresham College investigates how and why the song ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ has become so popular, transcending its roots in the MGM musical Meet Me in St Louis to become a presence in the canon of secular popular Christmas songs.

Live and recorded examples from artists including Judy Garland and Sam Smith explain both how this remarkable song works and the process by which it became so popular. What gives this song its prayer-like quality?

Professor Broomfield-McHugh is joined by singer and actor David Bedella.

This plaque commemorating the Home Children of Liverpool that sailed to Canada has been installed in the Liverpool Parish Church (Our Lady and St Nicholas).

It’s a lasting legacy of Liverpool researcher John Dickenson’s devotion to his “chaps” from the Liverpool Sheltering Home (LSH) who went to Knowlton Distribution Home in Quebec, many of whom then returned to fight in the CEF.  One such is Herbert Bretherton, whose story is included in Gloria Tubman’s book A Genealogists’ Guide to Researching British Home Children.

John Dickenson cooperated broadly with Canadian home child researchers, seen in this photo in conversation with Marj Kohli and Gloria Tubman, at the BIFHSGO 20th anniversary conference at Library and Archives Canada.

If you have an interest in the LSH children, be aware that John’s books and research material have been left to the library at the University of Liverpool. He would have been delighted to know of the interest already shown in that collection.

The photo of the plaque is courtesy of The Revd Canon Dr. Crispin Pailing, Rector of Liverpool, via Gloria Tubman. 

There are 3.9 million new entries on Ancestry’s version of Find A Grave since August. The U.S. has 1.6 million additions, with the UK and Ireland adding 1.1 million. Canada added over a quarter million.

Region	December 2023	August 2023	May 2023
U.S.	175,802,716	174,219,998	172,857,217
Global	15,649,165	15,090,205	14,604,632
Mexico	69,789	66,008	62,956
UK and Ireland	19,341,965	18,201,134	16,712,454*
Norway	223,985	220,413	216,182*
Italy	343,946	329,383	318,700
Sweden	1,116,071	1,110,094	719,305
Canada	10,080,603	9,808,392	9,646,273
Australia and New Zealand	11,436,526	11,297,318	11,044,654
Brazil	189,211	186,642	165,727
Germany	3,017,935	2,822,677	2,520,011

Note that the UK and Ireland, and Norway entries in the May column refer to the prior March 2023 update.

The actual Find A Grave site, where you can search 566,253 cemeteries in 249 different countries, has additional entries.