Fall will soon be here as we are now well into September. The weather in Tucson hasn’t been quite so hot, but we’ve had some rains left from Hurricane Lorena coming up from Mexico and the humidity was an astoundingly high 80% this morning. It’s not always a DRY heat!

Randy Seaver surprised me this week with the new Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge since it is based on my own 30 August post followed by my genea-buddy Teresa’s excellent – and different – list from mine.

1)  Linda Stufflebean posted “Essential Tools For Today’s Genealogical Success” recently, and Teresa Basinska Eckford followed that with her list in “Essential Tools for Genealogists.” 

2)  What are your essential tools for doing your genealogy and family history work? Please list five or more of your essential tools so that readers may find tools that may help all of us do our work.

I loved that Teresa’s list was so different and left that comment for her because that’s a great way to learn about different tools and resources from others.

My original thoughts were meant to be “slim and trim,” spotlighting modern tools that many might not be using regularly, but Randy has shared a much lengthier version of resources. In fact, there isn’t much else I would add since he uses many of the same “regular” resources all the time.

I will make a couple of comments, though, about AI. I’m not a super big fan, but for the few times I do use it, say to create a locality research plan, I have consistently found Gemini lacking in results. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity have provided more robust replies to my prompts.

As for DNA tools, there are many excellent ones out there, but I rarely use them. That’s because my immediate family is small on both sides. I have many, many Rusyn cousin matches that lack the name of the common ancestor. That’s because the church records only go back to the 1820s. We all know the names of the 2X greats and three or four 3X greats, but with no other records, DNA only tells us we have a shared heritage.

On my mother’s colonial side, I have tons of matches, but no surprises have appeared in the results nor has DNA provided any big breaks in making connections.

Now for trying out some new tools. I hadn’t ever heard of Everything or Synchredible on Teresa’s list. I will be looking into those.

Before I close, I’ll share a few other resources that I use all the time.

1. Thorndale & Dollarhide’s Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses 1790-1920. I love the book because it shows all the county boundary changes through the years. Yes, I know there are digital versions online that do the same thing, but I love this book and it’s much faster to open and browse than to go to a website.
2. FamilySearch’s full-text search – I am still amazed that even though it has been available now for months that I still hear people in online meetings say that they don’t know about it and have never used it. This, without a doubt, has been my favorite use of AI so far.
3. EBay – I regularly troll here looking for items related to my family’s history – books, vintage postcards and photos and other historical items. One of my best finds was 4 teaspoons owned by Jacob Stufflebean/m of Addison County, Vermont in the 1800s. Not our direct line, but the silverware is all engraved with “Stufflebean” on the pieces!

That’s about it. Thank you, Randy, for choosing this topic based on Teresa’s and my posts.