Posted June 2, 2026 by Orin Wells

Previous updates are available.

I placed the previous updates for March, April and May on the Wells.org website here:

https://www.wells.org/project26/project26.html

Proof of Concept

I want to work up an example Wells family and send the files to the Allan County Public Library to start the Wells Families History Special Collection.  I would like to use a family that does not extend back to the 1600s or beyond with several thousand descendants.   What we need is a "short" and mostly complete family that currently carries the name Wells but the descendants know it was something else 100 or 200 etc. years ago and you know when the name change came into being.  The change could have been voluntary, an NPE (Non Paternal Event), orphan triggered, etc.

I need some help here.  Please send me some suggestions whether it is your own family or another that you know about.

Please email me your suggestions.  This will give all of us the opportunity to see what the end product of this project will look like.

Family Leaders Needed for MOST of the Wells Families

I have heard from a few volunteers to take on the lead for their families.  But it is only up to 4 currently.  I need more of you to step up and offer to be the clearing point for all things pertaining to the family histories for all the other families.   If you are willing, please send me an email.

A.I.?

I didn't receive any volunteers to help me determine which AI platform might be best for our genealogy work.  But I did do some testing on a couple of dead-end/brick wall families.  Unfortunately I didn't find any solutions. Interestingly Google Gemini seemed to be better for this purpose, but I have a feeling that Perplexity may be still better.  One subscriber has been using Claude from Antropic and seems to be making some headway.

My jury decision is still out.  I will let you all know which I decide I think is better and why.

Roots Web Mailing Lists

I still have not had time to work on this.

More DNA tests?

I expect that Family Tree DNA will offer some discounts on the Y-DNA tests for Father's day.  I will advise when this happens. So you guys who have less than 37 marker tests get ready and you gals try to find a cousin to recruit.

Postscript - they did indeed offer a discount at $79 until June 22nd.

File Organization

I have begun building a top level index to my various storage boxes, file drawers and other nooks and crannies where my old Wells materials are stored.  Next round will be to go through all of these to build a more detailed general index for everything I have here.  I have found some surprising stuff I had completely forgotten about.  I also found some stuff that is not where it should be.  And I have found a lot of non-genealogical files that I should have thrown away 10 to 20 years ago.

Bible Records

I found a folder with a bunch of bible records while indexing what I have in the storage boxes, drawers etc.  I will get into them later and start processing them plus putting them on the website..

The Baseline Families

I have now added a set of files to the website for all the families and branches we had identified and "named" back in 2016 or so. This set is in alphabetical order.  In the process I discovered by far the most common given names were John and William.   I also found a few duplicated entries.  You can now find these pages here:

https://www.wells.org/dnaproje/dnaproje.html

At the bottom of the first section you will find separator links "A", "B" etc.  Click on the character(s) for the start of the ancestor you want to know is in there.

Wells Surname DNA Study Merge Database

Back in 2008 Wells Researcher Bonnie Hillmer created a huge database with all the gedcom files we had collected from the DNA participants in the projects from whom we were able to obtain the files.  Not everyone is in there, but it does contain 112,000+ Wells individuals, their spouses and children.  Might be something you are looking for.  You can go this page and then to the link at the bottom of the page:

https://www.wells.org/wfraone.html

She did an amazing amount of effort which included finding census and other records where she was able.  Unfortunately (from my point of view) she often inserted a source for the DNA testing including a name- my name.  I am not going to change it, just feel uncomfortable.

There is one potential downside to this.  It added 32 mb of data to the server and bumped the site from a little over 1,000 files to more than 6,700 files.  I am not sure how my ISP is going to look at this.  I suppose it is possible he will want to increase my monthly fee for this extra storage or I may have to take it back down.  Hope not.

Wells.org Search Engine

I have now subscribed to "FreeSearch.com" rather than simply utilize the "free" user account.  This expands the total number of pages we can have on  the website for indexing AND removes the advertising.  The new stuff is now also in the index.

It is my plan, as I mentioned last month, to place the three past Wells newsletters on the website.  They are all three in PDF format which I can now have the indexing tool pickup on.  That is potentially a good thing for many of you who are still trying to find ancestors.  I don't know what I will need to do to insert the PDF files into the website for possible links within the site.  Will report back on that next month. ====================================================

Project 26 Status Update

We have added a few more researchers to our list, but I put this on the back burner this past month. Phase II

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

The task to import all the FTDNA Y-Test results into my database has been started.  The coding will take a bit before I can do the import.. 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.  I did discover that the indexing software log exposes broken web links.  I will make use of this to help me determine what needs to be fixed.