Working with Handwritten Records for Genealogical Purposes & Using Google’s Gemini AI for Genealogy

Please register at this link https://bit.ly/WCGIG2025  A Zoom link will be sent before the meeting. For those people in the local vicinity, an in person meeting will also be conducted at Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St., Brattleboro, Vermont.

Using real-world examples written by or about Vermonters, we’ll examine resources for reading old (or poor) handwriting, transcription tips and techniques, using context to decode content, short-and long-term publication decision-making, and using additional resources to add depth to your final result.

Handwritten documents present a variety of challenges to genealogical researchers.

 Using Google’s Gemini AI  for Genealogy 

Gemini can be a useful virtual genealogy assistant.  Wayne Blanchard uploaded images of handwritten documents and asked for a transcription.  Not only was Gemini able to “read” the documents with its handwritten text recognition, but it then provided its own prompts that were helpful suggestions for further research.

Using information it found and additional facts that he provided, Gemini was able to produce a narrative of the person’s life, a timeline of the family, a family group sheet, and a narrative map of where family members moved. In addition it could generate proper citations for footnotes in a document that summarized the research. In this presentation he shows how the conversation with Gemini unfolded to give new insight into an ancestor.