52 Ancestors 2026: Free Space – Digging Deeper with NotebookLM

 

I’ve written before about my Reed-Harrison brick wall (and my shady maternal 5th-great-grandfather) and how I’m using AI to help find my way around it. While I’ve learned a great deal—though no major breakthrough yet—I wanted to describe how I’ve been using Gemini’s NotebookLM (now simply Notebook) as part of that research.

If you already use Google services, getting started with Notebook is straightforward. The interface consists of three panes: Sources, Chat, and Studio. Sources contain your input—documents, spreadsheets, and other files. Chat is where you enter prompts and receive responses. Studio serves as something of a repository and a playground, providing different ways to organize and present your findings.

So how did I use this new tool? First, I consulted Gemini in a separate chat, and it walked me through the setup, beginning with the creation of my source documents. Spending time planning and organizing at the outset can make a research project much more manageable. One early decision was to keep all my documents and spreadsheets in a folder on Google Drive and to use Google's own applications—Docs and Sheets. That allowed me to edit or add information online and then synchronize those files with the versions uploaded into Notebook's Sources environment. In the end, I had a collection of Google Docs and Sheets, each beginning with a two-digit number for easy sorting, along with several three-generation pedigree reports that I had downloaded and converted to text.

Since my focus was John Reed, some of the files were named 00_John_Reed_Narrative, 01_John_Reed_Timeline, 04_Muskingum_County_Records, and 11_John_Reed_Censuses. The narrative established my research objectives and held miscellaneous information that didn't fit elsewhere. The timeline followed the format suggested in Amy Johnson Crow's 31 Days to Better Genealogy. The census file contained tabulated information from each census, including the head of household, every family member's name, and the values of real and personal property.

The records files proved to be the most valuable—and the place where Notebook really demonstrated its strengths. Here I entered transcripts that I had obtained through FamilySearch's Full-Text Search. To keep everything organized, I maintained a separate research log in Google Sheets that recorded search terms, locations, years searched, source information, descriptions, and a Case ID (001, 002, and so on). Each transcript in my records document began with a header containing the Case ID, source, and image numbers before I pasted in the transcript itself.

Once I had accumulated enough information in each file, I uploaded it to the Sources pane. Each upload takes a few moments while Notebook analyzes the new material. Then it was finally time to enter my first prompt into the Chat pane. Unlike a standard chatbot, which may draw on its training data, search the internet, or occasionally make confident but unsupported assertions, Notebook restricts itself to the sources you have provided.

What did it return? In my case, it identified family relationships and inheritances, untangled who was suing whom, traced land transactions, and explained the legal terminology found in nineteenth-century court records. It also disentangled complicated family relationships and highlighted inconsistencies among the various records, especially in pedigree files I had downloaded from FamilySearch.

It summarized what I had learned about my ancestor John Reed:

Through the analysis of court transcripts, probate records, and census data, a detailed portrait has emerged of John Reed (1793–1873), a man whose life in Muskingum and Morgan counties, Ohio, was defined by a complex web of family ties and relentless legal conflict.

It also identified the key documents supporting its conclusions. My John Reed project quickly became complicated, with connections that would once have required stacks of index cards, a box of pushpins, and yards of string to keep straight. Instead, Notebook organized the evidence, identified relationships, and documented the reasoning behind its conclusions.

[T]rying to track these "neighborly" interactions manually across 100+ images of transcripts and three different census years would be a "nightmare."

With NotebookLM, you were able to:

• Distinguish between separate lineages: It quickly separated the "Delaware Reeds" (William’s family) from your "Virginia Reeds," proving that the litigation wasn't a brotherly spat, but a neighborly exploitation.
• Track Economic Evolution: The tool allowed you to see John Reed’s real estate value jump from $3,000 in 1850 to $25,000 in 1870, providing the "motive" for why his neighbors and heirs were so litigious.
• Map the Migration: By cross-referencing witnesses like James Bay and boarders like John Lyder (both from Virginia), you used the "neighbor" data to reinforce the Loudoun County/Harrison connection—the very "brick wall" you started with.

One feature I particularly appreciate is that the analysis evolves as the project grows. As I discover new records, I simply add them to the appropriate Google Docs file and synchronize it with Notebook. When I found records relating to John's father-in-law in an adjacent county, I created another document, added it to the Sources pane, and let Notebook incorporate the new evidence into its ongoing analysis.

And what about the Studio pane? Each chat response can be pinned as a note, but Studio offers much more. Notebook can generate videos, slide presentations, data tables (which are especially useful for mapping FAN clubs), and reports. Other study tools, such as flashcards and quizzes, are also available, although those are probably of limited value for genealogical research.

So, while I can see only a little daylight through my brick wall, Notebook has allowed me to develop a much richer understanding of John Reed, his family, his neighbors, and the complicated world in which they lived. But I'm not done digging. Yet.

52 Ancestors 2026: A Source I Want to Understand Better – All of Them?

 

With the internet age, genealogists have been able to accelerate their research as never before. There are so many websites and so many records available at the touch of a few keystrokes. Some resources remain behind paywalls, but many libraries—including FamilySearch Libraries—subscribe to library editions of these sites, making record gathering much more accessible. All of this access presents a new challenge: How can we make the best use of each resource, especially as they continue to add new features? This is the story of my own journey—what I've learned and what I still hope to learn.

When I started this endeavor 30 years ago, the tools were fewer and easier to master. I had a paternal pedigree chart that had been prepared for a probate case, a collection of Fast genealogy books, and family recollections that helped document several branches of my tree. I also had the advantage of living near a (then-called) Family History Center and Washington, D.C. Using Ancestral File, I discovered well-researched pedigrees that reached back to the earliest days of New Amsterdam and New England. From there, I found even more detail in published family histories housed at the Library of Congress. The National Archives yielded census records and Civil War pension files, although transcribing documents and making photocopies required considerable time and money. Even so, we were already moving beyond the days of traveling to county courthouses or writing to distant archives for copies of vital records.

And now? Online family trees of varying quality are everywhere, with Ancestry (Library Edition) and FamilySearch being my primary resources. But that's only the beginning. Census records are now searchable online. Countless genealogy books and county histories have been digitized and made available for download. FamilySearch has digitized millions of court, land, probate, and vital records and is using large language models to transcribe handwritten documents, making full-text searching possible—and leading to some remarkable discoveries. Artificial intelligence tools such as Gemini's NotebookLM can now help organize and analyze large collections of records and research notes.

How does one keep up with all this technology? FamilySearch produces excellent instructional videos, and numerous YouTube channels help researchers learn new techniques. Do I know how to use every tool? Certainly not. For example, I still find census searches easier in HeritageQuest (through my library subscription) than in FamilySearch, so that's one area I'd like to understand better. I also have library access to Fold3, but I sometimes struggle with its search interface. And I keep telling myself that I should learn to use the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) at the Allen County Public Library more effectively. I've watched the tutorials—I just haven't taken the time to give it a thorough test drive.

With the explosion of genealogy tools over the past three decades, it's difficult to imagine what the next 30 years will bring. Whatever comes next, there will always be people willing to teach the rest of us how to use these new resources. As for me, I think it's time to spend a little more effort mastering the tools already at my fingertips.

52 Ancestors 2026: Leisure Time – Making a Joyful Noise

 

So many of my ancestors came to colonial America in search of religious freedom. They were a godly bunch, imbued with the Protestant work ethic, so it can be difficult to imagine what kinds of leisure activities they enjoyed. But they did not work all the time. Sundays were reserved for worship and family, and although liturgical music could sometimes be controversial, it remained an important part of religious life. What hymns could be sung? Were musical instruments allowed? It is fascinating to trace how worship music evolved within the different denominations and across different periods of American history.

We do have a few clues. My Huguenot ancestors were undoubtedly familiar with the Genevan Psalter, and the singing of Psalm 137—translated into English as “By the Rivers of Babylon”—may have saved the life of my 8th-great-grandmother, Catherine Blanchan DuBois, when she was taken captive by Indigenous people in 1663. The Psalter was central to Reformed worship, as many Reformed Protestants rejected hymns that were not direct biblical texts. The fact that Catherine and the other Huguenot captives could recite the psalm from memory shows how deeply these songs were woven into their faith and daily lives.

My Puritan ancestors brought English psalters with them but soon produced their own American version, the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in British North America. 

Interestingly, few of its settings are still sung today, whereas several tunes from the Genevan Psalter—most notably the Old Hundredth (“Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow”)—remain familiar in churches around the world.

Eventually, however, cracks began to appear in the Congregational Church's commitment to exclusive psalm singing. The influence of Isaac Watts, Charles and John Wesley, and the growth of Methodism introduced hymns that drew on broader biblical themes rather than the Psalms alone. Their descendants embraced this richer hymnody, with New England spiritual songs emphasizing repentance, redemption, and personal faith. By European standards these colonial and early American hymns may have seemed primitive, but they reflected the folk traditions and homespun character of the New World.

Perhaps the most distinctly American expression of sacred music came from the Shakers. Some of my Banta relatives were among the founders of the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Their worship featured joyful, energetic singing and movement. “Simple Gifts,” indeed.

As my ancestors' religious traditions evolved, so did their music. Westward expansion and the growth of Baptist and Methodist churches brought new styles of worship, including the gospel hymns of the nineteenth century, such as “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”

Music clearly mattered to my ancestors. They took their day of rest seriously, just as they took their work seriously, and I suspect they approached worship with the same dedication. As a member of my church's chancel choir, I have had the opportunity to sing music from many different traditions, and I have found great joy in making “a joyful noise to the Lord.” I like to think that my forebears would have understood exactly what that meant.

Photo: The Whole Booke of Psalms, Stephen Day (dated 1640) - Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25799917

52 Ancestors 2026: A Record I Read Differently Now – A Second Reed-ing

 

Sometimes you try to break through a brick wall only to become dismayed by what you find between the cracks. That is what has been happening with my maternal Reed brick wall: my 3rd-great-grandfather, John Reed, born in Virginia in 1793 and later transplanted to Muskingum County, Ohio. When I began this latest effort to break through the wall, I was excited to find records that mentioned both John Reed and a William Reed, with John serving as administrator of William's estate. A brother, perhaps? A record that would make me happy and proud? Time to dig.

Before I describe the search and its outcome, though, this is really two stories: one about my search for John Reed's lineage and another about a new research tool I'm using—Gemini's NotebookLM. I'll write more about NotebookLM as I become more familiar with it and, hopefully, as I get closer to breaking through this brick wall. For now, however, this progress report contains enough drama on its own.

To tackle this particular problem, I have been using FamilySearch's Full Text Search to gather court cases (with so many involving my John Reed, I should have been prepared for the shocking findings) along with their transcripts, saving images to both my FamilySearch Source Box and my own computer. As I collected names from what became the Reed family's ever-expanding FAN club—or perhaps "circle of litigants" would be more accurate—I began following those families to see how they were connected.

A brief primer on NotebookLM: a notebook is a collection of documents that Gemini analyzes together, allowing it to identify connections, summarize evidence, and suggest conclusions with citations back to the original sources. Into my notebook have gone pedigree chart reports for families of interest, court case transcripts, probate records, deeds, timelines, census data, research notes, FAN-club information, and more. At this point, the notebook contains about over a dozen records, including a document with transcripts from more than one hundred images. Sorting through all of that manually would have been a nightmare. With AI, it takes only a few seconds.

My first clue that I might be able to reconstruct John Reed's family came from discovering that he had administered the estate of William Reed, who lived in the neighboring county. William was born in 1811, so perhaps he was a younger brother? The good news was that I learned much more about their relationship. The bad news was that, as I read the records more carefully, John looked less and less like the family hero. William died in 1852, and when his children came of age, they believed that John had used their inheritance to benefit his own family. At the same time, William's probable pedigree suggested that he and John were not brothers after all.

But it gets worse.

John—and, after his death in 1872, his estate—became entangled in a web of lawsuits.

William's heirs sued John for gross mismanagement of the estate. That case was followed by a series of lawsuits and countersuits involving John, his sons, the administrator of his own estate, and several sons-in-law. Did I mention that two of John’s daughters married two Miller brothers? Or that after his first wife, Sarah Harrison, died, John married the Miller brothers' mother? Or that another son-in-law eventually sued John's estate, even though John had spent his final months living in that son's home?

At best, John was a poor estate administrator. At worst, he was a liar, a fraud, and a thief.

Here is the conclusion reached by Gemini after analyzing the records:

Summary of Findings

The dealings between John Reed and the William Reed estate demonstrate that while they were not brothers, they were deeply and hostiley intertwined. John used his authority as administrator to transfer William’s assets into his own extended family network (via Daniel Sims), leading to a judgment of "unfaithful administration" that was still being litigated and settled years after his death.

On the positive side, there has been plenty of material to work with. As ChatGPT told me, "Family harmony rarely generates records."

So, the records I had hoped would lead to a breakthrough instead revealed much more about John's character than his lineage. Even so, the research was far from wasted. I was able to clean up numerous records, make several merges, and reconnect parents with their children in FamilySearch. What first appeared to be a promising clue led instead to a collection of court cases that cast John in a decidedly unfavorable light—but they also taught me a great deal about an interconnected group of families.

The search continues. I still hope to identify John's parents, but even if I haven't solved that mystery yet, I've uncovered a fascinating—if somewhat sordid—family story along the way.

Note: The top picture is the old Muskingum County courthouse, which was replaced in 1870 by a new Courthouse, which may have been built to accommodate all of the cases against John Reed. Or so it seems.

Photos:

By Unknown author - Marker #7-60 Second Capital of Ohio. Remarkable Ohio - a project of the Ohio Historical Society and Ohio Channel (before 1874)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36544028

By Tristan Blatt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51849568