Project 26 April 1, 2026 update

Project 26 Update

Posted May 1, 2026 by Orin Wells

Did you miss the May update?

I placed the update from May 1st on the Wells.org website here: https://www.wells.org/project26/project26.html Click on "Project Introduction" The March and April updates are there too. Did you miss the March or April updates? I placed both of the previous updates on the Wells.org website here: https://www.wells.org/project26/project26.html

A.I.?

A.I. (or Artificial Intelligence) is all around us today and becoming more of a thing every day.  While there is a lot of expectation for what A.I. will do for all of us it will also be painful for those who will lose their jobs to it and some just fear any technological advancement or anything that is new for that matter.  For our purposes think of A.I. as an amazing librarian who knows about everything in the library and can pull it up in seconds whereas you might spend years trying to find some of the information.  While A.I. IS here it is still a work in progress.  None of the A.I. systems have access to everything.  They can only work off of what is generally available to their system or has been stuffed into whatever database the developers have made available to it.

You can't do a Google search these days without bumping into A.I. Ancestry, Family Search and MyHeritage are all utilizing A.I. systems to improve the searching of their sites.  There are other tools available to us that may work even better.

To get a grip on how well these tools might work best for our purposes I would like to ask some of you to work with me to do a few tests to see how effective these different systems might be for our purposes and exactly what we can expect for them to return from a query.  Several of you have already volunteered to work with me and I know what systems you have available to you.  I would like to toss the following into the mix so if  you have access to one of them, please let me know.  

This won't take a lot of time.

I am open to any additional tools you all might know about.

What we are likely to find is that more than a single A.I. tool might be necessary to get the best overall result.   And we may find a learning curve to get what we want out of each tool.  Let's give it at try. Roots Web started making mailing lists available back in 1996.  The Wells Family Research Association began using them from about 1998 (I have some emails that old!).  Ancestry acquired RootsWeb in 2000.  In 2020 they shut down the posting to the lists allowing read-only access and then completely closed them in 2023 allegedly moving all the content to an archive.   I was asked recently how to get to the old list content.  What I discovered is that it is pretty much not available at all.   It looks like the Wells lists (there were several) never made it to the archives.  At least I was unable to find anything.

SO, it turns out I was subscribed to most if not all of those lists and received every post to them.   It seems I never delete anything, so I still have all the posts.  There was a lot of useful genealogical detail contained in many of those posts and I want to make them available to everyone who has an interest.   I have found a tool that takes old emails like what I have and converts them to HTML.  I have 31,000 emails from those lists although there are a lot of duplicates and a fair amount of chit-chat..  This is going to take time but I will convert all of the useful emails to HTML and post them on Wells.org.  I will advise you when this extra effort is completed and the information available.

The National Genealogical Society 2026 Family History Conference

Again, this annual conference will be held May 27-30 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  As I asked last month if any of you are planning to attend the conference, please let me know.  I know two of you are going but perhaps there are more?   Please let me know if you are attending.

More DNA tests?

If you missed the opportunity to either order a discounted Y-DNA test or an upgrade during the FamilyTreeDNA's DNA Day Sale, there will surely be another possibly for Father's Day or for the holidays toward the end of the year.   I will make sure you all know.

First Volunteers?

   I never expected everyone who is on this email list to volunteer to help.  However, I did hope I would see more than I did.   In the Army we were advised if they ask for volunteers to "step forward" to just step back and leave those who were too new to know any better as the volunteers.  No worries, we will press on.

If anyone wants to help, please let me know.

Bible Records

I also thought we would get more response on this.  I actually did not receive any Bible Records.  Seriously, none of you have any you are willing to share?

The Baseline Families

I have been updating the website (wells.org) to provide a list of all the families we have included as of about 2014 in alphabetical order to make it easier to find an ancestor among the many included.  I am probably closing in on 50% done with this activity.

Wells.org Search Engine

While working on updating the pages on Wells.org I discovered the search engine was not working at all for all practical purposes.  I dont' know how long it has been broken. I have fixed this and caused the site to be fully re-indexed.   So if you have tried to find an ancestor over the past many months or have NEVER tried to use it, give it a new try.   You might be surprised at what you might find there. I have a sense that since we are limited to just a bit over 1,000 pages with the free version that not all the site is indexed.  The advertising I commented on earlier seems to be originating from the FreeSearch search engine.  So, I will take a subscription to get rid of these and hopefully include all the pages on the site.

I also learned that the search engine is capable of including PDF files.  All the old newsletters 

have been scanned, indexed and are in PDF format.  I will advise you when these are available on the website.

*Only Vol 1-4 of Wells Researcher were included because I was unaware a 5th volume had been produced.   If anyone has copies of the issues from Vol. 5, please consider copying or scanning them and send them to me so I can include them in the collection.  Ann no longer has copies of vol. 5. ====================================================

Project 26 Status Update

Phase I

There has been little progress in adding Wells researchers to our list since last month although we have picked up a few.. Phase II

There has also been little progress in trying to contact past DNA participants since last month..   Phase III<.b>

The task to import all the FTDNA Y-Test results into my database has not been advanced since last month. Phase IV

No progress has been made in contacting other Wells researchers from my database since last month. Phase V

The task to clean up the Wells.org website continues to slowly make progress.

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e-mail: Wells Family Research Association

Last revised 6/1/2026