Every year brings new tools, websites, and approaches for genealogists to try. 2024 was exceptional! Here are four innovations that transformed my work, ranked by their impact:
1. BanyanDNA
Leah Larkin (the DNA Geek) and Margaret Press (of the DNA Doe Project) teamed up with developers and statisticians to create BanyanDNA, a tool many of us didn’t know we needed. This web-based app lets you draw complex family trees and check if the shared cM amounts match your diagram. And you don’t have to limit yourself to one DNA tester. Any pairwise comparison of DNA between any two people on the tree can be included.
BanyanDNA has become essential for me. I can run 1,000–10,000 calculations to simulate recombination randomness, validating my tree or finding the best placement for a mystery person. It even handles intricate relationships, like cousin marriages or double connections.
For example, I mapped a cousin marriage between the children of two of my 3x-great-grandparent couples: Holloway Key and his wife Catherine, and Thomas Adam Walker and his wife Julina Allen who lived in Benton County, Tennessee. In the image above I used red lines to show the descendants of the Key couple and blue lines to show the descendants of the Walker-Allen couple. The pink and purple lines represent where the two Key brothers married two Walker sisters. My mother, Gladys, and two of her siblings are DNA testers and I’ve shown three of their matches who are related to them through both couples. This kind of situation can throw off the expected amount of shared DNA, but BanyanDNA can handle it. Below is a validation run that shows me that there is one match that falls outside the expected range of shared DNA. Often when I see that result, it means I have drawn the tree wrong or mistyped the amount of shared DNA.
Summary:
I use BanyanDNA to:
- Diagram complex trees
- Record shared DNA between large numbers of DNA testers
- Validate my work using statistical simulations
- Place unknown matches on the tree.
What you need:
- A good understanding of relationships and family trees
- Shared DNA amounts (see Enhanced Shared Matching below)
- A willingness to learn how to use BanyanDNA. There are recorded tutorials here, a BanyanDNA User Facebook group, and office hours for free (publicized on the Facebook group). Leah Larkin offers a webinar tutorial for a small fee.
- Basic statistical skills to interpret the calculations.
- Patience! Large trees with many matches take time!
2. Enhanced Shared Matching at Ancestry
MyHeritage has long offered excellent tools for genetic genealogists, like downloadable DNA segments and AutoClusters. This year, Ancestry followed MyHeritage’s lead and introduced Enhanced Shared Matching, which shows the shared DNA between you, your matches, and their mutual connections.
The image above is a privatized look at Enhanced Shared Matching at Ancestry. My DNA match is CP and I know how I am related to her. With Enhanced Shared Matching (available with an additional subscription), I can see not only how much DNA I share with our shared matches, I can now see how much DNA CP shares with them. I sorted this list by how much they share with CP which helps me discover more about her family. For example, the first match, a, shares 603 cMs with CP but only 51 cMs with me. 603 is in the range of a first cousin to CP. Match a has a 9 person tree with only two visible people on the tree whose names are not found in my family tree. But knowing they are possibly a first cousin to CP means I can likely figure out their exact relationship to me.
All of the Enhanced Shared Matching data can be entered into BanyanDNA so I can validate this branch of my family tree.
Summary:
I use Enhanced Shared Matching to:
- Understand how my matches are related to each other.
- Place matches without full trees on my tree.
- Supply data for BanyanDNA calculations.
What you need:
- A ProTools subscription (currently $10 USD/month)
- Knowledge of shared DNA amounts
- Tree-building skills
- Ability to research DNA matches with incomplete or no trees.
3. Full text search at FamilySearch
FamilySearch, the world’s largest free genealogy resource expanded its capabilities in 2024. Its new Full Text search of historical records (available at FamilySearch Labs) uses AI-driven optical and handwriting recognition to unlock thousands of previously unindexed records, such as land deeds and probate files. For those working on reparative genealogy, the Freedmen’s Bureau Records are part of the collection that can be accessed.
From the FamilySearch Labs home page, click on “Go To Experiment” under the Full Text option. This will take you to a search page.
Use the keyword search to enter your names – that provides you with more opportunity to find your ancestors. I entered Calvin Whitney in Keywords, and Maine from 1800-1870 in the year range to discover the record below:
Calvin Whitney is my 4x great-grandfather. I don’t know a lot about him other than he died in October of 1832 in Thomaston, Lincoln County, Maine. His son, William E. Whitney, left Thomaston in October of 1849 for the California gold rush and later built four lime kilns at the foot of Mt. Diablo in Contra Costa County, California. This deed describes the property that Calvin Whitney purchased from David Watson in November of 1827 and that Whitney had “the liberty of digging & carrying away the lime rock from said land.”
Summary:
I use the FamilySearch Labs Full Text Search to:
- Find digitized records that are not indexed
What you need:
- A search strategy using keywords, places, and date ranges.
- Patience-more records are added regularly
This brings us to the final aspect of my genealogy work that changed in 2024: my use of AI.
4. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and genealogy
AI is revolutionizing genealogy. In late 2023, I joined Steve Little when he first offered the “AI for Genealogists” course through the National Genealogy Society. In the course I learned how to do the basics with AI: summarize, extract, generate, and translate. Much of my use of AI was confined to making fun images in my brand colour scheme for presentations.
Image created by DALL-E and me.
The potential for AI became clear during a reparative genealogy project. I was provided with a Civil War diary of the ancestor of my client. This project documents the people enslaved by the client’s family on Gwynn’s Island, Virginia. I used ChatGPT to transcribe the diary and to create lists of the people and places mentioned in the diary. AI saved me hours, though I still had to check its work. I asked ChatGPT to write a commentary on the contents of the diary based on historical context. It was fascinating! Here’s the conclusion:
Conclusion
The diary of Mary T. Hunley is a compelling window into the experiences of Confederate civilians during the Civil War. While shaped by the author’s biases and Confederate loyalty, it highlights the war’s disruptive nature, the agency of enslaved people, and the fragility of Southern society. It stands as both a testament to personal endurance and a reflection of the deeply ingrained injustices of the antebellum South.
I have a long way to go before I do some of the amazing things genealogists are doing with AI. There’s a great Facebook Group, Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Steve Little blogs and speaks regularly, and there’s a podcast, The Family History AI Show, to help you keep current. Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder at Family Locket also teach, blog, and podcast about using AI in their genealogy work.
Summary
I use AI tools to:
- Transcribe handwritten documents
- Summarize lengthy articles or records.
- Create tables and lists from documents.
- Create images.
- Understand historical context.
- Edit and refine my writing (including for this blog entry!)
What you need:
- Awareness of privacy and copyright concerns.
- Knowledge of Large Language Models (LLMs).
- Practice, practice, practice.
- Careful review of AI outputs
Final Thoughts
Genealogy is ever-evolving, and 2024 raised the bar with transformative tools like BanyanDNA, Enhanced Shared Matching, Full Text Search, and AI. Each one has enriched my research and streamlined my workflows. What’s next for genealogists? I can’t wait to find out!