Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
A "brick-wall" DIY genealogy podcast that features your questions and Kathleen Brandt's answers. She wants your stories, questions, and “brick walls”. But be ready to add to your "to-do" list. As Kathleen always says, this is a Do it yourself (DIY) genealogy podcast. “I'll show you where the shovel is, but I'm not digging up your family.”
Maybe, you have no idea where to start searching for an ancestor. Or, perhaps you want to know more about your family folklore. Host Kathleen has 20 years in the industry and is the founder of a3genealogy. She's able to dispense genealogy research advice and encouragement in understandable terms that won't get you lost in genealogy jargon. Along with her husband and co-host, John, she helps you accomplish "do-it-yourself" research goals, learn some history, and have a bit of fun along the way. Light-hearted and full of detailed info, Hittin' the Bricks is your solution for your brick-wall research problems.
Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
FamilySearch A.I.: Your Brickwall Hammer
Let's get techy with the latest Artificial intelligence tool from FamilySearch that's rewriting the rules on historical record-sleuthing.
Plus, family reunion planning; mistakes made & lessons learned.
Keep those genealogy questions coming!
Be sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: Off the Wall with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials.
Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.
Thanks to MyHeritage for their generous support to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen! Follow us on social media and subscribe to HTB with Kathleen in order to enter your name in our monthly MyHeritage Complete Package giveaway starting Jan 2024!
Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of flyover country in the heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the Mighty Mo, welcome to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen, the do-it-yourself genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, saying welcome to new listeners in New Zealand, the Philippines, netherlands, hungary, finland and, of course, the good old USA. Now let's start hitting the bricks. Here we go, now you're on. So yeah, that intro was kind of interesting. Where we have people from New Zealand, the Philippines, netherlands, we have a lot of people listening. Maybe not a lot of people listening, but we've got a few people in a lot of places as opposed to a lot of people in a few places.
Kathleen:Yes, but that means it'll spread quickly as people learn about us.
John:Like a bacteria. That's what we're shooting for.
Kathleen:I would like something a little bit more positive, if that's okay. So today I was talking on the phone to the banker and she saw our, our email and she says so do you do genealogy? Yes, that's what I do for a living.
John:Which email.
Kathleen:This was A3 genealogy. This was the A3 genealogy one and she said that is so cool. And she says do you have like a podcast or YouTube channel? So I shared it with her. Yeah, so it's kind of. I shared it with her. Yeah, so it's kind of fun. Hey, that's cool.
John:Yeah, that's fun. Was she the one in the Philippines or?
Kathleen:No, she was actually. Do we have?
John:offshore accounts or something that I'm not aware of.
Kathleen:I wouldn't tell you if we did.
John:See, I thought I caught you on that one, I thought I caught you what was. Let me see what else. Because I haven't really seen you today, because we've been headed in different directions since. Well, we did the Costco run.
Kathleen:We went to Costco as usual, John. I'm sure our listeners think we live in Costco An early date for old people. We went to Costco.
John:It was our social time.
Kathleen:Our private club.
John:We like strolling through the aisles and sampling the Costco crudités. Yes, it's too stupid. And then how'd you do on Wordle, by the way?
Kathleen:I got it in five. I should have gotten it in four, but I made a mistake.
John:And I got it in four. Yeah well, brian, so this is a common thing that we do, which I was thinking earlier. I was like I don't know, because we've been comparing wordle scores for a long time. Is it really? Are we comparing scores or are we just tracking our mental decline?
Kathleen:I think it's one of the latter.
John:It's the latter, I'm starting to see some trends here, that-.
Kathleen:I have mental capacity, you do, yes, you do.
John:You have mental capacity, whereas I have dwindling capacities of all types.
Kathleen:Oh, that's so sad. So, Mr, what are we here to talk about today?
John:You had said that you wanted to discuss. We were going to get an update on when Skynet will become self-aware and the world will end because of artificial intelligence.
Kathleen:I can talk about artificial intelligence as it's being used in genealogy right now.
John:And.
Kathleen:I want to talk about one specific one. I don't know anything about Skynet.
John:You've been using an AI and you were really excited about this AI feature, which I mean I've heard you talk about it from the other room, but I don't know that. I really know what's going on, so tell me about it.
Kathleen:So, as part of FamilySearch I know they talked about it a lot at RootsTech this year and for the last three projects, which all have been colonial for me, and I'm talking between 1640 till Revolutionary War I have found this to be a lifesaver. It helps me really work with the names that are so common, because everybody has to have a John and a Mary and a Thomas and a William. I have been working on three different sets one a Scott, one a Nichols and now a Thompson.
John:And what is it? What is the AI doing?
Kathleen:So what it allows you to do is it actually even has a transcription of the old English it has a transcription and I can put in these common names in a quote in the state I'm looking for or county and I can narrow it down.
John:Hang on a second. So the AI is crawling records.
Kathleen:Exactly All of the family search records and, if you know, that's our largest collection outside, probably, of National Archives. Right now it's in a beta form and so they call it an experiment, but everybody can access it and use it and it's fabulous if you have a brick wall.
John:If I took my name and was looking for just instances of my name within a time frame, is that something I could do with that? Or you were talking. You just started talking about the time frame.
Kathleen:It's more of a historical time frame, right, so we're not talking present day right. So I would do it by county and then if you know that someone might have had a will in 1694, you can do that also. But the key to it is how you're using the.
John:Are they Boolean operators?
Kathleen:Yes, but you can also use the plus sign or you could put a phrase in a quote. So what I have found when I'm putting in my keywords to say John Nichols, virginia there's so many of them I might want the one that I know died in 1744.
John:OK.
Kathleen:And so I would put a plus sign with John Nichols in quotes altogether and then put a plus sign with Virginia in quotes and the same thing with John Nichols, or John Nichols quotes in the year. And the reason I want to do the plus sign in each one of those. If you don't, it doesn't know you're wanting it to be necessarily included. It's almost like it's optional.
John:If you just list it like John Nichols in quotes and then right next to it space quote Virginia, then it'll accept that as well.
Kathleen:I'm looking for John Nichols or I'm looking for Virginia, that is correct, and I'm sure there's a lot of other tricks and tips with it and I have played with them, but I have noticed that this is just giving me absolutely excellent results.
John:When you say it gives you excellent results. What's the practicality of that? So you're working on a case what was, what was the circumstance, without you know, giving a client's work away or whatever. I'm not asking you to do that.
Kathleen:No, that's fine. Let's say I'm looking for the parents of John Nichols.
John:Okay.
Kathleen:Every John Nichols is related to a William Nichols, but I and a lot of them are married to the same girl because they all I mean I have the same child Now hang on.
John:That's polygamy.
Kathleen:No, yes.
Kathleen:All of them are related to the same named daughter and the reason is because they're naming it after their mothers. So if there's five Nichols brothers, they all have an Abigail. So what I'm doing now I can put this as no. I wrote this John Nichols, who's married to Isabel, but they do have a daughter named Abigail and they do live in Virginia. I am finding that this is how I'm working through a triplet family and the Nichols family right now. I could talk about John Nichols all day, and you don't know which John Nichols there is.
John:So I don't even have an idea.
Kathleen:Yes, so I can work through these problems and then they will give me, it, offers me all the documents and it would tell me the timeframe and which county. In Virginia it's in Henrico County, this is in Richmond County and it goes right through.
John:So you would be able to contact, let's say, local repositories. From that point, no, they actually show me the documents. Oh, okay, the digital documents.
Kathleen:Exactly that's the plus about this AI is scouring the database. Exactly that's the plus about this AI is scouring the database, showing me the digital documents and giving me a transcription, and. I can download both of those. I can even analyze it later.
John:I'm curious have you taken any notes on how accurate a transcription of, let's say, writing from 1700 is?
Kathleen:I have definitely taken note of it not notes, but note, meaning that the transcriptions aren't that great. So that means to me that the AI is missing some of the readings, so you might have to do a search on several words before you get exactly what you want.
John:So have you had any breakthroughs because of it?
Kathleen:Absolutely the entire Scott family. I mean, that was amazing. And now I've had the Nichols family. I can tell them who they're not related to, and that's the Nichols. But that is also through DNA.
John:So the Nichols family is not actually the Nichols family, kind of like the Brandt family is kind of not the Brandt family.
Kathleen:Right. It is for a while Exactly, and they are for a while back to the 1690s, something Before that, I don't know. So I do know who they're matching on DNA, but I'm now in the process of taking their DNA matches and doing the same thing, because I need to find documents.
John:So I'm feeling a lot of motivation for lazy genealogists like me. Hey folks, this one's for us. It sounds like wait a minute now. It sounds like I've just found my head researcher and it's called Skynet, or I mean AI. Can anybody use this? Can a beginner go in there and use it, or is it going to be like so? No, I'm not going to understand.
Kathleen:Now again I'm talking about is familysearchorg. You must start at the homepage, at the very top homepage. So just click in the upper left corner where the logo is Okay, and then, when you come down, scroll all the way down and to the right, all the way down. The very last thing on that page will say view experiments.
John:Oh fun.
Kathleen:Do you see it? Are you following along with me? No, I'm not.
John:I'm not following along. I got enough going on with my computer right now. I mean, I got two hamsters that are running full tilt right now and if, if I put one more, if I open up one more window, ah, yes. Bob is going to quit. I know he's going to quit.
Kathleen:So I'm just it's OK, so we won't we won't hamster Bob running. So if you go to view experiments it will take you to a page of all their experiments and one of them says just go to experiment.
John:Now does it do translations?
Kathleen:I have not done a translation. And I haven't seen that it does, but there's other places I can give you to do the translations. Family searches experiment is clearly tells you somewhere that is really right now for American documents. And I think that might be one of the issues Right, because they are giving you a transcription and so forth.
John:Yeah, it seems like it would be a whole other layer to that. Wow, that's, that's pretty cool.
Kathleen:It's wonderful. I mean, what my clients are getting for 10 and 20 hours now is pretty amazing. Ok, so that's all the good, and 20 hours now is pretty amazing, okay.
John:So that's all the good. That's all the good, okay. Yes, that's really interesting. Now let's talk about how this will end life as we know it on planet Earth. What are the Okay? So there's always got to be a downside to this kind of research. So where is it going to lead me to make a big mistake when I'm researching, doing these things, or can you see that?
Kathleen:I did see it yesterday. Actually, I let AI take me to a set of records and the record was great and I got names from this record. If I would have stopped there I would have not seen the other issues. But something told me go back about 15 pages and just scroll through. So it didn't even put me in the right place, the right time frame and in the right book and start looking. Also, I would have missed about 12 or 13 other documents that were pertinent to how this record got created. So the lazy genealogist John, it's still not welcomed.
John:So what I'm seeing is, if you approach it correctly, then this is fantastic and can be really helpful. It correctly, then this is fantastic and can be really helpful, and if you don't approach it correctly, then it's going to exacerbate the issues that are created. It's going to make you. It's going to give you bigger problems faster.
Kathleen:Right, it can. It's like everything a good genealogist would do, and that is corroborate, corroborate. Get other clues, get more names, make sure your story is the truth.
John:Well, this doesn't sound like it's making a lazy genealogist job any easier, so I'm pretty well done with this. So that's enough of that. I don't need that.
Kathleen:I have to tell you, john, I have to tell you lazy genealogist or genealogy is not a goal, it's not a goal, it's just not a goal. I don't know, it might be a thing, but it's not a goal, it's a thing that happens all over, but we don't discuss it in public.
John:Okay so no lazy. Genealogist, it's a dirty word, it's a four-letter word. What Genealogist Lazy.
Kathleen:Lazy John. It's a four letter word.
John:There's more of that mental decline if you're saying that, so okay, so wait a minute. Wait a minute. Time is just flying by. We got all caught up on the end of the world with artificial intelligence. I don't want to run out of time. We had also someone else who, again, they signed up on the, they subscribed to our Linktree page. Yes, Linktree. So it's a Linktree page for hitting the bricks. Linktree slash hitting the bricks.
Kathleen:So we have a new winner of our monthly winner for the month of April April For the MyHeritage Complete Package. Monthly winner for the month of april april for the my heritage complete package you did that so much better than the four takes I just did.
John:I'm using that you do it better, you say it better, you look better when you say it darling, I'm loving this, okay, go, baby, go with it.
Kathleen:Oh my and she had already even signed up for my heritage for the free, because I had put up how to move your DNA from ancestry to there Because of the tools. They have great tools, yeah, and it's Andrea Hatfield from Saline County Missouri.
John:And we know yes, of course we know Andrea now.
Kathleen:Yes, yes, of course we know Andrea now. Yes, Andrea and I actually know each other because she has helped me in work in Saline County and she helped us with the podcast about four podcasts ago with Howard Murray when he was one of our guests, and the name of that particular podcast was A. Grave Situation Bur buried on the farm.
John:Yeah, those graves, that maybe five people, maybe up to 20. We didn't know, right.
Kathleen:We didn't know, but she was able to assist us in that particular podcast for Howard and it was really a lot of fun. So I'm very happy that Andrea was excited to receive the April one year subscription value of $300 from MyHeritage.
John:Very cool and thank you to MyHeritage for that wonderful donation that helps people reconnect in a lot of different ways.
John:Because that's what really it's all about. It's not just the dates, it's not just the dates, it's not just the where's and when's, it's the connection. And speaking of so, you mentioned family reunions and said you wanted to talk about how soon to start. And I have a feeling there was an experience or something with this. The first one of yours, when you first started doing family research, your shingle wasn't hung out to do it publicly. You were just doing it for your own family, to answer your own questions, and your mother, jerry, and you were so sick at the time. But Jerry decided that yeah, you're going to have a family reunion since you did this work. Yeah, you're going to have a family reunion since you did this work. So she kind of pulled the trigger on and how much time was there to set up this family reunion?
Kathleen:Well, we actually had a. She decided she was having a family union as early as January and I hooked her up, even because I kept saying I don't want a family reunion. That's not what I did, that's just more work for me. And so I did the booklet. I did everything and I was ready to, against my will, but I was doing it. And she did all the planning.
John:And I remember we did like two pages of family trees and that had to be inserted in.
Kathleen:Yes, I don't know.
John:How many books did we do?
Kathleen:There were like 80 books or something.
John:No, that family reunion had over 100 people, it was the first one, I remember it was a lot of work from this side.
Kathleen:And I was hospitalized. You go into the hospital. And had to fly to San Diego to go to a specialist's hospital and miss the whole thing to go to a specialist hospital and miss the whole thing.
John:It was a family reunion for me because I went out and stayed with my half brother who is in California, so it was a family reunion of sorts.
Kathleen:And my mother had to give the presentation that I was slated for. We would sit on the porch while I was in my pajamas, sick as all get out, and on oxygen. It was a sad story and mother, mother, stole the show with her exaggerated ways of telling very naughty stories about things that happen.
John:I had wondered where you got that from, that exaggerated way of telling.
Kathleen:Sharing stories.
John:Sharing stories. Yeah, that's done running the family, apparently, but okay, keep going.
Kathleen:So everyone else got to go and I didn't after all of this. But the point was, if you're starting a family reunion and you want it in June or July and hers, I think, was in July, if that is their timeframe, you need to allow for those six months, because what can go wrong goes wrong.
John:You need a full six months. If you're having a family reunion, the idea would be give it six months.
Kathleen:Yeah, in January. You've already know that you all want a family reunion for the summer, because you've been through all the family by Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everybody wants it. Start the planning, and I'm not just talking about the hotel, I'm talking about the content. What's your goal at this family?
John:reunion. I think one of the considerations was location for that. Now, other reunions you had as people started taking over in the family and saying, hey, let's have this one or interject this portion of the family taking over Having a family reunion. We went to Las Vegas and there was isn't there Phoenix?
John:Vegas, minnesota, omaha, kentucky was a great one, and it was to accommodate different groups of people also Different groups of people in the family. But that is that's kind of a later on. But you would suggest probably that your first family reunion if you're doing it for the first time, if you've just started genealogy and you're finding all these people is to really find a central location, find a central one.
Kathleen:It makes it easier to travel. We still didn't get a lot of the Far East or the California. We got all of the middle section and for my family we all settled there there was the descendants of 24 children from two brothers. Yeah, I can get crowded and that first one was just the two Spouses.
John:If you go, it's not a vacation for you, it's a working trip. It's not for you, john. Other people's spouses get to enjoy.
Kathleen:But when I'm kind of like the head person making sure everything's right and everybody else gets to go to the horse races in Louisville you and I get to go to Kinko's and make more pictures of the family, so that the room was decorated Right so that everybody's aunt is happy with the table setting. They have enough pictures there.
John:It's not just renting a hotel room or a hotel venue where you can do a presentation. There's a lot more to it.
Kathleen:We've had some really great ones, though. All of our I think our family reunions have been really good.
John:All your reunions have been a lot of fun, the ones that we've been to.
Kathleen:Yeah, we haven't resumed since the pandemic Right and partially it's because other people need to help pick it up and there's a lot of younger people that I really want to get involved and I do have some cousins who I might be able to get involved.
John:The organizers, the standard organizers, are aging out Right. You get to a certain point where it's like it takes too much energy and too much physical work for people to get the work done that needs to get done.
Kathleen:We need the youngers and that's the biggest thing. And you know we were working with interns programs through University of Missouri, kansas City. They worked with us and what I found? One of my questions was how do I? Get your age group interested. It was kind of interesting getting that feedback we need to have. The young between 20 and 40 was my target audience. How do I get them more involved in social media? How do I get them more involved in podcasts?
John:I'll tell you how they need to put down their cell phones and start paying attention to their older people. And that's me, and you Put down your cell phone, you whippersnappers and stop scrolling.
Kathleen:Stop your. Instagramming I know what goes on there. And that is exactly you know. My message is aren't you all interested? Well, they were interested. They were a fabulous group and I even had to write the teacher and say I am so impressed how they got involved in it. They gave us samples of new websites and samples of social media.
John:They were interested in. Okay, were they interested in the idea of family reunion, slash genealogy?
Kathleen:They really were. And their ideas were just wonderful. I mean, I'm hoping to have time this summer for you to do that, to implement some of their ideas.
John:Well, congratulations. Ladies and gentlemen, that's about the time we know that we need to cut this out. Do you have anything else you want to touch on, kathy?
Kathleen:Okay, we had an AI, the winner, the family reunion and the newsletter.
John:Yes, One last thing, John.
Kathleen:Yes, I did a May newsletter. I'm already setting up with the June newsletter and I will talk more about the AI so that people are clear on that in the June newsletter.
John:Is there any way I can get a copy of this newsletter? Where is this newsletter, Kathleen?
Kathleen:Right now the newsletter is only on social media, but if you are, on. Linktree. There is a link that says newsletter.
John:Oh okay, that's cool. There is a link that says newsletter oh okay, that's cool. So that's another reason to go to Linktree subscribe and then go to the newsletter to find out. I guess, cool stuff. I'll be going because I have absolutely no idea what might be in these newsletters.
Kathleen:It's linktree slash, hitting the bricks without the G, of course, and no spaces. It's right there in Linktree, but it's also in social media, okay.
John:It's also on the blog page. I'll find it on Facebook.
Kathleen:It's everywhere, or, john? You can always use Linktree, our one-stop shop.
John:Yes, is there a kimchi sandwich in your future?
Kathleen:There is exactly a kimchi grilled cheese sandwich.
John:Okay, so this was a new thing.
Kathleen:It's delicious yeah.
John:But you have a twist on it, don't you?
Kathleen:I put it on sourdough bread and you add just a little honey.
John:Right.
Kathleen:You warm your kimchi, add a little honey. I add jalapenos to mine.
John:Oh boy.
Kathleen:Melt the cheese, put it on my sourdough bread and it is absolutely delicious.
John:A kimchi honey and jalapeno and cheese. Do you have any idea what our next podcast might be about?
Kathleen:I would like to talk about how to talk to your genealogist so that they understand your goal. So I had a consultation yesterday, John, because of what they were saying in the email, it looked like they had done all this work and they were all ready to go to Scotland and Ireland. Until I actually had the conversation and it dawned on me oh no, we're still in America. We have a lot more to do.
John:So is this when to know when you're ready to jump the pond, or is this?
Kathleen:That's a good, that's a perfect title. Um, you know, before you jumped the pond Before, you jumped the pond. Yeah, right.
John:So this will help you get ready to do big, big international research before you go international. All your questions answered. Big international research before you go international. All your questions answered, plus the end of civilization as we know it because of the interjection of artificial intelligence. All next week, on hitting the bricks with kathleen sweetheart, eat something. Well, congratulations, you've made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree webinars. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt, our part-time exonymous and full-time crucivablist, for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hittin' the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fistknuckle and the Parades Watch for their next appearance at the Ratskeller behind the Student Union at Howard University. You can find us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Do you have a genealogical dilemma or question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hittingthebricks at gmail dot com and let us know.
