Comments for Pat Burns

Comment on 2025 Christmas Ditty by xianyun

xianyun — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 07:25:12 +0000

What a lovely tradition, sending your own verse to friends and family every Christmas since 1995. Congratulations on the big move from North Carolina to Oregon too; those photos from Central Oregon look beautiful.

Comment on Using AI for Genealogy by AI OCR

AI OCR — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:46:17 +0000

The line that AI can point you in the right direction but the documents tell the truth is the best rule for genealogy research. Asking it to show its reasoning is a smart habit.

Comment on Using AI for Genealogy by xianyun

xianyun — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 07:08:31 +0000

I really appreciated your point that AI is a helper, not a source, and the line that “the documents tell the truth.” The tip about asking what records would help identify someone’s parents, instead of asking who the parents were, is such a simple way to keep AI from guessing. I also liked the reminder to be careful about sharing living people’s names and private family details. Have you found AI to be reliable when reading old handwriting in census pages or wills?

Comment on Genealogy Research Logs – Organize and Track Your Work by xianyun

xianyun — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 07:04:11 +0000

The point about repeating negative searches really resonated. It’s so easy to forget which databases you already checked and end up redoing the same work months later. I like that you listed “shows negative evidence” as a benefit of a log, since that’s the part most of us never write down. Do you find the spreadsheet or pen and paper works better when you only have an hour here and there?

Comment on Source Checklist for Genealogy Research by xianyun

xianyun — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 07:14:58 +0000

I like that the checklist starts with “Ask Family Members” before moving on to census, land records, and probate. Asking the question “what census years should they appear?” for each ancestor seems like a simple way to keep a search from wandering. Do you find the city directories and tax rolls fill in the gaps between census years?

Comment on Genealogy Research Links by Yechen

Yechen — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 11:32:57 +0000

Thank you for compiling such a practical, well-organized list of surname and family history research links! When tracing Chinese and East Asian immigrant ancestors, matching Romanized spellings (like Wong, Chan, Tan, or Lim) back to the original Chinese character (汉字) and ancestral village jiapu (家谱) is often the hardest step. For anyone researching Chinese family names, we also maintain an open Hundred Family Surnames (Baijiaxing) reference directory with character origins, dialect spellings, and generational naming traditions at https://mingzi.io/chinese-names/last-names and https://mingzi.io.

Comment on Genealogy Do-Over Week 7 part 2 – Digitizing Photos and Documents by Pat

Pat — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:50:17 +0000

In reply to photosrestore. Thank you for the additional information.

Comment on Genealogy Do-Over Week 7 part 2 – Digitizing Photos and Documents by photosrestore

photosrestore — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:38:59 +0000

Keeping a TIFF master before making smaller sharing copies is a useful foundation for a family-history book. One detail worth adding: converting an existing JPEG to TIFF does not recover information already lost to JPEG compression, although it can avoid further JPEG re-encoding during editing. I own Photosrestore (https://photosrestore.co/), a browser-based AI tool for repairing scratches, tears, stains and fading in scanned photos. Any repaired image should stay a separately named derivative beside that untouched master, so readers can distinguish the source from the edited illustration.

Comment on Martinsburg, Berkeley County, West Virginia by Pat Burns

Pat Burns — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 13:20:45 +0000

In reply to Karna Bosman. You're Welcome. If you can, visit the visitor center. Although it was a holiday, they arranged for us to visit the archives. There is a lot of information on the Van Metre family. My only regret is we just didn't have enough time. Safe travels and enjoy your visit.

Comment on Martinsburg, Berkeley County, West Virginia by Karna Bosman

Karna Bosman — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 17:20:30 +0000

Thank you for organizing all of the Martinsburg Van Metre information. My husband and I are hoping to visit there later this fall!