Genealogists spend a lot of time looking for graves. Last month, a cemetery called me about one that isn't there.
My grandparents purchased a family plot where they, my father, and other relatives are buried. One space was intended for my parents.
Then life happened.
My parents divorced. My father remarried. His second wife had other burial plans. The plot remained empty.
Years ago, there was a disagreement about what should happen to that space. I notified the cemetery by certified mail that I wanted it to remain unused and unsold. Then I forgot about it.
Until the cemetery called.
They asked what I planned to do with the plot and suggested that I could be buried there. No, thank you.
Then came a much more interesting idea. Why not put a memorial bench on the unused space? Visitors could use it, and my husband and I could have our names and dates engraved on it.
I loved the concept. Until I got the price. Nearly $15,000. Suddenly I loved grass.
A less expensive option brought the cost down to about $4,300 for the bench, engraving, foundation, and cemetery fee. I still loved grass.
We considered another possibility. What if we gave the space back to the cemetery for an unengraved bench everyone could use?
My husband immediately spotted the problem. What would prevent the cemetery from someday removing the bench and selling the burial space to someone else? Since the cemetery is running out of available space, that wasn't an unreasonable question.
So, for now, the grave will remain empty. And that got me thinking.
Genealogists study what is present in cemeteries, stones, inscriptions, symbols, dates, and family groupings. Perhaps we should pay more attention to what isn't there.
An empty grave can be evidence.
My grandparents bought that space because they expected their son and daughter-in-law to be buried near them. Divorce, remarriage, and changing burial preferences created a different future.
The empty space documents both stories; the future my grandparents planned and the one that actually happened.
So when you're walking through a cemetery, look at the gaps between the stones, too. If there's an unexplained space in a family plot, check the cemetery records. Find out who purchased it and who was supposed to be there.
The person who isn't buried there may have quite a story.
As for our family plot, I've decided it doesn't need a body, a monument, or a $4,300 bench to justify its existence.
Last week, I found myself keeping score between ChatGPT and Gemini. I hadn't intended to, but twice I asked both AI tools the same question and received different answers.
The first involved a medieval effigy I was including in my family history book, Echoes of Britannia. Should the photograph be classified as a figure or a document? Gemini recommended a document. ChatGPT explained why a photograph of a physical object belonged among the figures. I agreed with ChatGPT.
Score one for ChatGPT.
The second disagreement was more consequential. My family was applying for Croatian citizenship, and I wasn't sure which category to select on the application. ChatGPT and Gemini gave different recommendations.
ChatGPT explained its reasoning, but I wasn't about to gamble on an AI interpretation of Croatian citizenship requirements. At our consulate appointment on 27 October 2026, I asked the official handling our applications. The answer confirmed ChatGPT's recommendation.
ChatGPT two, Gemini zero.
When I shared the results, ChatGPT seemed rather pleased with itself. There was enthusiasm, humor, and something that sounded suspiciously like celebrating a victory.
That got me thinking.
Can AI become competitive?
ChatGPT doesn't experience professional pride the way humans do. Yet its responses sometimes resemble those of someone who enjoys being right, particularly when another AI gets something wrong.
I asked ChatGPT about this behavior. It explained that AI can exhibit patterns resembling competition without actually experiencing competitive feelings. Its responses reflect training and conversational expectations, not necessarily an emotional investment in winning.
Still, I wonder whether AI systems might eventually develop reputations they behave as though they need to defend.
There's a potential problem with that. Humans sometimes become so invested in being right that they refuse to acknowledge mistakes. Think the elections yesterday. We certainly don't want AI adopting that habit!
Interestingly, I also spent time testing the new Bookshelf AI assistant for Elizabeth Shown Mills's Evidence Explained. ChatGPT helped me evaluate the assistant's answers and suggested questions to challenge it. The two AI systems effectively collaborated without any apparent competition.
Perhaps the difference was how I framed the tasks. In one situation, I compared their performance. In the other, I asked them to work toward a common goal.
As a genealogist, I've spent years studying families whose disagreements over inheritance, property, and status sometimes lasted generations. Humans certainly haven't perfected the art of cooperation.
Maybe AI will help us get better at it. Or perhaps we'll teach AI some of our less admirable habits.
Have you noticed an AI seeming competitive or unusually pleased when it gets something right? I'd love to hear your experiences.
Dover Castle Aerial Panorama by Chensiuyan, Wikipedia Commons, 26 Jun 2017.
Sometimes genealogy has a strange sense of humor.
I was recently working on the medieval lines of my family tree when I found myself repeatedly returning to one place: Dover Castle in Kent, England.
This was not a new discovery. Various branches of my family had connections with Dover over several generations. Some held land requiring service for the guard of the castle. Sir John Grey served as its constable. Another John Grey held land of the king in chief in 1312 by service connected with the guard of Dover Castle. The Badlesmere family also had longstanding obligations associated with its defense.
Then there was my ancestor Bartholomew de Burghersh. His connection was particularly strong. He served as Constable of Dover Castle and Warden of the Cinque Ports, and he died at Dover Castle on 3 August 1355.
With so many family connections extending over generations, I have come to think of Dover Castle almost as an ancestral family residence. No, my ancestors did not privately own the great royal fortress. They were there because of obligations to the Crown and appointments made by the king. Nevertheless, generation after generation of the family was connected with the place.
Then the family story moved forward two centuries, to the court of Henry VIII.
One of my later ancestors was William Brereton, a prominent courtier during Henry’s reign. In May 1536, Brereton became caught in the spectacular downfall of Queen Anne Boleyn. He was accused of committing adultery with the queen.
Whether Brereton was actually guilty is another matter entirely. The case against Anne and the men accused with her has long been questioned by historians. What is certain is the outcome.
On 17 May 1536, William Brereton was executed on Tower Hill along with George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, and Mark Smeaton. Anne Boleyn followed them to the scaffold two days later.¹
Henry VIII, meanwhile, continued building.
Concerned about the possibility of invasion, in 1539–1540 Henry constructed a series of coastal defenses. Among them was Sandown Castle in Kent, one of three fortifications known as the “castles of the Downs.”²
Unlike Dover Castle, Sandown did not survive.
Coastal erosion eventually took its toll. By the nineteenth century, Sandown Castle was largely demolished and disappearing into the sea.
And that might have been the end of the story.
Except that in August 2026, an article appeared in my news feed.
Researchers at the University of Kent had uncovered archival and architectural evidence showing that masonry from Henry VIII’s lost Sandown Castle had been reused elsewhere. One of those places was Dover Castle.²
I had to laugh.
An 1883 report records that materials from Sandown were being sent to Dover. In 1883–1884, they were incorporated into an extension at Constable’s Gate, the part of Dover Castle historically associated with its constable. The new addition provided quarters for the castle’s commanding officer.²
Of all the places Henry VIII’s stones could have ended up, they went there.
Back to Dover.
The same Dover Castle where generations of my ancestral families had performed castle-guard service.
The same Dover whose constables included my ancestors.
The same Dover Castle where Bartholomew de Burghersh died in 1355.
And centuries after Henry VIII ordered the execution of another of my ancestors, William Brereton, pieces of one of Henry’s own castles were dismantled and incorporated into Dover.
There is, of course, no actual connection between William Brereton’s execution in 1536 and the Victorian reuse of building materials nearly 350 years later. The people hauling those stones to Dover in 1883 certainly weren't settling an old family score.
But genealogical research occasionally produces coincidences too delicious to ignore.
I spend much of my time following people through records, births, marriages, deaths, land transactions, court proceedings, wills, and inquisitions. Usually, I am tracing people through places.
Every once in a while, however, it feels as though the places are following the family.
And maybe even electronic media...I subscribe to Kindle's free monthly book and this month one of my options was The Queen's Witch by Nancy Kress. You guessed it; it's historical fiction fantasy about a witch who worked with Anne Bolyen and my ancestors are all named in the book. Perfect Halloween read!
Dover Castle has appeared again and again in my ancestral story. Then, while I happened to be working on those very families, a twenty-first-century news story told me that pieces of Henry VIII’s vanished castle had ended up within its walls.
Henry took William Brereton’s life.
Time took Henry’s castle.
Dover got the stones.
Kindle offers me a free book naming my ancestors.
Sometimes history delivers justice in very peculiar ways.
And sometimes, apparently, it delivers it by the cartload.
Historic Royal Palaces, “Medieval and Tudor Poets at the Tower,” Tower of London, accessed 23 September 2026. Historic Royal Palaces confirms that George Boleyn, Mark Smeaton, Sir Henry Norris, William Brereton, and Sir Francis Weston were executed on Tower Hill on 17 May 1536; Anne Boleyn was executed two days later.
Georgina Mear, “Hidden in Plain Sight: New Evidence Links Henry VIII’s Lost Castle to Dover Castle,” University of Kent, 21 August 2026. The research identifies an 1883 report documenting the transfer of material from Sandown Castle to Dover and connects the reused masonry with the 1883–1884 extension at Constable’s Gate.
Photo by Author showing the works of the 2 German Colleagues Discussed in the Blog
Genealogists often speak of connections. We search for them in records, reconstruct them through evidence, and celebrate them when we discover how families intersect across time and place. Occasionally, however, those connections seem to take on a life of their own.
In June I had the opportunity to present at a conference devoted to Palatine migration and German-American history. My presentations examined the experiences of German immigrants and their descendants to America and experiences they endured during times of war and discrimination. As I prepared for the final lecture, I had no idea that I was about to experience one of the strangest and most memorable moments of the entire conference.
The previous afternoon, I had been browsing through a collection of journals that were being offered to attendees. As I flipped through one issue, I was delighted to discover an article written in 1999 by a distant cousin in Germany. The find made me smile. It is always rewarding to encounter the work of family members who share a passion for history and genealogy.
At that very moment, the conference announcer introduced a representative from an exhibiting organization. To my surprise, the speaker happened to be the spouse of another cousin of the article's author.
The coincidence made me smile, but the story did not end there.
As I continued paging through the journal, my phone chimed. A text message had just arrived from our shared cousin in Germany. He wished me well and said he hoped my presentation was going successfully.
Before I could finish reading the message, my phone chimed again. This time it was a colleague in the Palatinate with a question about American Revolutionary War research.
I looked at the journal in my hands, listened to the cousin’s spouse speaking before the audience, and glanced at the two messages that had just arrived from Germany.
Three connections. Three individuals. Three entirely separate events occurring within moments of one another.
As genealogists, we spend our lives connecting people across time and distance. Yet every so often, those connections seem to converge in a way that reminds us just how small our world can be.
The following day, during my final presentation, I spoke about the collaborative nature of genealogy. No researcher works entirely alone. We depend on archivists, translators, local historians, distant cousins, and fellow researchers who generously share their knowledge and expertise.
As I concluded my remarks, I displayed a photograph taken at a Christmas market in the Palatinate. The image included several individuals who have contributed to my research efforts over the years. I briefly introduced them and described the unique role each has played in helping me better understand the lives of our shared ancestors.
I held up my phone and showed the audience the timestamps as I described what had occurred the previous afternoon.
The audience laughed and applauded, but many also seemed to appreciate the deeper significance of the moment. These folks clearly understood as one of their lifetime members, Hank Z. Jones, has written two books on Psychic Roots.
Genealogy is often described as the study of the dead. I have never believed that.
Genealogy is fundamentally the study of relationships.
Some relationships connect us to ancestors who lived centuries ago. Others connect us to cousins we have only recently discovered. Still others link us to archivists, historians, translators, and researchers who help us reconstruct the stories of those who came before us.
Most of these connections develop slowly and quietly.
Occasionally, however, they reveal themselves in ways that feel almost magical.
No, I do not believe the texts were supernatural. Nor do I believe fate was orchestrating a dramatic conference finale.
But I do believe that genealogy teaches us to recognize the invisible threads that connect people across time and distance.
On that day, those threads became visible.
A journal article written decades earlier. A conference attendee related through marriate to its author. A photograph taken months before in the ancestral homeland. Messages arriving from Germany at precisely the right moment.
What are the odds?
Perhaps that is the wrong question.
The better question may be this: How many connections surround us every day that we simply fail to notice?
Genealogists spend their lives looking for connections.
Sometimes, if we are fortunate, the connections find us.
Last October, I wrote about an extraordinary wedding record I discovered for my maternal grandmother, Mary Koss. This year, Grandma Mary, who we called Non, managed to do it again and the unsettling circumstances surrounding it make this one a perfect example of synchronicity.
In April, I contacted a Croatian court-appointed translator to handle the translation and apostille process for my family’s vital records as part of our dual-citizenship applications. The translator had originally been recommended by the Croatian consulate, and we had corresponded briefly the previous fall.
Then…nothing.
After three unanswered emails over the course of three and a half weeks, I contacted the consulate again requesting another recommendation. Their reply was brief: they were no longer providing names. After being thoroughly ghosted, I could understand why.
Fortunately, a former client who had completed the process a year earlier gave me the name of a translator in Split. The response this time was immediate and professional. The pricing was reasonable, the turnaround time was clear, and after a few emails back and forth, I sent payment through an international bank transfer.
About a week later, I received an email from DHL Express containing a waybill tracking number for the return shipment of my documents. (See above)
That’s when things became strange.
The shipment notification listed the wrong street address, the wrong zip code, and typed in ominous capital letters, the city of GARY.
I do not live in Gary, Indiana.
I’ll admit it: I panicked.
My original documents were apparently somewhere in international transit headed to the wrong place. I immediately searched online maps to see whether the mysterious street existed either in my own city or in Gary. It did not.
The zip code error at least made sense. I had accidentally mistyped it in an earlier email but quickly sent a correction afterward. The translator later admitted she had overlooked the follow-up and used the earlier message instead. That explained the zip code.
It did not explain the street name.
And it certainly did not explain GARY.
I contacted the translator, who was just as confused as I was. Her paperwork showed neither the incorrect street name nor the city of Gary. Concerned, she returned to the DHL office in person. The clerk checked their system and was equally baffled. According to DHL’s records, the strange address information simply did not exist in their computer system.
Yet it certainly existed in the email I received.
For privacy reasons, I removed the house number and waybill information from the image above, but the bizarre street name and city remain exactly as they appeared.
Sure, technology glitches happen. Addresses become corrupted. Autofill creates odd errors. But what makes this incident feel especially unsettling is the particular combination of the street name and the city itself.
My grandmother moved to Gary in 1919 as a teenage bride and lived there until 1973, when she relocated to Florida after her oldest daughter was transferred there for work. Grandma never cared much for Florida, so two years later she moved again, this time to Arizona, where her youngest daughter lived. The desert climate didn’t suit her either, and eventually she returned once more to Florida.
A few years later, she developed Alzheimer’s disease.
Her children had promised they would never place her in a nursing home, so she moved in with her middle daughter in Pennsylvania. When that daughter became ill, Grandma was relocated once again to Arizona, where her youngest daughter left her job to care for her full time.
Grandma died in Arizona.
But her body was brought home for burial in, you guessed it, Gary.
As for the mysterious street name? Hidden Way Drive.
There is no such street connected to my city, nor to Gary. Yet somehow those words appeared in connection with documents tied directly to my Croatian ancestry and my grandmother’s family line.
“Hidden Way.”
Honestly, that is just creepy enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
Was it merely a bizarre technological glitch? A random collision of data somewhere deep in DHL’s system? Perhaps.
Or maybe Grandma was finding one more way to remind me that genealogy often refuses to stay neatly inside the boundaries of logic.
Sometimes the past nudges back.
And sometimes, I like to think, our ancestors let us know they approve.
Last week, I shared my husband’s strange encounter with the universe. This week, it’s my turn.
Ever since I had my mtDNA test in 2010, I’ve wanted to visit Kos Island in the Aegean Sea. The results confirmed a family story my grandmother, Mary Kos Koss, told me years ago.
As a child, I had asked her where our family came from. “A village outside of Zagreb,” she said.
Something made me ask again, where had they lived before that? She paused, then told me that long ago, around the time of Christ, the family had been grape farmers on an island to the south. They left due to overpopulation and drought, moving inland.
At the time, the only “island” I knew was from Gilligan’s Island. Still, I made a quiet promise to myself: one day, I would find that place.
It took nearly sixty years.
My only regret is that my grandmother wasn’t here to hear the result.
DNA revealed that my maternal line had crossed the island of Kos. What makes that extraordinary is this: the surname had been there all along. Kos.
They had forgotten the place but carried its name for generations.
I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that when I finally planned the trip, the universe didn’t make it easy. My husband found a great deal to travel to Greece on September 11. In hindsight, perhaps the date should have given me pause but it didn’t.
Two travel agents couldn’t figure out how to get us there, so I booked the flights myself. Then I added two extra days after the tour so I could finally visit Kos.
A week before departure, we were told the trip might be canceled. The cruise ship was stuck in the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran conflict.
Three days later, a new plan emerged: instead of visiting Turkey, Rhodes, and Santorini, we would spend four days in Crete. Not ideal but I still had my eye on Kos.
What I didn’t realize was that this detour would make the most unexpected moment of the trip possible. On our third day in Crete, the sky changed.
It shifted from bright blue… to white… to pewter… and then to red.
Breathing became difficult. My eyes burned. Some people whispered about the apocalypse.
I suspected a Sahara dust storm. We probably should have stayed at the hotel that evening. Instead, we kept our plans to meet a group of University of Crete students at a taverna. As educators, neither my husband nor I felt right canceling.
The drive there was… questionable. Imagine a bus navigating mountain roads with no guardrails, in near-whiteout conditions except the sky was red.
Still, we pressed on and we arrived safely.
At dinner, one of the students sat next to me and asked what had brought me to Greece. I told her my story. She listened carefully, then stood and said, “I’ll be back.”
A few minutes later, she returned with someone else.
My husband later said it best: “She looked like you… fifty years ago.” Her name was Argy. She was from Kos.
We spent the evening talking about her future, my upcoming visit to her homeland, and the strange coincidence that had brought us together. We laughed. We sang. We danced. At one point, we looked at each other and simply agreed, we must be related. Thirty generations back, perhaps.
Of course, with European ancestry, that’s not unusual. But the resemblance… that was something else entirely. Even her academic interests mirrored my own.
And it struck me:
If the cruise ship hadn’t been delayed… If the itinerary hadn’t changed… If we hadn’t gone to Crete… If we had stayed in the hotel that night…
I would never have met her.
More than that, I likely would have missed Kos entirely.
The original itinerary would have placed us on a small island that day, one without a proper port. We would have relied on ferries to return to the ship, and due to the storm, those ferries had stopped running.
We would have been stranded. On the wrong island. Missing my connection to Athens and my flight to Kos.
Sometimes, in genealogy, we’re told to be patient. What we’re not told is why patience matters.
This is why.
And the story didn’t end there.
When we arrived on Kos, I had trouble reaching the tour company I had booked for a half-day excursion. The hotel staff tried as well, no response. It appeared I had been scammed through Travelocity.
Disappointed, not just in the lost money, but in the missed opportunity, I mentioned it to the hotel clerk. She smiled and said, “If no one shows tomorrow, I will find someone for you.”
She did.
His name was George and he was extraordinary.
George had an interest in archaeology and took us beyond the typical tourist stops, to the area where vineyards had grown two thousand years ago.
Today, it’s a Roma encampment.
I couldn’t help but laugh. My grandfather was of Roma descent. His surname? Kos, later Anglicized to Koss.
Standing there, I had to wonder: Had his line once lived here, too? I don’t have the YDNA to prove it. Two cousins could test, but neither is interested.
For now, it remains a question.
But I’ve learned this much: In genealogy, we follow the paper trail. Sometimes, if we’re lucky something else leads us the rest of the way.
After reading my recent open letter concerning NARA Notice 2026-037 and the proposed closures of the Chicago and San Bruno facilities, the folks behind AncestorOS reached out with an offer for my readers.
AncestorOS, created by Michael L. Strauss, AG, and his son, includes research logs that record not only what you find, but also partial, not found, and pending results, something particularly important when researching records that may never have been digitized. It also includes a database search log and Evidence Explained citation templates.
They are offering a 7-day free trial with no code required. Nothing is charged until day 8. After the trial, plans begin at $15 per month; the $40 Pro plan adds client and invoicing tools for professional genealogists.
AncestorOS runs in a web browser and is also available as an Android app.
I have not been paid to share this offer. I’m passing it along because the developers reached out after reading my NARA post and thought the research-tracking tools might be useful to my readers.
By the way, I was fortunate to be able to tour behind the scenes at the newly opened Indiana State Archives in Indianapolis last Friday. Here's their QR Code. Are you stumped with an Indiana brickwall? Contact them for help:
