That’s the title of my newest YouTube video. In the video, I share another hidden gem from FamilySearch.
At RootsTech 2024, FamilySearch launched their Full-Text Search in their Lab, which contained land records and wills for the U.S. I didn’t really have many research ancestors in the U.S. (at least not then), so I had a look but didn’t really get into it. Then, in the fall, I learned from my friend Randy Seaver (Genea-Musing) that records were added for Canada, so I’ve been doing some research.
If you’re wondering what the Full Text Search is all about, FamilySearch has millions of digitized records. However, many of these records are not indexed. In the full-text search, they have done OCR (optical character recognition) on documents, which makes these record sets fully searchable. How cool is that?
In my video, I show you where to find the lab. Then, I share how I entered William Beaton’s name. You’ll see what I found. I copied the transcript of the document I’d found. Then, I took it over to ChatGPT. I asked it to explain this legal land document to me as if I were a fifth grader. It gave a cute and funny analogy of the document that any fifth grader could understand.
What will you find at the Full Tex Search Lab? I’d like to hear about it.
I hope you’ll check out my video HERE. If you like what you see, please be sure to subscribe. Ring that bell so you’ll be notified of videos as I post them.
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