Bringing My Ancestry to Life
When I first started working on this website, my aim wasn’t just to gather names, dates, and family trees. I wanted to go further — to paint a picture of what life was actually like for the people who came before us. It’s one thing to know when someone was born or where they lived, but it’s much more powerful to imagine what their daily lives might have looked like.
To help me do this, I’ve been using ChatGPT, an AI tool created by OpenAI. Think of it as a kind of research and writing assistant. It doesn’t know my family personally, but it’s excellent at explaining the bigger picture — the history, customs, and ways of life that shaped the times my ancestors lived through.
I’ve used it to answer questions like:
- What was daily life like in the UK during the 1800s?
- How did education change over the last two centuries?
- What sort of work did people do on farms, in textile mills, or in rural villages?
- What were homes, food, and family life like in Victorian Britain?
The power of AI lies in the way it can take huge amounts of knowledge and present it in a clear, human way. In the past, I would have had to spend hours digging through history books or searching endless websites to gather this kind of background. With ChatGPT, I can ask a question and instantly get a well-rounded, easy-to-understand answer. That doesn’t replace research — I still check details and adapt the information — but it gives me a fantastic starting point.
Even more importantly, AI helps me bring history to life. Rather than dry facts and figures, it paints a picture: the crowded schoolrooms of the 19th century, the long days of farm work, the smell of coal fires in a Victorian town. It’s these details that turn genealogy into storytelling, and that’s what makes family history engaging for future generations.
For me, using AI in this project feels a bit like blending the old and the new. My ancestors lived through times of incredible change — the Industrial Revolution, advances in education, and the beginnings of modern society. Today, we’re living through our own revolution, with technology like AI transforming the way we work and create. It feels fitting to use one of today’s most powerful tools to help preserve the stories of yesterday.
I hope that as you read through these pages, you get a sense not just of who my family were, but also of the world they lived in — a world that, thanks to a mix of history books, old records, and a little AI assistance, I’ve been able to bring to life.
And maybe it will spark something for you, too. If you’ve ever thought about exploring your own family’s history, don’t be afraid to mix traditional research with modern tools. AI can’t tell you who your great-grandparents were, but it can help you understand the world they lived in — and that’s a story worth telling.