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Search 40+ sources on a brick wall ancestor's FAN Club with NotebookLM
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Before you start, ask me 1–3 short questions about the details below and wait for my answers. Once I've answered, confirm the plan in one line and run the whole task start to finish. Goal: Act as my genealogy research assistant and help me find patterns across all my sources on one ancestor's friends, associates and neighbors. Questions to ask me first: - Which ancestor is the brick wall, and where and when did they live? - Which surnames or places keep coming up? - Which sources have you uploaded? Inputs (fill in or confirm): - Ancestor and time and place: [ANCESTOR / PLACE / YEARS] - Context sources uploaded (county histories, deeds, church records, diaries): [SOURCES] - Surnames to trace: [SURNAMES] Rules: - Cite the specific source and passage for every answer. - Use a conversational style. - If sources conflict, tell me what conflicts and why. - Always separate what the sources say from what you're inferring, and never treat an inference as a proven relationship. Checkpoint: Start by listing the people and places that appear in more than one source, then wait for me to pick which ones to follow. If you get stuck: If you can't find a name, say which sources you checked instead of guessing. Verify before you finish: Check that every connection you report cites at least one source I can open. Output: A list of repeated names and places with citations, plus suggested hypotheses for me to test. Done when: I have a short list of sourced connections to research next.
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Before you start, ask me 1–3 short questions about the details below and wait for my answers. Once I've answered, confirm the plan in one line and run the whole task start to finish. Goal: Act as my genealogy research assistant and help me find patterns across all my sources on one ancestor's friends, associates and neighbors. Questions to ask me first: - Which ancestor is the brick wall, and where and when did they live? - Which surnames or places keep coming up? - Which sources have you uploaded? Inputs (fill in or confirm): - Ancestor and time and place: [ANCESTOR / PLACE / YEARS] - Context sources uploaded (county histories, deeds, church records, diaries): [SOURCES] - Surnames to trace: [SURNAMES] Rules: - Cite the specific source and passage for every answer. - Use a conversational style. - If sources conflict, tell me what conflicts and why. - Always separate what the sources say from what you're inferring, and never treat an inference as a proven relationship. Checkpoint: Start by listing the people and places that appear in more than one source, then wait for me to pick which ones to follow. If you get stuck: If you can't find a name, say which sources you checked instead of guessing. Verify before you finish: Check that every connection you report cites at least one source I can open. Output: A list of repeated names and places with citations, plus suggested hypotheses for me to test. Done when: I have a short list of sourced connections to research next.
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The prompt they actually used
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You are a genealogy research assistant assisting another researcher. When I ask questions, provide specific citations to the sources where you found the information. Use a conversational style. If you see conflicting information across sources, tell me what is conflicting and why. Always distinguish between what the sources say and what you’re inferring.
AI tool
Outcome
Genealogist Lisa Rex had more than 40 sources about brick wall ancestor Oren Briggs scattered across folders, including county histories, land deed transcripts, migration diaries, researcher emails and church records, and used to spend an hour hunting through PDFs for each new question. Rex uploaded the broad context sources about the ancestor's FAN Club (friends, associates and neighbors) to NotebookLM and set an instruction to cite sources, point out conflicts and separate what the sources say from inferences. Rex could then ask questions like 'Can you find references to the Crosby family?' and get answers with citations across all the sources. NotebookLM helped confirm a migration pattern linking several FAN Club members to a specific county in Ohio before they all appeared together in Illinois. Rex notes it won't prove relationships on its own.
Evidence: Described by posterThe person describes what happened in words, without screenshots or video.
Source
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- by Lisa Rex (Ancestor Audit, Substack)
- Last checked
- Method:
- How we verify
https://ancestoraudit.substack.com/p/my-notebooklm-setup-for-fan-club
Context: Rex keeps DNA match names private (first name and last initial) and leaves out paywalled material. NotebookLM only searches uploaded sources, not the web.
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