Marching Through Time: A Family Military History for My Grandson

Judi Boren, a Cranberry Genealogy Club member and program committee member, presented a project that she has been working on to write interesting stories about her ancestors. This presentation was about how she created a family history book about ancestors and their military service. Judi combined available family data, internet research, AI queries, and her own incisive editing to weave an interesting narrative.

After years of researching, Judi finally decided to stop researching and write. A detailed family history seemed unworkable and possibly uninteresting to readers, so she focused upon writing shorter stories about select interesting persons in her family’s past. Judi focused on military service facts on all sides of her family tree, filtered results through her Family Tree Maker program, and chose a Civil War confederate soldier, William H. Lott, from her daughter-in-law’s side of the family as a starting point.

Using the basic information that Judi had already found and added to Family Tree Maker, Judi then used Google Search to find out more background information about a specific battle in which Lott fought. Judi asked Chat GPT to write a simple story about his life based upon the facts she had and her subsequent internet research. She also used internet searches to find additional information and images to augment her story.

Once Judi was satisfied with the results of her research, she assembled a book using text generated by Chat GPT (but edited by her), with pictures and additional information to prepare a final product. Judi used Canva.com to create the layout, saved each page as a pdf file, and then uploaded the book to Shutterfly for printing. Because this book turned out so well, Judi is planning on several other ancestral sketches to be turned into books.

Judi also showed and discussed a few additional ways that Chat GPT can be used to enhance your story telling. Her discussion of how to use prompts for Chat GPT and other AI systems was enlightening and useful.

Club members Patty Robison, Rich Watson and Ron Morton added their experiences using AI and useful tips that can benefit all of us who may wish to use AI in the future.

Patty Robison is creating a book detailing a portion of her family history. Patty showed how she used Gemini (Google AI) to create a historical map of Sherman’s march through Georgia showing towns, the path of regiments, and the location of one of her ancestor’s home. The result was amazing! Patty (as well as Judi and others) stressed the need to review and edit the results of any AI search. Don’t just blindly accept what AI gives you.

Rich Watson had received a book from his grandmother about his great grandfather who had served in the Civil War, Sgt. Charles Barton. Although the book contained a photo of two soldiers, Rich was unsure which was his great grandfather. Rich queried Gemini to find additional information about Sgt. Barton, and Gemini found the original picture in the Library of Congress that identified which man was his great grandfather. Rich used AI to help put together an ancestral sketch and added the picture and identifying information to a book he was writing.

Rich’s tip – you can’t ask AI too many questions; it will always come back with something and will prompt you to ask another question. The more you use AI and get used to refining prompts and searches, the better information you will receive.

Ron Morton has written many books about his family history and has used AI extensively. He shared a story about how he used Gemini to take some sparse raw data about some ancestors and prompted Gemini to write a biography about certain persons including social and political events that may have affected how they lived. Gemini responded with a good one to two page summary for each person queried. After noting some repetition in the content of the AI replies, Ron asked Gemini to eliminate duplication, and it did it! Just another great example of the use and power of AI.

More and more club members are writing memoirs, family histories, or individual sketches of interesting ancestors. When is it your turn?