A family history bookrecords, stories and the questions still open

Method

1. 1

   Give your assistant the research log

   Connect the assistant you already use, Claude, ChatGPT or a local model, to know.sh, then give it your research log and transcriptions. Files go to the assistant itself; know.sh has no upload. Leave out anything about living relatives that you would not want passing through the assistant’s provider.

   Ask it to build the shelf The Marek family with a document per line, Jan and Anna Marek — from Spiš to Cleveland, Joseph and Helen Marek — Slavic Village, 1913–2002, The Kowal line, and a separate The living generations that you will never share. Every record becomes an Evidence finding titled person, record, year and place, with three headings: What it says, What it supports, What it does not settle. Every open problem becomes a Question.

2. 2

   Check every finding against the record

   An evening’s building gives you dozens of findings, and every one is a first draft. Open each line, press Edit, and read each finding beside its record image. Put back the misspellings it tidied away, correct misread ages, and add the source links in order, the image first.

   Drag the findings into date order, fix any type that is wrong, and mark as Key the records that fix identity: the manifest, the naturalisation, the marriage. Then write each overview yourself, two or three paragraphs on what the records add up to. The story is yours to tell, not the assistant’s.

3. 3

   Give every brick wall a Question finding

   An open problem deserves a page as much as a fact does. File each one as a Question: “Where in Spiš was Anna Novak born?” Under it, list what you have already searched and found nothing in, because a negative search is a result and you will not remember it in two years. End with the record that would answer it, if it exists: a parish register, a passport application, a church marriage entry.

   Questions keep the history honest. A cousin reading the link sees “we do not know yet”, rather than a guess repeated until it hardens into fact.

4. 4

   Ask your assistant where the records are

   Ask about records, not people: “What naturalisation records survive for Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 1906–1930, and where are they held?” Ask your assistant to research it on the web and file what it finds as a new document on the shelf, one finding per record set, each with its source links. This needs an assistant with web search; Claude and ChatGPT have it, and many local set-ups do not.

   Read that document as a list of leads. The assistant reaches the open web only, not your subscription sites, and it can cite a page that does not say what it claims. Open every link, and let nothing into a line document until you have seen the original record.

5. 5

   Let the conflicts show

   Records disagree. Ask your assistant to read Jan and Anna Marek, compare every age, birth date and birthplace across its Evidence findings, and leave a proposed note wherever two records conflict. The notes arrive in the margin with a dashed rule; Accept the ones that are real and Dismiss the rest.

   Do not settle a conflict by editing the older finding. Write a new finding, filed as an Insight, that weighs the records against each other and says which you trust and why: a manifest filled in by a clerk at Bremen against a census answered by a neighbour. The reasoning is the part of a family history that no tree shows.

6. 6

   Steer the index with names and places

   Open the shelf’s index and read it. You want every surname and every parish and town. Finding titles and first lines feed the index one word at a time, so put surnames, married and maiden, and parish names in titles: “Anna Novak Marek on the 1911 manifest”, “Baptism at Lipník, Spiš”. A maiden name buried deep in a body will not reach the index; Look up (⌘K) still finds it.

   Highlight the lines that carry the weight: the manifest entry naming a village, the obituary listing survivors. Highlighted findings show their numbers in bold in the index, which is where a cousin looking for their own grandmother will start.

7. 7

   Share the dead, not the living

   When a line reads well, press Share and add a password; send the password to the family separately from the link. Copy the link the moment it appears; know.sh shows it only once. Then open each finding that mentions someone alive, a DNA match, or a story someone asked you to keep, and leave it out of the link from that finding’s own page.

   Readers see the overview and the findings with their sources, never your notes or highlights. Corrections come back by phone or email, and you file them. If you replace the link, its exclusions reset: check them again before you send the new one.