Getting Started with ChatGPT

By now you have probably heard about OpenAI’s systen, ChatGPT. You can use the Preview Preview for free with an account. ChatGPT has a number of ways it can support the genealogical community, covered in Artificial Intelligence and Genealogy. It can also support your personal genealogical efforts, covered in other posts.

NOTE: DO NOT ENTER PRIVATE OR SENSITIVE DATA INTO ChatGPT. Your data is used for training, and is reviewed by OpenAI to verify that content complies with their policies and safety requirements. They may be used for training purposes.

Once you establish an account, using ChatGPT is as easy as typing in your questions or requests, which become the “prompts” to which ChatGPT generates responses. Underneath the hood, ChatGPT uses prompt engineering as part of its natural language processing capabilities to get meaningful responses from its models. Knowledge databases, texts, and other sources as well as an understanding of language has been used to train its neural network. When it has not been trained about a specific topic, it uses relevant information from external sources. ChatGPT answered a few questions about this for me. ChatGPT told me it did not search the web as humans would. In fact, ChatGPT is not connected to the Internet, and it has limited knowledge of world events after 2021. In response to another question, ChatGPT answered that it did not need question marks for it to understand that I asked a question, but that using them might clarify the input.

You can use the research preview of ChatGPT for free. You own the output that is created. The output from a paid or free plan can be reprinted, sold and merchandised.

To get a free research account https://chat.openai.com/and select “Sign up” and follow the steps.

To sign up for an account, you have to provide your email address and a phone number. The email address and phone number do have to be validated before your account is activated.

The “Send a message…” box at the bottom is where to type a question or issue a request.

At the end of the generated response, you can continue the conversation by asking another question. You also have the option to select “Regenerate response” to make ChatGPT process the request again and generate another response.

NOTE: If you choose to REGENERATE RESPONSE, the original one will be replaced. So, if you are looking to combine or compare responses, be sure to copy the original response.

Your conversations will appear on the left side of the screen in a laptop or desktop browser. You have the option to edit the automatically assigned label for the chat, or delete it. There is also an option to begin a “New chat.” NOTE: Conversations with the Free Research Preview are reviewed to improve systems and to verify that content complies with their policies and safety requirements. They may be used for training purposes. You can request to delete your conversations from a link in the FAQ.

Here is an example where I started out with a simple question in my message prompt: What is a GEDCOM file?

ChatGPT answered this prompt. While it was answering, there was an option to “Stop generating” the response. Note the “Regeneration response” button at the bottom of the reply.

In the image above, you can see the thumbs up and down buttons so that you can provide feedback by about the answers.

The same prompts generated different responses, as evidenced by the regenerated responses. To see if the responses might be presented in a preplanned sequence, I asked a friend to enter the same prompt (different than the example given). The response she received certainly had similar elements, but the responses were definitely not the same. The responses were more different than rearranged words; the concepts were expressed in a different manner.

The conversations you have with ChatGPT can be saved through browser addons, but I found it far simpler to copy-and-paste into Word or Wordpad documents (for now).

As for how long my input prompt could be, I asked ChatGPT directly about that. The answer is 2048 tokens, which can be interpreted as characters. ChatGPT needs you to know that a spaces and punctuation marks count.

This technology really is impressive. I began with giving specific prompts but before too long I found myself falling into a pattern like conversation with the ChatAPT. It seemed very natural. I could also ask for clarification about a previous answer, or change the intent of my question. I could lead the conversation in different directions based on the responses. According to the ChatGPT FAQ, https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6783457-chatgpt-general-faq

ChatGPT Mar 14 Version of the Free Research Preview was used for examples in this tutorial. Future releases may have slightly different interfaces and options.

Artificial Intelligence and Genealogy

By now, you have probably heard about ChatGPT. This blog post will discuss how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in Genealogy with the help of ChatGPT.

In other posts I will cover how to use ChatGPT and some other AI tools that can help you in the pursuit of genealogy.

Genealogy is the study of family history and ancestry, and it has become increasingly popular in recent years. With the advancement of technology, researchers have been able to access more information about their ancestors, making the process of genealogy more accessible and convenient. Artificial intelligence (AI) has played a significant role in making genealogy research more efficient and effective.

AI is a technology that uses algorithms to mimic the human brain’s decision-making process. When it comes to genealogy, AI can be used to sift through large amounts of data, uncovering hidden connections, and providing insights that would have been difficult to find otherwise.

Here are some of the ways AI is being used in genealogy research:

1. Record Linkage: Record linkage is a process that involves connecting different sources of data to create a comprehensive profile of an individual. AI algorithms can match and link various documents such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, and census data, making it easier to trace family lineage.
2. Facial Recognition: Facial recognition technology can analyze photos and match them with other images in the database, creating a visual family tree. It can also be used to identify unknown ancestors in old family photos.
3. DNA Analysis: AI can analyze DNA test results to find genetic matches and identify relationships between family members. It can help to identify distant cousins, uncover ethnic origins, and find long-lost family members.
4. Translation: AI-powered translation tools can help researchers decipher and translate foreign language documents, which can be a valuable resource for uncovering family history in different parts of the world.
5. Predictive Analysis: AI can analyze existing data to create predictive models of likely family connections. This can help researchers to identify family members they might not have known existed and to predict possible future discoveries.

In conclusion, AI has revolutionized the field of genealogy by enabling researchers to access and analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately. By using AI-powered tools and techniques, genealogy researchers can unlock a wealth of information about their ancestors and uncover hidden connections that would have been impossible to find otherwise. As the technology continues to evolve, it is likely that genealogy research will become even more accessible and exciting.

Book Review: “Generation by Generation”

With a wealth of knowledge and experience in researching, lecturing, and teaching others, Drew Smith has now turned his efforts to create a book for those who are beginning their genealogical research in the United States. “Generation by Generation: A Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy” is a concise way for new genealogists to benefit from Mr. Smith’s wisdom as well as enjoy his warm and approachable manner. He makes good use of analogies and examples so that the content is manageable by even the most novice researcher.

Part I of the book lays a solid foundation of key knowledge and skills a reader needs to conduct successful genealogical research. In Part II, readers are guided while they actually research their own ancestors. The book lends itself to navigating through its sections in order, supporting the reader with both a table of contents and an index.

The topics covered in Part I are important to understand and practice for successful research outcomes. Given that understanding cousin relationships can be tricky, the book is specific with regard to those relationships. Topics from changing calendars to DNA are presented clearly and painlessly throughout. As I was reviewing this section the book, I found that just as I would wonder, “will he tell beginners about…,” he did! The breadth of those examples ranged from genetic recombination and to ethics of DNA testing to the fact that the records of the Freedmen’s Bureau also include records of employees. The importance of introducing the genealogical research process and the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) to new genealogists cannot be overstated. The book conveys an appreciation of citing sources, while eliminating the fear of them.

A key part of researching using “Generation by Generation” is helping a new researcher travel back in time, organizing how they will research within each time frame of generations of ancestors. The book provides descriptions of which records are appropriate for each time frame. With Mr. Smith’s guidance, the researcher steps backwards through their US ancestors’ generations who lived during the time periods: 1950 to now, 1880-1950, 1850-1880, 1776-1850 and pre-1776 British America. Mr. Smith also supports readers as they start to tackle researching their ancestors back to their European or Canadian roots. These divisions are logical, and it would be straightforward to follow the book’s structure to approach personal research or formulate a syllabus for a class or study group.

Another feature is due to the printing process. The chapters that contain an odd number of pages include a blank page at the end. These blank pages are an ideal location to enter notes and record questions.

This is a book to both read and use. It is a way for a reader to bring Mr. Smith home and have him alongside while taking significant steps to research their family history. Using Part I to learn the main ideas and terminology, and pitfalls, prepares the reader to be ready to do their own research using Part II, and have a good foundation before advancing into more detailed research.

The book is available at Genealogical.com and other booksellers.

Notes: A review copy of the book was provided by the publisher. Like many other genealogists, I am a fan of The Genealogy Guys podcast, and recognize both of its hosts for service to the genealogical community.

This blog post is copyright ©2023 by Margaret M. McMahon. All rights reserved. No part of this post may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews. All copyrights and trademarks mentioned herein are the possession of their respective owners and the author makes no claims of ownership by mention of the products that contain these marks.

Cultural Anthropology and Genealogy

Cultural Anthropology

Last semester I took a third course in anthropology. After taking courses in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, the next for me to tackle was Cultural Anthropology. (Our local community college does not offer a course in the fourth area of anthropology, linguistic anthropology.) Due to the nature of the subject material, this class was the least rooted in hard science. Cultural Anthropology studies how a society organizes itself. This is done through its beliefs, and how people live, think, create and find meaning. It introduces the concept that cultures have an intrinsic logic in their practices.

A big part of this branch of anthropology is fieldwork. Anthropologists in the field study societies, collecting data to build ethnographies. This data is often qualitative. Originally fieldworkers studied societies as impartial and distant observers; later they shifted to coming off the veranda to be participant observers.

When we go beyond our ancestors’ birth and death dates to fill in the dashes with what they did between those two dates, we are doing something similar to the fieldwork done by anthropologists. We often wish that we could go back in time to come off the veranda to be participant observers but lacking that option we can use the older anthropologists’ method of building their work on others’ first-hand source material. In our pursuit, we can use published sources that were contemporary to their times to learn about their culture at their time. When we research and write about our ancestors, we are building an ethnography. We can interact with the artifacts that they and their contemporaries left behind, which is like the activities of archaeologists.

Even though we cannot be participant observers in our ancestor’s society during their time, sometimes we can participate with a society that is close to theirs. This can be done through participating in ethnic crafts, cooking, dancing, clothing, reading the books they read, learning stories they told and heard, and learning about or practicing their beliefs.

NOW AVAILABLE: Our New Research WWI Guide

Our newest book is NOW AVAILABLE!

Researching U.S. WWI Military Members, Military Organizations and Overseas Noncombatants:

A Research Guide for Historians and Genealogists

Have you been wanting to do research about the military and supporting organizations in World War I? With these 30 chapters, this book shows how you can learn about the service of a U.S. World War I military member, WWI military organizations and about noncombatants who went overseas.

Based on feedback for the popular “Researching Your U.S. WWI Army Ancestors” and questions asked during popular lectures, this book reaches beyond researching ancestors in the Army to include information about researching service members in the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine, along with the civilian noncombatants who went overseas to support the troops. The strategies presented can also be used in larger projects to research a military organization.

Among the topics covered are how to research the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Coast Guard. Also included are some starting places for civilian organizations who supported the troops overseas. Information about the Merchant Marine is also included, and prisoners of war. Other chapters cover specific record sets. There is a chapter about researching fallen service members who died overseas. A variety of sources are presented to dig deeper for information gathering through types of sources and where to find them. There are ideas about using social media and what to do with what you learned.

This book will lead you to use a timeline so that you can capture what you will learn during your WWI research. Learn to use a variety of resources including online records, social networking, archives and how to expand your search to other places where material from WWI can be found. It contains ideas to turn your research into works that can be shared with others.

Based on feedback for the popular “Researching Your U.S. WWI Army Ancestors” and questions asked during popular lectures, this book reaches beyond researching ancestors in the Army to include information about researching service members in the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine, along with the civilian noncombatants who went overseas to support the troops. The strategies presented can also be used in larger projects to research a military organization.

“Researching U.S. WWI Military Members, Military Organizations and Overseas Noncombatants” can be found on Amazon.

U.S. Merchant Marine in WWI and SMS Wolf

During my lectures about WWI research, there is usually some with a question about researching members of the Merchant Marine. While I revised and expanded my book about researching WWI ancestors, I definitely wanted to include information about the U.S. Merchant Marine. It can be difficult to research the Merchant Marine in WWI, so I spent some time looking for both obvious and less obvious sources to learn about and understand their experiences.

In this post, I will demonstrate the use of a less obvious source: contemporary accounts. It is very helpful to have contemporary accounts from the time so readily available for the Great War (World War I). Many of the contemporary books are out of copyright and accessible to us over the internet. These accounts are useful in our research and for understanding that range of experiences that people had during the war. 

Newspapers remain a solid resource to use for this research, but some stories were not reported at the time, and some details might have been suppressed. Personal accounts, published close to the time of WWI, can provide facts and fill in the details of experiences that we might have learned from conversation with participants.

I read three books about prisoners of war, held on the German surface raider SMS Wolf that provided insights into the experiences of captured mariners and passengers. All the books were all page-turners. The level of personal insight was as candid as a diary, but with the benefit of being better edited. The authors had similarities in their narratives about the events and the food, but sometimes offered different perspectives based on their roles and even about different crew members.

“Ten Months in A German Raider: A Prisoner of War Aboard the Wolf,” was written by Captain John Stanley Cameron, the Master of the American Bark Beluga. This book was illustrated with several photographs. Captain Cameron, his wife and child were captured 15,000 miles away from the fighting, in the South Pacific. His commentary included the fact that some of the prize crew were actually American seaman, who had worked on American ships but went “home” to Germany to enlist when war began. He expressed his sadness about the deliberate destruction of good ships. He reported that the number of people grew a total of 800 people onboard Wolf. Cameron also included the stories of the fourteen captured vessels in an appendix to the book.

“A Captive on a German Raider” was written by F. G. Trayes in 1918. The author was a British Professor who had left Siam after a long posting to sail home with his wife on the Japanese Mail Steam Ship Hitachi Maru. In the book he shares details of life in captivity, including the “Rules and Regulations for Onboard the German Auxiliary Ship ‘Hitachi Maru’ Detained Enemy Subjects.” He shared that only three of the officers on Wolf were from Imperial Navy, with the other officers being from the German mercantile marine. He also reported the dire conditions of over 400 prisoners kept onboard Wolf. The ten thousand cases of canned crab that Hitachi Maru had been transporting were mentioned as becoming a reviled food.

In “The Amazing Cruise Of The German Raider ‘Wolf’,” Captain Donaldson of SS Matunga offered a perspective different than the other two authors. As a crew member from a combatant country, he and his crew were kept prisoners below decks and always kept on Wolf. SS Matunga also had officers returning from leave take at home in Australia. His civilian passengers were treated better. His book was well illustrated with personal pictures and maps of the events during Wolf‘s cruise.

Captain Donaldson’s begins the story of Wolf before he was taken captive, using the German Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Karl August Nerger’s words to tell the story. With an inauspicious beginning to its cruise, Wolf had only succeeded getting underway on its third attempt. It was disguised as a merchant ship to elude casual visual inspection of ships that passed near, and kept its weapons hidden. It had also been involved in laying mines at various locations that had caused interruptions on the sea that were attributed to U-boats.

Wolf found ships to prey upon by eavesdropping on open wireless conversations. Wolf carried a seaplane hidden between decks, called Wolfchen. Wolfchen would act as a scout to investigate targeted ships and spot enemy ships. When not in use, it was kept out of sight of other ships. 2.5 hours were required to put her together when she was brought up to the deck to use. Once the prey was within reach, Wolf would threaten to fire upon the ship if any transmission was attempted. In fact, Wolf had a transmitter powerful enough to jam any signals sent by another ship.

There were prisoners from twenty nations kept on Wolf, but the only fighting that that Captain Donaldson had witnessed was between British sailors who were having personal disagreements. The crew from the Japanese “Hitachi Maru” were also belligerents, and were kept separate from other prisoners. Her officers were prisoners, but some of their members elected to work for the Germans. Her Captain eventually committed suicide.

It was interesting to compare the experiences of the authors who were taken captive by Germany’s Wolf. A common thread was that the combatants and laborers were kept below decks, and some agreed to work for and be paid by the Germans. The passengers and non-combatant officers were treated better, staying in officers’ quarters. They were shuttled between captured ships and Wolf.

Donaldson’s book shared insights about the Germans, and included more about the story of Captain Cameron’s daughter, Anita, and her mischief onboard Wolf.

While on Wolf, the passengers feared that they would be sunk on an enemy vessel, but Captain Nerger assured them they were safe. He could receiver all the wireless messages from the ships cruising in the vicinity, he could avoid those posing a danger. Wolf also picked up news from the wireless and circulated it to the passengers.

Wolf used captured ships to replenish her stores and coal supply. The first captured ship was used  to lay mines. The other captured ships would detach from the marauding Wolf, then join up after another conquest. The prize crews capturing the ships were small, but very well armed. When the coal ran out of a captured ship, they would strip it, then destroy it.

The Captain and German officers often said that they would let the passengers off at a neutral port, but this never happened. For all the months imprisoned on Wolf, there was no word of the prisoners; stopping at port to file a report about prisoners or disembark non-combatants would alert the enemy of the raider’s activities and position.

Donaldson brought up several discrepancies in Nerger’s story. In one case, he asserted that the Ford cars sunk on the captured John H. Kirby were not armored for battlefield use, but rather intended for regular motorists.

Captain Nerger wanted to bring the Hitachi Maru back to Germany, but when she ran low on coal, the Captain elected to sink her. The Spanish steam ship Igotz Mendi was subsequently captured and used as a collier (coaling ship), with Wolf‘s crew working to repair her, and painting her.

After sailing through the tropics of the South Pacific for months, Trayes, Captain Cameron and the other passengers had been transferred to Igotz Mendi to rendezvous with Wolf after a cold trip back to Germany. Once in Germany, they would be placed in a prisoner camp for civilians. Under cover of a fog, the German crew tried to pass through the waters of the Skagerrak on their way to Kiel, but Igotz Mendi ran aground hours outside of Germany. In spite of the prize crew’s attempts to get a Danish tugboat to set them free. The Danish tugboat captain had grown suspicious about the nature of the ship, and brought in Danish naval authorities to intervene. After investigating, the Danish authorities freed the passengers and interned the prize crew.

Donaldson and the other prisoners on Wolf were not saved before arriving at the port of Kiel. He and his Australian mercantile marine were imprisoned. He traveled to various prison camps during his time as a prisoner of war, and he described the camps, activities and meals. After the Armistice, he made his way out of Germany to London, and managed to sail on a ship home on Christmas Eve, 1918. He sailed home on a former German ship.

After leaving Kiel with a crew of 375 men, Wolf had claimed fourteen boats, seven steamers and seven sailing ships in its 15 months of raiding.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cameron, John Stanley. Ten Months in A German Raider: A Prisoner of War Aboard the Wolf. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1918, https://books.google.com/books?id=zjjHAAAAMAA.

Donaldson, A.  “The Amazing Cruise Of The German Raider ‘Wolf’.” Sydney: New Century Press, 1918, https://archive.org/details/amazingcruiseofg00dona.

Trayes, F. G. A Captive on a German Raider. New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, October 1918, https://books.google.com/books?id=JJ8MAAAAYAAJ.