Game Changer

 

Not often am I blown away when a genealogist on YouTube puts out a video showing me the latest and greatest way to find new records on ancestors. For the most part, it is just rehashing what I have already known about and tried. But recently, I watched a video about a new search function on FamilySearch.org called "Full-Text Search". As of writing this, it is still a feature in their "Experimental Labs" section of their site but one I think anyone can navigate to it and try it out. Essentially, it is using some sort of A.I. software to read and translate script written documents that are scanned but not yet translated or indexed in any way. It sounded promising so I went downstairs to try it out.

I have a lot of fairly undocumented families that I would like to search for more documents on but I chose to do my first search on my Chicken family since their surname is fairly unique. I typed in the name of Joseph Chicken since the two most researched people on that branch shared that name until Jr. changed his name to Baker later, and was immediately given around 300 search results. Of those 300, 66 of them you see in the picture above are directly applicable to my direct ancestors and have never been seen by me. There were many more that related to my direct ancestors in an indirect way such as them being witnesses to someone else's will writing etc., that I didn't save since they were essentially just a name on a document.

I am blown away!

The bulk of the documents appear to be land deeds or indexes for land deeds but I did see the occasional court document, such as my 4th great grandfather being charged in a Durham County Court in England for trespass. I'll have to spend some time sifting through them and reading them to really understand what they contain but there is a lot of great information in them for sure.

One thing that I never realized that my 3rd great grandfather who changed his name from Chicken to Baker didn't do so abruptly. All records prior and through the Civil War say Chicken on them and all the records post war say Baker. But I was finding records listing him and his wife Frances with the last name of Chicken at least until 1871, 6 years after the end of the war. It was also the first time to find any record mentioning wife Frances with the last name of Chicken. All her records have been Bolton (her maiden name) Baker or Heppenstall, her married last names. 

I have this new search bookmarked for easier access for now and I'm sure it will see a lot of use in the future. For now, I don't have a way to point the A.I. towards script writing on documents already in my possession, something I was lamenting about in a previous post not long ago, but that day may be here a lot sooner than I had imagined!