Researching WWI Contractors

There is a picture of Thomas Patrick McMahon in a dough boy’s uniform, but no records can be located that document any military service. So, why was he wearing a WWI US Army uniform in a picture?

This post includes how artificial intelligence (AI) was used to begin the investigation of the answer, and how it provided context for additional work.

At the time of his WWI draft registration he was 25, single, and a naturalized citizen. His trade was carpenter and he was self-employed.

The answer was discovered by his descendant, my cousin, in the US Army Transport Service (US ATS) records. If you have read my books or blog, or seen me lecture, then you know how much I appreciate these records. They are a mini-census, showing details of Army personnel who were transported on US Navy ships. Thomas McMahon had sailed from Hoboken, NJ, and traveled to France as a 2nd Class Civilian Employee in the organization: U.S. Civilian Employees, U. S. Engineer Department, James Stewart & Co. Contract, on Agamemnon and returned on

The US ATS records found online are digitized of records that were originally stored in folders; there was one folder for each sailing. When you find a manifest containing an entry with the person you are researching, I recommend going backwards through the images to the front of the set to locate the pages containing details about the sailing. In this case, the front images contained the description of cargo that was transported on Agamemnon to France (both handwritten and typed) was interesting. Agamemnon was transporting 25 tons of telegraph supplies, 9 tons of aviation supplies, 79 tons of Signal Corps General supplies, 993 tons of French steel, and other supplies.

The Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) provided information about Agamemnon (Id. No. 3004) during 1917-1919, which included her voyage to Europe in mid-January 1918. Five days into the voyage the convoy faced heavy seas, and Agamemnon turned on lights and circled back after a report of a man overboard. Falling into a trough, a 43-degree roll caused the loss of some material. Fortunately, no one was lost. She continued on for a brief stop at St. Nazaire, then on to Brest where she docked on 24 January.

The images at the front also included information about the cablegram received by the Navy Department stating that the ship had made it safely to France.

I decided to use AI as an assistant to strategize how to learn more about contractors in WWI and the specific contractor.

ChatGPT provided some information about the engineering effort during WWI, and recommendations about where to search. It suggested searching in NARA’s Record Group 77, which contains records for the Army Engineers which would have information about the contracts let by the organization. I suspect all that we might find is what the contract was for; it would be up to the company to find the people to fill the roles.

Google Gemini was more helpful in this case.

Gemini explained that uniforms were worn by civilians so that they would not be mistaken for spies if captured, and they would receive treatment under the Geneva Convention. (This explains photographs of civilians wearing uniforms in war zones!) It also shared information about James Stewart & Co. recruiting a skilled workforce for infrastructure project in France, such as piers, warehouses, fuel tanks and depots.

It captured its findings in a nifty report WWI Civilian Contractor Research Report
Subject: James Stewart & Company | Port of Brest | Militarized Civilians

Gemini referred me to a source: United States Army in the World War 1917-1919 General Orders, GHQ, AEF, Volume 16. This volume was one of seventeen which compiled selected American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) records. Volume 16 captured all of the General Orders given by General Pershing.

The General Orders contain directives issued from the top, the General Headquarters. They dictated the command structure, logistical support, and standards of conduct for the entire force. I scanned these orders for the reference material that Gemini promised. I did not find details of the contractors’ uniforms in the G.O.’s listed by Gemini. There were many references to uniforms, but I did not find full details of the contractors’ uniforms. G.O. 46, 1917, did have details about the uniforms worn by the French interpreters, including the sphinx insignia they wore. G.O. No. 63, 20 Nov 1917, address identity cards which were required for all the AEF and the militarized civilians. There were G.O.’s with details of civilian pay. Additionally, G.O. No. 30, 15 Feb 1918, IV. 7. (n)(1) “Two aluminum identification tags, to be furnished by the Q. M. C. [Quarter Master Corps], will be habitually worn by all officers and enlisted men, and also by all civilians attached to the A. E. F.” G.O. No. 23, 20 Aug 1917, 1. 5. discussed the importance of clerks and civilians in uniform saluting officers.

Thomas P. McMahon traveled back to the U.S. on the U.S.A.C.T. Honolulu, which sailed from France on 1 Dec 1918. He arrived at Newport News, VA, on 21 Dec 1918. His Group or Classification was shown as “Civilians for Discharge.”

The war was over for Thomas, and he was back home in the U.S. for Christmas. His brother, my grandfather, would march to Germany after the Armistice and participate in the Army of Occupation. He would return in July of 1919.

I had one question left. From the information I could find about the contractor, Thomas was probably working at Brest. (The NHHC excerpt did not indicate any one/thing leaving the ship at St. Nazaire.) If Thomas were working at the port of Brest when Joseph arrived in August 1918, did they see each other? In the activity of that port, it would be remarkable if they might have
seen each other, but the 51st PIR spent time at the port unloading the Kroonland
after they arrived (joys of being a Pioneer Infantryman!), so maybe, just maybe.

Fortunately I was able to locate “A Century of Construction (1844–1944)” James Stewart & Co.” through an interlibrary loan. While work done in the United States and around the world was documented, little was recorded about WWI in the narrative. WWII was much better documented. There was a table listing War Construction projects in the United States during WWI. There was also a table of projects done for the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Brest was not listed among them, but St. Nazaire was. It may be that the list was incomplete, or that he worked in another place. Either way, there is more to learn.

FamilySearch Full-Text Search for the Win!

Recently I followed up on an Ancestor hint relating to a branch on my maternal line, which led me to interesting discoveries.

In my family tree, Maria, a seemingly abandoned Irish woman and her three children entered a workhouse in England. Fortunately, she and the children left it in a year. At least one of the children (my great-grandmother, Mary Ann) made her way to Providence, RI, where she married my great-grandfather. (I have previously blogged about finding an ancestor in a 19th century workhouse in https://aweekofgenealogy.com/found-ancestors-in-the-workhouse/).

A death certificate record was located in Providence, RI, for a woman whose data seemingly matched Maria’s. Standing alone it was certainly of interest, but no other records had been found to put her in that place and time. I admit to being somewhat skeptical. Knowing Irish naming patterns, causing the repetitive use of names within family units, I wondered if this might be a relation rather than Maria herself. Were these common names where she originally hailed from in Ireland? Or was it coincidental?

The Ancestry hint sent me to a family tree that contained a person with the same name of my great-great-grandmother along with her two sisters. The documentation for those two sisters was more detailed than that for my great-great-grandmother, suggesting the owner of the tree was not along the same line as I. I followed the suggested records and built out a detailed pictures of two women who had immigrated to the United States and came to call Providence, RI, their home.

I always look for the records that document facts in a person’s life, link people, and tell a story, and I found some. In my own family tree I added these two women without connecting them to Maria in the main tree When I found records on Ancestry, I attached them to these women, downloaded them, and copied the source information. I also took snipped screenshots of the relevant data and captured it in a timeline built in a Word document. So far, so good.

Margaret, the elder of these two sisters, had come to Providence and married before Ellen. Ellen arrived in 1880 and was shown in the census of that same year, living with married Margaret. (This suggested a chain migration.) Ellen worked in Providence and married several years later in 1889. Sadly, Ellen died in 1899 at age 38. At that time, she was already a widow, and she left behind two young daughters. Margaret died in 1904, leaving behind a husband and six children. My great-great-grandmother, Maria, died in 1902. The records for all three women that contained parents’ names were consistent:

Father, William Connaughton

Mother, Bridget

As I searched through the records Ancestry suggested, a standout was the Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. Old Stone Bank Records, 1844-1924 at https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62959/. Both Margaret and Ellen had bank accounts, and along with other identifying information, there was common data:

Birthplace: Co. Roscommon

Margaret’s entry contained additional data:

Mother, Bridget Murphy

So, parents had the same names. If Maria was in fact their sister, I would then know the county where she was born, and the maiden name of her mother.

I looked at Maria’s death information again and noted the address where she had died. It was the house owned by Margaret and her husband. Evidence was mounting, but I was still wondering if she might have been a cousin or another relation.

Contacting the owner of the tree was a good idea, but had I tried before? I checked the messages on Ancestry and viewed the messages exchanged 2019. (I could have consulted my correspondence log, but this was more convenient. I admit to being on a fishing expedition rather than focused on answering a research question.)

Based on that previous correspondence, I doubled checked DNA matches. By my calculations, we were fourth cousins, once removed. Yes, this contact did know more about Margaret and Ellen than Maria.

At this point, circumstantial evidence was being built, but I wanted one record to connect Maria with one of her sisters. Searching for Maria, or her daughter Mary Ann, in the Old Stone Bank records and the 1900 US Census in Providence (and Rhode Island) was not fruitful.

It was time to move laterally to check other indexes and other databases. I decided to search on FamilySearch for records that would be helpful in connecting Maria to these two women.

I decided to jump in and use FamilySearch’s Full-Text Search to find those records that might have mentioned Maria, even if the record was not about her. Full-Text Search has moved out of the FamilySearch Labs and can be selected from the Search Menu.

As a reminder, the best way to search for a person is to enter their name within quotation marks in the Keywords field.

Carefully reviewing results…there was result contained a death record I had not yet seen.

The same address was in the record, namely the home owned by her sister and brother-in-law. The parents’ names were there (without her mother’s maiden name).

In this record there was data that was not included in the register:

Name of Informant and Relationship to Deceased: Thos. Kelly Brotherinlaw

Thomas was Margaret’s husband! He and Margaret owned that house. Since he was Maria’s brother-in-law, that made Margaret her sister. (None of her late husband’s people were identified in the proximity.) FamilySearch Full-Text Search for the win!

That was the definite piece of data I needed to call my brother and tell him that we had roots in County Roscommon, and that our great-great-great-grandmother’s name maiden name was Murphy. (Even though he lives in time zones behind mine, it was so late that I waited until the next morning to make the call.) It was also a good reminder:

Always look for all the records related to an event, focusing on the ones made closest to the event.

The details in Returns of death were recorded by a physician. The data on them was used to make an entry in the register. Death indexes and death certificates draw data from the ledger.

Engineers are known for being belt-and-suspenders people. Being that way meant that in addition to downloading the records, saving sources, and extracting the information into my timeline document, I added the record to my tree (my part of the one family tree) on FamilySearch.

That is where the middle-of-the-night surprise occurred.

A brother to Maria, Margaret and Ellen is shown in that tree! Back to the drawing board to see if the records prove out James Joseph Connaughton’s relationship to these sisters. (The first record I looked at was his Intention to Marry in Providence in 1883, with his parents: William Connaughton & Bridget Murphy.)

But right now it is time to connect Margaret and Ellen to their sister and parents in my family tree on Ancestry.

Google NotebookLM Tutorial

This is it! You have decided to give Google’s NotebookLM a try!

Maybe you want step-by-step instructions, or just want to look over the process before diving in. Either way, this tutorial stands ready to help.

What will you do in this Notebook? One suggestion is to upload a group of documents related to a subject or ancestor. These are documents that you want to understand better or analyze. Don’t overthink it. You just need to have an idea of your subject, because once you begin to use the Notebook more ideas will probably come to you.

In this tutorial, we’ll get started with a brand new NotebookLM, add documents to it, then based on those documents generate an Audio Overview, an Infographic, a Slide Deck and a Video Overview.

NOTE: For this tutorial, keep in mind that Google may change how it looks or add/remove specific functionality and labels at any time, but the basic ideas will remain.

When you have decided the topic for your Notepad, it’s time to get going and create it.

In my example I will add only a few documents: the homestead patents and pages from the tract books for Charles F. Gilroy.         

Here’s the link:

https://sites.google.com/view/notebook-lm/login

Login to your Google account here. If you are already logged into Google in the same browser, you may go directly to this page:

You’re in!

Select Create new notebook to start.

After you have created a new notebook, a window pops up asking you to add media. (This is the same window that will open when you select + Add sources)

As of this writing the Notebook supports: Google Docs, Slides, PDFs, text files, web URLs, YouTube transcripts, and audio files. When you enter a link a YouTube video, only the transcript will be used and the video has to be public.

For best results, enter documents with text in them. There is no guarantee that images will be transcribed properly.

From this window you can drag and drop the files you want to add to your Notebook.

When adding to this Notebook, I have to admit that I did not follow the text-is-best rule. That means I will need to verify the transcription that the Notebook is using was done correctly. I added Land Patents and Tract Book images. (The Tract Book images had been located by FamilySearch Full-Text Search!)

On the left, I selected one of the sources, and viewed a description of the document containing key information from it that had been extracted. 

The workspace that opens is called the Notebook, and it has three windows labeled: Sources, Chat, and Studio. The first two are self-explanatory.

The third window is the Studio Window, which is also called the Studio Panel.

There are two sections within the Studio Panel. One section is home to the buttons, called Action Tiles, where you ask the Notebook to generate complicated multimedia products. By selecting an Action Tile, the Notebook to generate audio or visual presentations, infographic, slide decks, reports, mind maps and more. At this point, several Tiles are labeled “Beta” which means they are almost ready to be full-fledged features but are still being evaluated. Do not let that dissuade you from trying them! Test them out for yourself.

The second section is the Generated Resource List. When you request a product, you will see it added to that list. The list is empty for a new Notebook. As you choose products, the list is populated with the generated media. Next to each resource in that appears in the list there is a 3 dot menu (snowman) where you can Rename, Download, Share or Delete a resource. When you rename a resource, that changes only the name and does not change any of the media’s content.

After uploading the documents, a name for the notebook was automatically generated.

I renamed the Notebook.

Audio Overview

First, I tried an Audio Overview based on the few documents I had uploaded. This action offers to “Generate an AI podcast based on your sources.”

Documentation for the Notebook had explained that it may take some time for the Audio Overview to be generated.

Within minutes, I was listening to audio in a podcast format of two people explaining and discussing the documents and their context in a pleasant conversation presentation. It was 19 minutes, 12 seconds in length.

A clip from this audio is here:

Infographic

Next, I decided to generate an Infographic based on the documents.

In the Generated Resource List at the bottom of the Studio Panel, there was a spinning circle to indicate that the infographic was being generated. When it was done, I could select it from the list.

I clicked on the Infographic in the list in the Studio window

and a Viewer opened up. I had options to share, download, collapse the Viewer and close the Viewer in the upper right hand corner.  

After I closed the Viewer, I could click on the snowman (3 dot menu) and to be presented with options: Rename, Download, Share, Delete

This is one of the features that in BETA, but the infographic that was generated was interesting.

Slide Deck

An option is to generate a Slide Deck. At this time, this feature is in BETA.

I selected Slide Deck and waited while it was generated

When I clicked on the Slide Deck in the Resource List, a Viewer opened up where I could look at the slides, and interact with them.

I particularly liked this slide

NotebookLM Generated Slide

I also liked the option to download the slide deck as a PDF or a PowerPoint document.

Selecting “Revise” gives you the chance to interact and make change to the slide. The pending changes will be generated in a few minutes (or longer).

Video Overview

I selected the Video Overview Tile

and accepted the default selections, which included the longer Explainer format.

Generating that video took a long time. When I quizzed Gemini if I could find out how long it took to generate a product, I was told no, but that this task usually took from 5 to 30+ minutes.

At the end of that response, Gemini asked me if generating was taking a long time, and when I said yes, Gemini recommended that I refresh the webpage because the user interface had not updated. When I followed this recommendation, it appeared that the Video Overview generation had failed.

I deleted the Video Overview entry on the Generated Resource List, and tried again. This time I selected the option for a Brief Format.

The brief format video was generated within minutes, providing me with a video 1 minute and 50 seconds long.

When I clicked on the Video Overview in the Generated Resource List it opened a window within the Studio Panel. The video gave the context of the Homestead Act then dove into presenting data about the two homesteads’ and their patents.

An excerpt from the video:

An Experiment in the Chat Window

I have engineering experience in testing, which matches my style of pressing the buttons and trying the features. That made me want to see if I could get some general information in a Chat within the Notebook.

I asked in the Chat window of the Notebook: If I upload a Word document with newspaper clippings can you transcribe all of them?

This was answered literally, using only the data within the Notebook. (At that point, there was no Word document in the sources containing newspaper clippings.) So if you have a general question that is not based on the information loaded into the Notebook, or have a question about how NotebookLM works it would be better to ask it in Google so that Gemini can answer it.

Gemini told me that “…if the clippings are embedded as images (e.g., photos or scans of newspaper pages), NotebookLM may not automatically transcribe that visual information into searchable, readable text” reminding me that “NotebookLM is designed to work with machine-readable text. If your Word document contains photos of newspaper clippings, the AI may be unable to “read” or transcribe the text inside those images.”

Getting back to my Notebook

When you need to revisit your Notebook, or login on a different computer, you can choose it from your list of Recent notebooks.

Current Limitations

According to Gemini, currently free accounts have limits of generating approximately 3 Audio/Video Overviews per day, and can only send 50 chat queries per day. The Free accounts are limited to 50 sources per notebook, and are limited to 100 notebooks. (Workaround for large projects: Try combining multiple, smaller documents into a single PDF or Google Doc before uploading.)

Google has a tutorial that provides good information in an overview, and it can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/notebook-lm/tutorial

Give this a try and explore the Tiles and Chat. Let me know how you do.

Have You Tried Google’s NotebookLM Yet?

Trying out NotebookLM has been on my to-do list for months. I just did, and I was blown away by it. The accessibility of technologies that I knew existed but had so well not seen integrated was impressive. You can chat with the AI about what has been added to the Notebook, and you can generate products based on what the uploaded documents. The AI-generated media and responses in the Notebook are all based on the documents that you upload to it, which should reduce the opportunity for AI hallucinations. Keep in mind that the best idea is to enter documents with text; there is no guarantee that images will be transcribed properly.

I had already identified a couple of ancestors as test cases. One is all-time family favorite who was born and raised in Newport, Rhode Island, served in the Army during Spanish-American War, then settled on a homestead out in Oregon. He was a poet and a raconteur who loved to travel and was always involved in social movements.

Another ancestor is one of my brick walls. He is the only German immigrant in my tree (so far), and while I have clues about his origins in Germany, I cannot pin down his arrival to the United States or from whence he came. What I have learned about him is in the U.S., and begins when he was married to an Irish woman, after he had anglicized his name. From the time of his marriage, he never lived near other German immigrants. Very knowledgeable and generous researchers in Brooklyn, New York, and in Germany have helped me follow up on the very limited clues I have developed. The ability to pull together the material and look at it from different perspectives has the potential to help with this brick wall.

If you have not had a chance to try out NotebookLM, here is the link:

https://sites.google.com/view/notebook-lm/login

If you are interested, I have put together a step-by-step tutorial that will get you started here: Google NotebookLM Tutorial.

AI: Meta Prompting

If you have attended one of my AI presentations, then you know how important it is to develop prompt engineering skills to get the most out of Large Language Models (LLMs). The good news is that we do not always have to create the perfect prompt on our own!   

There is a harsh term used in my field, GIGO, which stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. When it comes to AIs, this applies to the fact that the LLM response (output) will only be as good as our prompts (input).  

A simple explanation of meta prompting is to have one Large Language Model (LLM) create a prompt for another one. Meta prompting is more involved than that because it builds a prompt with more specific instructions about the steps to take to realize the goal of the prompt. It is as if the LLM is translating what you want to do into LLM language!

The cinematic arts student at my home gave me some insights into his practical use of meta prompting. He was having an issue with an AI that generates video. It was not creating what he was describing, so he turned to ChatGPT to explain his vision and ask for a prompt to use for generating that image. ChatGPT dutifully responded with a prompt that did work with the AI video generator. The message is that when it comes to crafting prompts, we are not on our own.

While working to understand meta prompting, I thought of an example application to try before applying this skill to genealogy. I asked ChatGPT to create a prompt for me that I could use to have a research report generated for me about a topic. I also specified what and how I wanted to investigate the topic, as well as the fact that I wanted sources and in-text citations. Using the power of the AI to recognize patterns, I certainly wanted analysis to be part of generating the data in the report.

A prompt was created, but ChatGPT had some specific questions that it included in its response about the type of citation I wanted and asked if there were other constraints, such as word count or including quotes. We had a conversation to refine the prompt, starting with a 308-word prompt and concluding with the final response which was a modular, reusable 1122-word prompt.

The prompt began with: “You are an expert in …

The prompt contained sections for FOCUS & SCOPE, RESEARCH & SOURCES, STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT, STYLE & LENGTH and FINAL OUTPUT

ChatGPT’s prompt also included some interesting anti-hallucination guidance: “If there are areas where evidence is limited (for instance, few direct author comments about a particular name), clearly indicate uncertainty and base comments on reasonable inference, not fabrication.”

I decided to use the prompt in ChatGPT, and opened a new chat. I pasted in the prompt, and it responded with a request for clarification:

It offered me options, providing details, which are omitted for brevity:

• Option A — Use only 100% verifiable, well-known, widely documented sources
• Option B — Allow me to cite plausible but harder-to-verify sources
• Option C — A blended approach

Then it asked me to respond with which option it should use:

After the clarification interaction, ChatGPT told me that

It waited for my response before it began to generate the report:

The report was reasonable, and described patterns. ChatGPT offered me formats for downloading the report and other products based on the report, an executive summary and PowerPoint presentations. If I want to dig deeper, this report is valuable to me as a starting place.

Of course, the caveats still remain about not using this for school reports (unless the assignment calls for the use of AI) and not submitting it to a client. There can be tell-tale signs of an AI-generated report, as I know from a high school science fair project done by that same cinematic arts student, and documentation out on the web.

So, will you try meta prompting? Let me know how you do.

NCGS Fall Conference 2025

Recently I had the pleasure of presenting at, and attending, the North Carolina Genealogical Society Fall Conference 2025. The Conference was very well planned and organized at a wonderful venue with great food. As much as I appreciate the reach of virtual presentations to give presentations at many places far from where I am based, it was nice to be with a group of genealogists, learning and chatting.  

At the Conference, I presented sessions about Military Research and Artificial Intelligence (AI). When speaking about military research, I always customize my presentation to include finding military records for the location of the audience. North Carolina has great resources, both in person and online!

With a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, I am always reaching deep into the technology of AI to learn its inner workings, and to then share an understanding of how it works and how to use it. As a graduate school professor in cybersecurity, and having tested computer code used on military aircraft for years, I also have a perspective about what we should be concerned about and what can go wrong.

What was also fantastic about the Conference was that people could attend the lectures virtually. The NCGS members and technical staff streamed the presentations and recorded them for attendees to watch later. I knew everything was working when questions from online viewers came during the lectures and insightful questions via email were waiting when I returned to my hotel.

Even though my research in North Carolina is limited to a few months during WWII at Camp Davis, I did attend J. Mark Lowe’s presentation, “Creating North Carolina Local and Regional Locality Guides.” (Mark’s smile is even bigger in person!) The presentation definitely had information that I will carry forward to the places where I do research. I will never look at detailed maps the same way again.

I attended another terrific presentation about using DNA to solve maternal surnames by Kate Penney Howard. Jon Smith’s workshop about using AI for creating locality guides certainly shifted my mindset from the free form text I have been using, and his tips about using Gemini in Chrome tabs were game changers. Thankfully the presentations were recorded so that I can enjoy Diane L. Richard’s presentation about Researching Your Ancestors as Kids. (Diane and I share an educational experience: Go RPI Engineers!)

The beginning-to-intermediate artificial intelligence presentation I gave on the first morning may have provided a warm-up for Steve Little’s intermediate artificial intelligence presentation. It is always interesting to see how other genealogists are using AI tools, and how its use is gaining acceptance. Promise to keep checking your output and stay sensitive to privacy concerns!

Thank you to everyone who planned and worked on making the 2025 North Carolina Genealogical Society Annual Conference such a great experience, to the audience members who shared their time with me, and all the other instructors and attendees for a rewarding and fun time!