FamilySearch Labs: Full-Text Search

If you don’t already have a free account for FamilySearch, you need one!

You may have used the indexes that are a part of court and land records will only list the principal people in the records. That means that you would find your ancestors’ probate records or the land to which they were a grantor or grantee.

But what about the other names that are mentioned in these documents? You have probably seen a will that includes a list of individuals inheriting something from the deceased. These lists may be very helpful, as they may reveal the addresses of relatives, or show female ancestors under their married names.

To find those other names in unindexed records, try the Full-Text Search experiment at FamilySearch labs.

FamilySearch labs is where users can try and test new tools that are under development.

Go to https://www.familysearch.org/labs, and Sign In. There are several ways you can sign in, and if you do not already have an account, select CREATE A FREE ACCOUNT.

Once you are signed in, you will see the available experiments that users can try and offer feedback.

Scroll down until you see “Expand your search with Full Text.”

Select “Go To Experiment.”

The Full-Text Search page gives reasonable cautions given that this is not a fully released project. Among them are that the experiment may not always be available and that there may be errors.

My recommendation is to begin by using the search box.

The search seems to yield better results when the name between is entered as a keyword and put within quotation marks. You can leave the name field blank.

Since this search is done by matching patterns in the text, try different searches using women’s maiden names and married names.

Keywords: “Amelia Matier”

Keywords: “Amelia Small”

Be prepared to search using variations on place names, or different places where your ancestor may have lived.  

Keep in mind that records that were not created in Brooklyn may appear in the results. This means that Brooklyn appears in them.

For comparison, when I searching by putting her name in the Name field, there were 99,842 results. In the search results, you get the name of the record set and a preview of the parts of the record that match the search terms. Currently, the maximum number of lines appears to be four. This helps to see the context of how the search terms appear.

Clicking on MORE will give all the parts of the record that match. Clicking on the name of the record set (Steuben, New York, Marriage Records 1821-1923) opens a new tab where the record is accompanied by a transcript. The words from the search terms are highlighted in the document and the transcription.

Select “Summarize the document” for an AI-generated summary of the transcription. This may be helpful to assess the usefulness of the record, but I did not use it.

Use the Download arrow for options of what you would like to download. Choose if you want a PDF version with or without the highlights. You can also use the check boxes to include the Transcription and the Citation in the PDF document. The transcription and/or citation can also be downloaded without the image. (I downloaded multiple versions of the record including PDFs with and without highlights as well as JPG only.)

When you download the image, a pop-up box may appear offering the option to attach the record image to the Family Tree.

In another blog post I will show you one of the finds that I made, and the search that it commenced.

Give it a try and let me know what you find!

Researching Civilian Employees of the Federal Government

Researching Civilian Employees of the Federal Government

This blog post is intended to get you started on researching civilians who worked for the Federal Government. Civilian employment also includes records for those who worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) or Works Project Administration (WPA) employment.

NARA has an older publication that has information about their resources researching federal employees: https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/ref-info-papers/rip110.pdf

(To find other NARA informational publications, see our blog post: Finding Helpful NARA Publications)

Although this is one of the older publications, there is a section about civilian employees of the Federal Government beginning on page 30 of this document:

An important thing to know is that personnel records become archival 62 years after the person’s employment by the Federal Government has ended. This 62-year time is calculated on a rolling date. Before 62 years has elapsed, the records are non-archival.

Prior to 62 years after the end of a person’s employment as a civilian employee of the Federal Government, their Official Personnel Folders (OPF) can only be accessed by the employee or an authorized third-party requestor.  During that time, only limited information may be released to the general public through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The National Personnel Records Center’s (NPRC) Federal Records Center Program maintains the Official Personnel Folders (OPF) of former Federal civilian employees whose employment ended after 1952.

A starting place to learn who can request records, and how to request them, would be the webpage for Official Personnel Folders (OPF), Federal (non-archival) Holdings and Access: https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/civilian-non-archival

Learn how to access archival Official Personnel Folders (more than 62 years after the civilian employment ended) from: https://www.archives.gov/st-louis/opf

Once you know the agency where the civilian employee worked, look for its current website. In some cases, the name of the agency or its organization within the government may have changed, so investigate the history of the organization. Look for information about projects in which your ancestor had been involved.

Good luck researching your civilian employees of the Federal Government, and let me know how you do!

The Postmaster Finder

The Postmaster Finder is a useful database if you are researching U.S. Postmasters or Post Offices. You can look up a Postmaster by city or search the database by Postmaster name. This database has entries from 1971 or in some cases, earlier. Another interesting part of this website is links to other useful resources for researching the postal service at the National Archives.

The Postmaster Finder database can be found at: https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/

To find the Postmaster in a city, select the link Postmasters by City

I searched for New York, New York.

And was rewarded with 96 entries (on 5 pages of results), going back to 1775.

If you know the name of the Postmaster and not where their Post Office was, you find out where they served by selecting the link Where Served to search for Postmasters by name.

The link for County and the link for State will let you search for Post Offices in those locations. Be sure to read the notes to the right of the search fields because they give helpful hints about how to search and what may not be included.

Another feature allows searching for locations by a range of ZIP Codes. To search by ZIP Code use the first 3 digits of the from ZIP Code and to ZIP Code. In the example below, I searched using the first three digits of a ZIP Code where I had lived in both the From and To fields.

The FAQ is worth exploring for suggestions to learn additional information about Post Offices, such as the origin of their name or their original locations. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/postmaster-finder-faq.htm

One answer has a reference to the paper ” What’s in a (Post Office) Name?” found at:

https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/post-office-names.pdf

“Sources of Historical Information on Post Offices, Postal Employees, Mail Routes, and Mail Contractors” can be found at: https://about.usps.com/publications/pub119.pdf

Enjoy researching your Postmaster ancestors!

Using AI in Genealogy

Thanks for such a warm reception at the Western New York Genealogical Society this past weekend. It was a pleasure to be talking about “Using AI for Genealogy” as part of their year-long fiftieth anniversary celebration, conducted over Zoom. At least fifteen states and two countries were represented in the audience.

The lecture was for people who have not already used AI tools but wanted to learn about them and how to start, AND for those who were already using the tools to share ideas about how to be more effective and expand their use.

It took over a day to obtain the ChatGPT data export that I mentioned during the lecture, but it did arrive later in the afternoon. As a reminder, this data export of all your chats can be requested by clicking on the profile icon on the lower left -> Settings -> Data Controls tab -> Export data. The link allows you to download a zipped file, and when you open it, use an HTML file to access your chats.

I wanted to share some of the great feedback from the audience:

• “Fantastic ‘Gen AI 101’ and how to apply it to research!!!”
• “Thank you so much! Very clear. Makes me want to go out and try it.!”
• “Fantastic program!”
• “This was perfectly demonstrated. Thank you!”
• “Wow! So much information. Thank you so much.”
• “I learned so much.  No longer afraid to try it.  Thank you.”
• ” Hope I can find the time to watch this over and over and over!”

You can embark on a captivating exploration at the crossroads of genealogy and artificial intelligence with our lecture on “Using AI in Genealogy,” conducted over Zoom. Presented by a seasoned genealogist who holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering and is the author of “Crash Course on ChatGPT and Genealogy ,” this session promises practical ways to get started using text-to-text artificial intelligence, prompt engineering and other AI tools, with some technological background. AI tools into your genealogical research, along with some technological background about generative AI.

The reasonable pricing ensures accessibility for your group, and participants will receive a thoughtfully curated 5+ page handout. Additionally, we’ve included some optional ‘Homework, but not to turn in’ for those who are ready to delve deeper into the subject. Contact us now to secure an engaging, informative, and educational Zoom lecture for your group.

The reasonable pricing ensures accessibility for your group, and participants will receive a thoughtfully curated 5+ page handout. Additionally, we’ve included some optional ‘Homework, but not to turn in’ for those who are ready to delve deeper into the subject. Contact us now to secure an engaging, informative, and educational Zoom lecture for your group.

There’s an AI for That: Transcribing Handwriting

Despite what you might have heard, there is progress being made on anything an AI can help with, including handwriting-to-text. In this blog post, we will cover just a few of the AI tools available for transcribing images of handwritten documents into text. The conversion can be done using digital images created by scanning or photographing handwritten documents.

Transcribing documents (or important parts of documents) is a thing that I always recommend. Reading a document is passive. The motion of writing or typing a document forces us to engage different parts of our brain with its content.

Even if a tool pulls the text out of an image, there is still work to be done in checking the accuracy and formatting the text.

While this can be done with a pencil and piece of paper, I always write the transcription into a word processing document. A word processing document is easier to share and extract the key pieces of data. Be sure to store the original image and the transcription together on your computer. 

NOTE: Always consider any privacy concerns before uploading documents to a website. While the website may not store the image, it may be used to train the AI model. Anything uploaded to a website usually travels through several stops on its way through the internet to the website and back. 

NOTE: The results from these experiments are certainly influenced by the quality of material that is input. This means that your results may vary.

I am not affiliated with any of the products mentioned in this review.

Always check usage rights for what is generated by a tool.

As the “Unofficial Historian for the 51st Pioneer Infantry Regiment,” we are always on the lookout for materials that add to the understanding of the Regiment’s service in World War I. We located some letters and decided to try out some handwriting-to-text AI tools.

The beginning of one of the letters was:

OCR2Edit

OCR2Edit has tools to extract text from scans, images and includes more  features. Since the tools are focused on text, and there was no explicit tool for converting handwriting into text, I had low expectations that this would be the right tool for the task.

At the time of writing this blog post, 3 tasks per hour could be done for free.

I selected the Image to text tool and followed the directions to start the process.

When the tool was done, I could download the text file with the transcription.

The transcription of the letterhead was good, but the handwritten part was not helpful.

Aspose

Aspose OCR app is an online tool is for turning handwritten notes to text.

The interface on this webpage is slightly awkward.

The first page of a letter uploaded and the “Recognize” button clicked. Then it is time to wait. It took a while to process the request, but there was an option to bookmark the page and return to it.

There are buttons for several of their other Optical Character Recognition (OCR) apps that might be more useful.

The format for download was selectable from a drop-down menu.

There was also an option to apply Automated Text correction.

The results are downloaded into a file named “results” which is less useful than a file that has the original filename in it.

There is a button for Options on the Home Page, where you can select: Enhance Contrast, Deskew Image and Upscale Resolution.

All of the options were selected in an attempt to get better results, but there was no improvement.

Pen TO Print

Pen TO Print was the best tool in this set of experiments.

Only the first 10 pages are free, so check out the pricing if you need to do more.

Select Handwriting to Text Converter. Then Add Files, by dragging and dropping the file or clicking the plus to open a dialog box to navigate to and select a file (or files). Then select Convert.

The text can be Download as Text or Word document, or copied to the Clipboard. The filename of a downloaded files is the original filename with “Pen2Print-Export” added to it. This feature helps keep track of the transcribed files on your computer.

This was by far the best of the tools that were tried. The output needs some minor corrections, and formatting. Both of these tasks will engage the brain, and make us think about the content.

Let us know how you do!

Back to School: Genealogy Style

When autumn comes, we think of going back to school. Genealogists are always learning, and webinars are a great way to do that. Presentations give us information, introduce us to new techniques or provide a new way of looking at our research. These resources in the blog post offer great classes and more.

---

The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library hosts the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) and has many recorded webinars available on its YouTube Channel. You can even send them an email if you have a question.

---

The Midwest Genealogy Center at Mid-Continent Public Library offers a variety of resources. You can even request an Appointment with a Genealogy Consultant. Be sure to check out their upcoming and register for them on their events page. You can view their recorded talks on their YouTube Channel.

---

BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library offers new webinars every week. They also offer a large library of recorded webinars.

---

Of course for the more adventurous, consider a class at your local community college.

When everyone around is going back to school, join them!