A week or so ago, I came across a mention of the community of Potterspury in Northamptonshire for the first time. It was in an article by Lolly Fullerton, Using Artificial Intelligence to Write an Ancestor’s Story, in a late 2023 issue of the Bruce County Genealogical Society’s Bruce Bulletin. The article, based on a timeline from Ancestry, showed where ChatGPT had gone astray but still provided a good start for writing a family story.
One thing missing was information about the community in the late 18th century. Googling “Potterspury” pointed to several resources: a Wikipedia article, a volume of British History Online (originally published as part of the Victoria County History for Cleley Hundred), the Potterspury History Group website, and GENUKI. I learned that Potterspury lay on the Roman road Watling Street, meaning it had better-than-average communication with distant places and businesses serving travellers.
Then, on Sunday, a post titled The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Perplexity AI for Family History by Denyse Allen landed in my inbox. She wrote that Perplexity’s real strength is “finding sources to turn your genealogy facts into interesting family history writing.” I tried it, asking: “I’m researching a person born in Potterspury, Northamptonshire, in 1798. Please find resources to explore life in that place in those times.” Perplexity does a better job than Google with more complex queries.
The response named the same major resources that Google had identified, plus a few tangentially relevant ones. It also suggested useful follow-up questions like, “What were the main industries in Potterspury during the late 18th century?” and “How did the presence of coaching inns impact the local economy?”
You can take these sources and have AI draft a short paragraph—likely all you need about the community. Perplexity isn’t the best AI tool for writing; you might prefer ChatGPT, Claude, or one of the others. Just don’t accept what it writes without checking the facts, cutting the fluff, and refining it so the final product fits your style. Don’t be afraid to refine again and again until you get something you like, or exhaust what you can get if using a free version.