Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy

A single 1917 WWI draft card, plus a naturalization petition filed seven years later, reveal an Italian immigrant's real birth name. This is a real, start-to-finish example of using AI for genealogy research, ChatGPT, Claude, and NotebookLM working together to solve it. If you've searched "AI genealogy tools," "ChatGPT for family history," or "how to use AI to re...

Use ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude to email any archive in the world, including drafting a formal German-language request, in under 15 minutes. Most genealogists stop when online records run out. But the records you need are often one professional email away, whether it is a US county courthouse or a German Catholic archive that has been keeping baptism registers since the 1500s. Brian demonstrat...

Three AI tools, one 1866 Mexican parish register, and the family  that a U.S. census reduced to a single word: México. Brian traces composite ancestor Esteban Vasquez through two Arizona  census records where birthplace reads only "México" and no  naturalization record exists. The research pivots to FamilySearch's  Mexico-Sonora Catholic Church records, a collection covering roughly...

You can write a genealogical proof argument using 3 AI tools in one afternoon: NotebookLM organizes your evidence, Claude drafts and stress-tests the argument, and ChatGPT reviews it for plain-language clarity. This is the GPS Mini-Series capstone on Element 5. What you'll learn: The three-part proof argument structure: Statement to be Proved, Evidence Presentation, Analysis and Reasoning How...

Brian uses 4 AI tools to trace a formerly enslaved Mississippi ancestor across 6 record collections and through the 1870 Wall. This is what African American genealogy research looks like when AI and the Genealogical Proof Standard work together. If your ancestor was enslaved, the census did not record their name before 1870. Every year before that belongs to a completely different research strateg...

You've found the estate settlement. You've counted the heirs in the distribution sheet. And the math doesn't add up. Nine children appear in the 1860 census. Seven names appear in the 1874 settlement. Two heirs are gone with no explanation, no death notation, and no trace in the legal record. That is where this episode begins. Probate records are among the most underused sources in...

If you can't find your Norwegian ancestor in genealogy records, the problem is almost certainly the name. Norway used a patronymic naming system until 1923, meaning most Norwegian-Americans carried completely different surnames in their homeland than the names their families kept in America. A woman who appears in Minnesota records as Astrid Solberg was never called Astrid Solberg in Norway....

Most genealogists search 4-6 databases and miss 70% of the records that exist for their ancestor. In this episode, we fix that. If you have ever searched Ancestry, FamilySearch, and a couple of other databases and still hit a wall, this episode is for you. The problem is not that the records do not exist. The problem is that you do not know what records exist or where to find them before you start...

Every family has a story that got quietly handed down across the generations. A birthplace. A number of children. One marriage, one life, neatly summarized. But what happens when you sit down with the actual records and the story doesn't match? In this episode of Ancestors and Algorithms, Brian walks through one of the most universal genealogy research scenarios there is: testing a family ora...

If you have Scottish Highland ancestry and your family tree hits a wall before 1855, this episode was made for you. In Episode 36 of Ancestors and Algorithms, Brian traces a MacLeod family from the Isle of Skye using three AI tools and a research workflow that works for any Scottish Highland, Hebridean, or Inverness-shire ancestry. Whether your ancestors were MacLeods, MacDonalds, Morrisons, Campb...

Three records. Three completely different birthplace answers. A German Lutheran church register from Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania says New York. The 1880 US Federal Census says Germany. A Pennsylvania death certificate says Pennsylvania. All three claim to document the same German immigrant ancestor. Not one of them agrees. In this episode of Ancestors and Algorithms, Brian walks through a step...

Your ancestor went to California in 1849 as a forty-niner. The family says he struck it rich. But when you search the mining records for his name? Nothing. No claim. No miner's registration. No county tax list. He's a ghost. That is exactly where Episode 34 begins, and where four AI tools working in sequence completely rewrite everything the family thought they knew. Host Brian traces a...

If you have a brick wall ancestor with a common name; a William Harrison, a Mary Smith, a John Thomas this episode will change how you research forever. In Episode 33 of Ancestors and Algorithms, host Brian walks through a completely upgraded FAN Club cluster research workflow that goes far beyond what was covered in Episode 16. The FAN Club method, coined by renowned genealogist Elizabeth Shown M...

"All the Irish records burned." Every genealogist with Irish ancestry has heard this warning and most have believed it long enough to stop searching. In Episode 32 of Ancestors and Algorithms, host Brian shows why that warning is not the whole story. In a live AI-assisted genealogy research session, Brian traces his own Irish ancestor, Caitlin Flanagan, born around 1831 in County Clare,...

What happens when your ancestor filed a homestead claim, worked the land for a decade, and then vanished from every surviving record? In Episode 31 of Ancestors and Algorithms, Brian follows the trail of a Volga German family who filed a homestead entry in Rush County, Kansas in 1877. They built a house, dug a well, broke forty acres of Great Plains prairie, and raised five children on the America...

Every genealogist eventually asks the same questions. How do you know when you have enough evidence? How do you decide which record to trust when two documents disagree? How do you turn years of family history research into a conclusion that holds up against scrutiny? The Genealogical Proof Standard, developed by the Board for Certification of Genealogists, has answered those questions for serious...

Have you ever searched for an ancestor in a newspaper database and found nothing, even though you were certain the information had to be there? You are not searching wrong. You are searching with the wrong strategy. And in this episode, that changes. Episode 29 of Ancestors and Algorithms is a full AI tool showdown: Perplexity vs. Claude, head to head on the same newspaper research challenge. Same...

He arrived at Ellis Island in 1912 as Salvatore Maranzano. He reappeared in the 1920 Census as Samuel Martin. Eight years of silence in between, and three years of searching by his granddaughter had turned up nothing. In Episode 28 of Ancestors and Algorithms, we follow this real listener case from start to finish and show you exactly how three free AI tools, Perplexity, Gemini in Google AI Studio...

For millions of African American families, the search for ancestors hits a wall at 1870. Before that year, the federal census did not list enslaved people by name. They appeared only as ages and numbers in slave schedules, as property in estate inventories, as entries without identity. The 1870 census was the first time most formerly enslaved African Americans were documented by name in any federa...

If you have been sitting on a pile of DNA matches with no idea how to make sense of them, this episode was made for you. Episode 26 of Ancestors and Algorithms tackles one of the most requested topics since the show launched: can you actually use artificial intelligence to help decode your DNA results without putting your family's genetic privacy at risk? The short answer is yes. But the HOW...

Discover how to find Australian convict ancestors and track family across international borders using free AI tools. Perfect for genealogists researching British, Irish, Scottish, or Australian family history. What You'll Learn: Track transported convicts from Britain to Australia (1788-1868) using AI-powered research techniques that work for ANY international genealogy challenge, German ance...

Have you ever stared at a stack of genealogy documents knowing the answers are there, but unable to find them? That was me with a 47-page probate file from 1892. Three years I avoided it. Then I discovered Google NotebookLM, and twenty minutes later, I finally understood why two of my ancestors never spoke again. In this episode, I'm teaching you everything about NotebookLM for genealogy rese...

Learn how to transform dry genealogy facts into compelling ancestor biographies using free AI tools. This complete AI writing tutorial teaches genealogists step-by-step how to use Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT to create family histories people actually want to read—without inventing a single fact. What You'll Learn: In this 35-minute genealogy AI workshop, discover the three-part system for...

Three John Smiths. Same parish. Same occupation. All married to women named Mary. Which one is YOUR ancestor? If you research English or UK family history, you've hit this genealogy brick wall: multiple people with identical names in the same small community, and parish registers giving you almost nothing to tell them apart. This episode shows you exactly how to solve this using AI tools. THE...

The Soldier Who Came Home Different: Using Free AI to Uncover PTSD in Civil War Records A Union soldier survived three years of brutal Civil War combat, witnessing battles where 30% of his regiment was killed or wounded. He came home physically unscathed. But something broke inside. His hands trembled. Thunder sent him into hiding. He woke screaming from battle nightmares. His wife said, "He&...