Using AI tools to overcome brickwalls

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Montreal. 6 Nov 2019.

The initial searches using FamilySearch Labs new tool is already proving quite useful, uncovering new-to-me records. Now I need to put together a search plan and make some priorities in an effort to push through brickwalls on some of my ancestors.

I intend to return to my research on the Carter and related families in Northern Virginia. This was a big focus of my February posts and I am hoping the search tool may yield some finds connecting John Carter and Elizabeth Armistead. One area where this could be useful is helping identify the documents to present a fuller picture of the lifetime of John Carter in Spotsylvania and King George Counties in the early-mid 1700s.

I would love to uncover a marriage record for John O'Brien and Bridget Dooner, or find records connecting Bridget back to Ireland. Based on my Dad's AncestryDNA results, it is likely these records will link the family to central Ireland, near Roscommon, Longford and the area around Lough Ree (shaded in blue below).

AncestryDNA.

On the Mexican side of the family, more records covering Sonora need to be available in the search tool before I can make some discoveries on my Campuzano, Vasquez and related branches. If records are added for Chile, I would really love to be able to follow Gabriel Vasquez backward in time and perhaps connect his family to the first arrival in Chile from the Basque region of Spain.

Another branch of the tree to revisit is the family of Samuel Hampton, my 6th-great-grandfather. I can already see several potential results in Sullivan County, Tennessee, where he died in 1841.

Lucinda McIntosh and Asa Putnam Smith, my 4th-great-grandparents on my Dad's side of the tree, are also potential targets for research. Asa's origins in Nova Scotia are a bit of a mystery, but were mentioned in Lucinda's War of 1812 widow's pension application.

I can see I'll be returning to research on Isaac Smith, my 4th-great-grandfather, and his wife Susan Ann Martin.

On my Mom's side of the tree, the parents of my 4th-great-grandfather William Free are unknown to me, perhaps this tool can help with Kentucky records to identify his beginnings. There's work to do on the Mathews-Davis branch, with lines going backward from Kentucky to North Carolina and Mississippi.

For March, I'll concentrate once again on the Carter-Armistead-Kenyon-Heslop corner of tree before exploring some of the other branches I mention above.