Put Artificial Intelligence To Work
- Leslie Ryan
- Mar 11
- 2 min read
Artificial Intelligence is helping Genealogists break through brick walls! We have talked about the FREE records you can find through Full Text Search at FamilySearch, and now Ancestry has jumped on that bandwagon too.
Ancestry's big announcement at RootsTech 2026 was that they are processing 10 million hand written records a DAY and putting them online. They are most excited about the Revolutionary Pension records you can see at their military arm, Fold3.com, where as of last week they had 10 million names. You cannot yet search for them at the Ancestry site, you will have to do a search at Fold3 by selecting "Revolutionary War." Some people report that they have also gotten new family member possibilities (sons? brothers?) as you can search by last name.
They have uploaded some family and local history books that the computer will gladly search for your names, and they are refining the search criteria to make it easier to find exactly what kind of record you would like the computer to read for you, be it probate or birth and death records.
Ancestry has also added a photo context tool like MyHeritage has had for quite some time, which will examine your uploaded photos to help you determine the year it might have been taken.
I'll be diving into these new toys soon, but I'm going to spend a little more time at FamilySearch Full Text Searching a few days more. I have had such great luck finding records for formerly enslaved people and their descendants, marriage licenses in particular! Maiden names at last!!
I also plan to re-watch Diahan Southard's DNA Swim School videos from RootsTech. She has some great suggestions for tweaking your perspective on matching! Here's a link to that first video to give you a taste:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/dna-swim-school-part-1-floating-with-one-dna-match
How's your research coming? Have you put AI to work for you? Send me an email for a free review of your tree and your brick wall(s).
Happy St Patrick's Day,
Leslie Ryan
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