Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It’s Saturday night again —
time for some more Genealogy Fun!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

This week’s question:
What genealogy fun have you had this past month? What was your genealogy highlight of January?

When I first read this prompt, I wasn’t quite sure how to answer it. January felt busy, productive, and methodical — but fun? To help me step back and look at the bigger picture, I asked my research assistant to summarize my genealogy activities during January 2026.

What came back made me smile.

January was very “on-brand” for me genealogically: deep research, careful documentation, and a lot of “how can I share this better?” energy. I spent much of the month working through paper files and offline finds, especially Michigan records sent by another researcher, along with death records, court and probate documents, and deeds and wills from Randolph County, North Carolina; Brooke County, Virginia; and Calhoun County, Michigan. I wasn’t just transcribing documents — I was extracting relationships, land details, and context with reuse and storytelling in mind.

January was also heavy on blog work. Between Friday Finds, Monday’s Diggings, ABC Biographies, and community-focused posts, I spent time refining introductions and conclusions, tightening explanations of family relationships, and writing short, SEO-friendly meta descriptions. My goal throughout the month was to make genealogy not just accurate, but readable and inviting.

I also leaned heavily into AI as a research partner — cleaning up difficult handwritten transcriptions, summarizing wills and estate settlements, comparing land descriptions, and experimenting with tools to analyze research reports. At the same time, I continued collaborative work on WikiTree, formatting research notes, creating Free Space Pages for full transcriptions, and linking legal documents across multiple profiles to improve transparency and sharing.

All of that was satisfying work — but when I asked myself what was the most fun, the answer surprised me.

The highlight of January, in terms of pure enjoyment, was using AI to create song lyrics — and then actual songs — based on my genealogy research. When Randy Seaver first began sharing genealogy songs, I didn’t fully understand their appeal. But after creating several myself, I realized something important: the songs touch my emotions in a way no chart, timeline, or narrative report ever has.

So, just for fun, I decided to take one of my January blog posts and turn it into another song.

I chose my January 7 post, “Pauline’s Airplane Ride.” Using my earlier ChatGPT conversation for that post, I asked it to create song lyrics about my grandmother’s airplane trip. I then copied the lyrics into Suno.com and prompted it to generate a song in a 1930s big-band style. ChatGPT also created a background image, which I used in Canva to turn the song into a video. The finished result was uploaded to YouTube — all for a bit of genealogy fun on a Saturday afternoon.

🎶 You can watch and listen to “Pauline’s Airplane Ride” here:

Sometimes, genealogy fun isn’t about finding something new — it’s about finding a new way to feel the story you already know.