RootsTech, the annual convention held by FamilySearch.org is in the middle of their annual gathering. Today on the mainstage several new products were announced. They saved the biggest announcement for the end, in a presentation by our friends at Ancestry.com.
Ancestry has a list of new features, but one outshined all the others as far as I was concerned. They released today a product known as Image Transcript. This is the first generation of the offering and they cautioned that it was focused on letters and journals.
What it does is read the handwriting in the uploaded document and produces a transcript of even hard to read words. It sounded like they were telling me to not get my hopes up and to take it easy on the software.
I’ve been impatiently waiting for AI to catch up to my dreams for years! My thoughts went directly to the Diaries/Journals left by Thomas Babb of Urbana, Champaign, IL (1841-1915). Thomas left 8 journals amounting to something like 1200 pages of handwritten entries. The books are about 5×8″ each so there isn’t a huge amount of text on each page. His handwriting was respectable, but it is just a sea of content without some way to search through it and cull the details.
The same is true of the 17K pages Jean A. Sargent left and the almost 6K pages Ian Henry Babb collected. Much of it is handwritten and up until now there is no way search it. Windows 11 has a feature in development that I believe will finally open the lid on those pages, but a release date hasn’t been announced. I’ve signed up for the Windows Insider program hoping to be one of the first to put it through it’s paces.
So, taking it easy on the software, I uploaded just Volume A as a test, with just 92 pages of content. It is still running as I am writing this post, and I have no idea if it will choke at the end or finally render a full accounting of his first journal.
15 Minutes in
I’m hypnotized by the spinning wheel of death, but still hopeful that it is nearing completion.
While we wait, let me tell you something about Thomas’ life. He is a member of the Potters of Staffordshire lineage and was born in Gratwich, Staffordshire, England on 15 Dec 1841. He immigrated to the US about 1860, which must have been really fun as an Englishman to waltz in right on top of the near collapse of the United States as we know it.
He was located in Champaign Co, IL for 40+ years, finally moving in his old age to Inez, Victoria, TX where he died.
30 Minutes in
It is my plan to keep typing as long as I can, or until the software renders a result! This is real-time for me. Fortunately, I am a night owl and on vacation this next week. I mean, who doesn’t dream of sitting in their office late at night watching an eternally spinning wheel? I just hope that the results are worth the wait!
I first posted about these journals in 2019, just before the pandemic started. Speaking of eternal waits, this feels a bit like the isolation I felt while quarantined.
…tick, tick, tick….
While staring at Thomas’ record trail, I’ve noticed a large gap between the date he says he immigrated (1860) and the first Census record I have for him in 1900. I also lack his 1910 Census record, so I’m off in search of those at 38 Minutes in.
I find him in 1880 with wife Eleanor and children, Elenor, Cyrus and Bertha. They are located in Champaign Co, IL, as I would have expected.
I then find the family in Condit, Champaign, IL in 1870. So, the records appear to match my expectations.
I also merge his Baptism record from Gratwich.
45 Minutes in
OK, so the page rate of the transcription clearly isn’t fast. With 92 pages in 45 minutes, we have crossed over 30 seconds per page. Did I mention that I have a screaming fast top of the line new Surface Pro 11 with a Neural Processing Unit and 64 GB of RAM?
No? Well, I should have said that up front.
Back to the records.
51 Minutes in, I find the marriage record to Thomas’ second wife, Ella Connett in 1912. They are in Missouri but will shortly be in Texas. Her name is spelled differently in almost every record, so we don’t know exactly which way it should have been spelt.
I find some records that don’t match. But Thomas is a common name in our tree and I reject them. Just know that he has a doppleganger out there somewhere.
1 Hour in
I’m circling the drain with new records to add. time to Tap Dance!
Here’s something of interest!
Thomas Babb leaves for England to bring back his mother (Champaign County Herald, Wed, Oct 11, 1882 ·Page 5)
I wonder who Thomas Deakinwill is, so I’ve decided to go down that rabbit hole to find out. I find no other references on Newspapers.com. I also find nothing on Ancestry. The surname looks a bit tortured, so I expand my search by allowing for more and more spelling variants. I come up empty.
I move on to Archive.org to look for Thomas Babb and find 152 hits.
75 Minutes in
I compile the results of just the first book that mentions Thomas & Family. I find 10 pages that mention a Babb. The first of which reveals something about Thomas Deakinwill, whose surname turns out to be Deakin.
I bind these 10 pages into a PDF.
The book is named: Thomasboro, Illinois, centennial, 1864-1964 : Irle, Frances C : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
It’s too late in the evening for me to analyze the entire file, but I pull out the details of his relationship to Thomas Deakin, Sr which read as such:
In about 1870, Thomas Deakin, Sr. bought 240 acres adjoining the townsite on the west side that was previously owned by John Thomas. Some time later, Thomas Babb, Sr. bought 80 acres on the north side of the townsite. In the meantime, the town of Thomasboro was building up in leaps and bounds. Stores, dwellings, churches, and a school were built; a railroad depot and a post office had already been provided. A grocery store, blacksmith shop, livery stables, harness shop, butcher shop, and a barber shop made their appearances rather rapidly. Frazier and Walton erected a grain elevator (later called the South Elevator); and a year or two later Thomas Babb built a grain elevator (later called the North Elevator). As time progressed Thomasboro became a large grain handling station. Mr. Frazier sold his interest in the South Elevator and moved to Iowa. J. B. Walton & Sons took over the elevator, but soon after built a new and larger elevator which is in operation yet today. A few years later the North Elevator was destroyed by fire and a new firm, Morrison & Grindley, built a larger and new cribbed elevator.
I’m struck by the irony that Thomas and Thomas live next to each other in Thomasboro.
90 Minutes in
I’m off to get a snack.
96 minutes in: Back now.
We are up to at least 1 minute per page now. At least, that is, if I didn’t crash Ancestry with this upload.
Returning to Newspapers.com, I find that Thomas had a devastating fire in 1879. A $300 loss would have bankrupted most people in that day and age. But Thomas had done very well in his business and was able to absorb the shock.
105 Minutes in
I’m officially over this experiment. Do you realize how much AI has advanced just while I run this query?
In 1885 Thomas contracts Bilious fever. I do a quick Copilot search and find that Bilious fever is an outdated medical term that was historically used to describe a fever accompanied by symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which were believed to be linked to bile disorders. It was often associated with conditions like malaria or viral hepatitis. This term was commonly used in the 18th and 19th centuries but is no longer part of modern medical terminology.
I took the dog out, had a cookie and I’m back now. I realized that I’ve been focused on finding information and not on incorporating it into his tree record. <deep sigh> But now, my eyes are bleary and my attention span is dwindling. This isn’t a good time to add that stuff.
2 hours in
Exhausted, I’m calling an end to my experiment on what was supposed to be an exciting new feature at Ancestry.com. I’ll set my hard drive not to go to sleep and perhaps it will be done in the morning.
I face an all too often reality, that I’ve now got dozens of new records that need to be carefully added to the tree. I set my intentions to work on that tomorrow. But my downloads folder is littered with such items where I’ve done this exact thing. No matter how many I reconcile there are always at least 200 such records in this folder just waiting their chance to be made whole again. This scenario is all too familiar.
…what’s that? The dog ate dinner and now wants to go outside again, it’s a thing.
2 hours and 6 minutes. I’m off to bed. I’ll look at this in the morning to see if it completed and will make a new post with the transcript in all its glory/shame.
2 hours 15 minutes in
The jury is still out, and it looks like its hung!