---
title: "KleioBase blog"
description: "Research notes and product writing from KleioBase."
canonical: "https://kleiobase.com/blog"
---

# KleioBase blog

Research notes and product writing from KleioBase.

- [Best Genealogy Software 2027: 12 Tools Compared](https://kleiobase.com/blog/best-genealogy-software-2027): Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Findmypast, WikiTree, RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, Legacy, Gramps, MacFamilyTree, Transkribus and KleioBase, compared on what each one is, how you pay and who it suits, with the 2026 changes that affect your choice for 2027.
- [How to Use ChatGPT for Genealogy, and How to Give It Your Real Records](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-to-use-chatgpt-for-genealogy): ChatGPT is good at reading a hard document and planning a search, and bad at knowing anything about your ancestor. Here is what to ask it, what never to trust it with, and how to connect it to your own family archive so it answers from your records instead of from memory.
- [How to Use Claude for Genealogy: Reading Records, Planning Searches and Connecting Your Archive](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-to-use-claude-for-genealogy): Claude can read a difficult register entry, turn your notes into a research plan and, once connected, work on your actual family archive. Here is how to ask it well, which permission settings to change first, and why a connector should start read-only.
- [Which AI Assistants Can Connect to Your Family Tree? Gemini, Perplexity, Le Chat and Copilot](https://kleiobase.com/blog/which-ai-assistants-can-connect-to-your-family-tree): Every big AI assistant can read a document you paste in. Far fewer let you connect your own family archive, and the rules differ by country, plan and account type. Here is which assistants accept a custom connector as of October 2026, what each one requires, and where it is still a no.
- [Calculating a Birth Date From Age at Death: How Far Can You Trust the Answer?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/birth-date-from-age-at-death-how-accurate): Subtracting an age at death from a death date gives you a precise-looking birth date. The arithmetic is the easy part. Here is what the linkage studies found about the ages written on death records, why ages bunch on round numbers, and how wide a range to search.
- [Manorial Court Rolls: How an Heir's Admission Can Date a Death and Name Three Generations](https://kleiobase.com/blog/manorial-court-rolls-admission-of-heir): Before 1926, inheriting copyhold land in England meant standing before the manor court, and the court wrote down who had died and who their heir was. Here is how to read an admission of an heir, why the heir was sometimes the youngest son, and where the rolls are now.
- [Soldier Settlement Records in Victoria: What a WWI Settler's File Tells You About the Family](https://kleiobase.com/blog/victorian-soldier-settlement-records-what-the-file-shows): After the First World War, Victoria put about 11,000 returned soldiers on farms, and the government kept a file on every block. The struggling farms left the fullest files: inspectors' reports, letters asking for help, even grocery lists. Here is what is in one, where to find it, and how to read it.
- [Claude and ChatGPT Can Now Work Inside Your Family Archive](https://kleiobase.com/blog/use-claude-chatgpt-with-your-family-tree): KleioBase now connects to Claude, ChatGPT and any assistant that supports MCP, on every plan. The assistant reads your actual records and the scans behind them instead of a pasted copy, and you choose whether it can only look or also make changes. Here is what it can do, and where it stops.
- [How Accurate Are the Dates on a Gravestone? Find Out When It Was Carved](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-accurate-are-gravestone-dates): A date cut in stone feels final, but someone had to supply it, and often years after the death. Here is what the archaeology of graveyards says about when stones went up, how few of the dead ever got one, and how to weigh a gravestone against the paper records.
- [Family Tree Statistics Are Most Useful Where They Look Wrong](https://kleiobase.com/blog/family-tree-statistics-find-errors): The Statistics page is live in KleioBase, on every plan. It counts your names, places, lifespans, families and ancestors, and the record holders it picks out are often where the errors in a tree are hiding. Here is what it shows, how it counts, and where the numbers stop.
- [French Notarial Records: How to Find the Notaire Who Wrote Your Ancestor's Contract](https://kleiobase.com/blog/french-notarial-records-find-the-notaire): A French marriage contract, will or inventory after death sits in one notary's bundles, not in any index. Here is where those minutes are kept, the deposit rule that changed from 125 years to 75, and the two tax registers that tell you which notary to search.
- [Which Genealogy Software Handles Source Citations Best? Check What Survives When You Leave](https://kleiobase.com/blog/genealogy-software-source-citations-compared): RootsMagic, Legacy, Family Tree Maker and Gramps all promise properly formatted source citations, and they build them in very different ways. The bigger difference is what happens when your tree leaves the program. Here is how each one handles citations, and what a GEDCOM file can carry.
- [Was Your Ancestor Really a Huguenot? How to Test the Family Story](https://kleiobase.com/blog/huguenot-ancestry-test-the-family-story): A French-sounding surname and a story about fleeing persecution are the two commonest reasons people believe they have Huguenot ancestors. The Huguenot Society says there is no such thing as a Huguenot surname. Here is what the refugee records are, where they are, and how to test the story against them.
- [GEDmatch Alternatives: Where You Can Still Upload Your DNA, and Who Can Search It](https://kleiobase.com/blog/gedmatch-alternatives-where-to-upload-dna): Uploading your raw DNA to other sites used to be simple. Now two of the biggest companies take no uploads, a third stopped in May 2025, and Ancestry and MyHeritage files processed since late 2025 are refused by FamilyTreeDNA. Here is what each site takes, what it costs, and who else can search your match list.
- [Español in One Record, Mestizo in the Next: Why Your Mexican Ancestor's Calidad Changes](https://kleiobase.com/blog/mexican-ancestor-calidad-espanol-mestizo-records): Colonial Mexican records label people español, mestizo, indio or mulato, and the same person's label often changes from one record to the next. A study that traced three years of one town's marriages back into its census measured how often, and why. Here is what a changed calidad does and does not prove.
- [How Accurate Is an Obituary? Ask Who Wrote It](https://kleiobase.com/blog/obituary-accuracy-genealogy-evidence): An obituary and a death certificate that agree look like two sources. Often they are one family member, interviewed twice in the same week. Here is who actually supplied the facts in a death notice, which details obituaries get wrong, which deaths never got one, and how to weigh what you find.
- [Disowned for Marrying Out: What a Quaker Disownment Proves About Your Ancestor](https://kleiobase.com/blog/quaker-disownment-records-what-they-prove): A Quaker ancestor "dis mou" looks like a family scandal. It was the most common disciplinary outcome in colonial Quaker meetings, and it is one of the most useful entries in the minutes: it dates a marriage, tells you whether the spouse was a Friend, and points to the register where the wedding is. Here is how to read one.
- [A Folder Says Where Something Lives. A Tag Says What You Still Need to Ask.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/folders-and-tags-organise-genealogy-research): Folders and tags are live in KleioBase, on every plan. They exist because a family archive outgrows memory long before it outgrows search, and because folders and tags answer two different questions. Here is how to organise genealogy research with both, and the one thing a folder will never do.
- [Free Irish Genealogy Records: What Is Free, and When RootsIreland Is Worth Paying For](https://kleiobase.com/blog/free-irish-genealogy-records-vs-rootsireland): Most of the Irish records a family historian needs are free, from the Irish state's own websites. The catch is that each free site holds one kind of record, and the paid site sells transcripts of many registers you can already read for nothing. Here is what each one holds, and when paying actually helps.
- [MyHeritage vs FamilySearch: What You Pay For, and What Was Free All Along](https://kleiobase.com/blog/myheritage-vs-familysearch-what-you-pay-for): MyHeritage and FamilySearch are not rivals. They have been partners since 2013, and some of what a MyHeritage records subscription unlocks is FamilySearch data that is free at FamilySearch.org. Here is what each one actually holds, which MyHeritage plan includes records, and which plan does not.
- [A Norwegian Bygdebok Hands You the Whole Family. Here Is How to Check It.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/norwegian-bygdebok-farm-books-check-sources): A bygdebok can give you five generations on one farm in a single page, already worked out. That is exactly why it needs checking: it is a compiled history built from church books, censuses and probate records that are now free to read online. Here is how to find one, how to read it, and how to test it.
- [Quebec Marriage Contracts: Why the Notary's Copy Says More Than the Parish Register](https://kleiobase.com/blog/quebec-marriage-contracts-notarial-records): A French-Canadian marriage left two records: the priest's entry in the parish register, and a contract drawn up by a notary. The contract was written against a legal default set in 1664, so every clause that departs from it tells you something about the family. Here is how to read one, and how to find it.
- [Which AI Genealogy Tools Can Actually Find Your Ancestors' Records?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/which-ai-can-find-your-ancestors-records): "Find records with AI" covers four different tools, and each one can only find what it is able to see. Full-text search reads one archive's images, record hints match one company's index, and a chatbot with no search invents citations. Here is what each reaches, and which one starts from the gap in your tree.
- [Before 1870, Your Ancestor Is in Someone Else's Paperwork](https://kleiobase.com/blog/african-american-ancestors-before-1870-property-records): The 1870 census is the first that names formerly enslaved people, and most research stops there. It does not have to. The records that name your ancestor before 1870 were written by the people who claimed to own them, filed as property, and a 2024 search tool finally made them readable.
- [Which Parts of Your Family Tree Survive a GEDCOM Export?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/gedcom-export-what-survives-which-software-loses-data): A GEDCOM export always looks like it worked. The names are there, the tree is connected, and the parts that quietly did not travel are invisible until you need them. The GEDCOM 7 specification says in its own words which parts those are, and nobody publishes a comparison table. Here is how to test your own software in twenty minutes.
- [Italian Processetti and Allegati: The Marriage Packet That Reaches Back to the 1700s](https://kleiobase.com/blog/italian-processetti-allegati-marriage-packets): The marriage act is one page. Filed beside it is a folder of birth extracts, death certificates and sworn statements that reaches back into the 1700s. It exists because Napoleonic law made a couple prove which of their ancestors were dead before it would let them marry. Here is what is inside, and where it does not exist.
- [Pre-1858 English Wills: What They Prove, and Who They Leave Out](https://kleiobase.com/blog/pre-1858-english-wills-what-they-prove): An English will is a list of who was still owed something, not a list of who was born. The Statute of Distributions of 1670 names the mechanism behind most of the gap, and Evidence Explained says the rule everyone repeats about married children is not a rule at all. Here is what a pre-1858 will actually proves.
- [What Archives Charge to Copy a Record, and Why One Bills You for Finding Nothing](https://kleiobase.com/blog/what-archives-charge-to-copy-a-record): The National Archives charges £38.95 per fifteen minutes to search for a record, and does not refund it if the record is not there. ScotlandsPeople sells a will for £2.50. NARA will not take an order under $20. Nobody puts these side by side, so here they are, with what each one actually buys you.
- [How Accurate Are Family Stories, Really?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-accurate-are-family-stories): Family stories are not lies, and they are not transcripts either. Psychologists and historians who study how memory travels between generations have found a consistent pattern: some parts of a story survive almost untouched, and other parts change in predictable ways. Here is which is which, and how to test the difference.
- [Kirk Session Records Name the Father. Here Is What They Actually Prove.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/kirk-session-records-illegitimate-father-scotland): When a Scottish baptism says "natural son" and names no father, the parish's church court often wrote him down. But the Church of Scotland's own 1707 rulebook said a woman's word alone was not proof. Here is how to read a session minute, and which entries you can build on.
- [Your Ancestor's Records Just Say "Germany." Here Is Which Column Names the Town.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/find-immigrant-ancestor-town-of-origin): There was no Germany when your ancestor left it. The town is usually recorded somewhere, but only on certain forms, and only after certain dates. Here is which record has the column, what year it was added, and which of the three columns on a 1907 manifest is the one worth trusting.
- [What It Actually Costs to Get an Old Record Read](https://kleiobase.com/blog/what-it-costs-to-get-an-old-record-read): A free tool, a paid tool and a human translator will quote you nothing, about fifteen cents, and about ten dollars for the same page. They are not competing offers. Here is what each one actually costs in 2026, what you get for it, and when paying a person is the only right answer.
- [Which AI Actually Reads Your German Church Record?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/which-ai-reads-german-church-records-kurrent-latin): Every tool says it handles German. Nobody has published a test on an actual Kirchenbuch page, or on a Latin parish register, and the accuracy figures on the landing pages have no methodology behind them. Here is what each tool's own model catalogue shows, which model to run, and why FamilySearch's full-text search will not do this for you yet.
- [Which Pages of a 200-Page Pension File Actually Matter?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/which-pages-civil-war-pension-file-matter): The National Archives was asked to pick the pages of a Civil War pension file that carry the genealogy. It picked eight. Here is what those are, why the file is in a known order you can navigate by position, and which of the other 190 pages you can safely skim.
- [Why Two Families Should Never Share One Archive](https://kleiobase.com/blog/workspaces-keeping-client-research-separate): Workspaces are live: a completely separate knowledge base for each family you research, on Professional. They matter because researching an unrelated family inside your own archive raises your false-match rate, and conflation is the genealogical error that does the most lasting damage.
- [Breaking a Genealogy Brick Wall: The FAN Club Method](https://kleiobase.com/blog/breaking-genealogy-brick-walls-fan-club-research): A brick wall is rarely a missing record. Far more often it is a record that exists, names your ancestor, and is filed under somebody else's name. Cluster research is how you find it.
- [What Not to Publish: Privacy and Ethics in Family History](https://kleiobase.com/blog/genealogy-privacy-ethics-publishing-family-data): Genealogy is the only research field where most of your subjects never agreed to be studied. Where the law actually stands on the living and the dead, what the professional standards require, and a workable set of rules for the hard cases.
- [How Accurate Is AI at Reading Old Handwriting?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-accurate-is-ai-handwriting-transcription): Published error rates for AI transcription range from under 2% to over 35%, and both figures are honest. Here is what the research actually shows, why the standard accuracy metric is the wrong one for genealogy, and how to check a transcription you did not write.
- [Research Logs Track Where You Looked. Nothing Tracks What You Found.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/genealogy-research-evidence-layer): Your genealogy workflow stores two things: the searches you ran and the conclusions you reached. Everything in between, which is all of the actual evidence, sits in files you will not open again. Here is what that costs, and how to tell whether it is your real bottleneck.
- [Russian Empire Revision Lists: How to Read a Ревизская Сказка and Follow a Family Across 140 Years](https://kleiobase.com/blog/russian-empire-revision-lists-revizskie-skazki): Revision lists are the closest thing Eastern European genealogy has to a longitudinal record. Every entry carries two ages, and every person who disappeared between revisions has a reason written next to their name. Here is how the document works and where the surviving lists actually are.
- [How to Use Negative Evidence in Genealogy](https://kleiobase.com/blog/negative-evidence-in-genealogy): A search that found nothing only becomes evidence when the source should have recorded the event. Here are the five questions that make an empty search trustworthy, the five things to write down every time, and a worked example that turns a missing death record into the next place to look.
- [Julian or Gregorian? Reading Old Record Dates](https://kleiobase.com/blog/reading-dates-old-records-julian-gregorian-feast-days): Two brothers baptised on the same day can carry dates ten days apart, because one parish was Catholic and Gregorian and the other Lutheran and still Julian. Here is how to tell which calendar a record keeper used, what 1731/32 and Dominica Cantate mean, and how to convert a date without inventing a year.
- [How to Find Ancestors in Austrian Galicia: AGAD, the Lviv Archives, and Gesher Galicia](https://kleiobase.com/blog/austrian-galicia-records-agad-lviv-gesher-galicia): Austrian Galicia is the partition where the Polish State Archives will disappoint you. Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic and Jewish records all survive in quantity - they are just split across two countries. Here is where they actually are.
- [Polish State Archives Online: Szukaj w Archiwach](https://kleiobase.com/blog/polish-state-archives-szukaj-w-archiwach-guide): Szukaj w Archiwach, the Polish State Archives portal, publishes over 55 million scans for free with no account, but none of it is searchable by name. Here is how to find your town's parish or civil registers, and why reading each year's index first turns a day of scrolling into a few minutes.
- [Poznań Project and Prussian Partition Records](https://kleiobase.com/blog/prussian-partition-records-standesamt-poznan-project): The Poznań Project indexes every named person in over two million 19th-century Posen marriages, parents and witnesses included, so an ancestor can turn up at a neighbour's wedding. Here is how to use it, where church books end and the 1874 Standesamt registers begin, and where the scans are held.
- [The Family Tree That Shows You What Is Missing](https://kleiobase.com/blog/family-tree-that-shows-what-is-missing): The KleioBase family tree is live. Because it is drawn from your actual archive of records rather than a form you type into, it can do something a typed-in tree has nothing to measure against: it scores every profile for completeness and flags exactly where your research is thin.
- [How to Read Old German Records: Kurrent, Sütterlin, and the Handwriting Wall](https://kleiobase.com/blog/reading-old-german-records-kurrent-sutterlin): Most German records from before the 1940s look unreadable even to fluent German speakers. Here is why, and how to start reading Kurrent and Sütterlin.
- [Best Genealogy Software 2026: 10 Tools Compared](https://kleiobase.com/blog/best-genealogy-software-2026): Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, RootsMagic, Legacy, Gramps, three DNA tests and KleioBase, compared side by side: what each one is, how you pay, who it suits and the main trade-off. Most serious researchers use more than one, so this genealogy program comparison helps you pick a combination.
- [Getting Started with Genealogy Research: A Beginner's Guide](https://kleiobase.com/blog/getting-started-genealogy-research): A step-by-step guide for anyone starting genealogy research - from interviewing family and gathering documents to organizing your findings.
- [AI Handwriting Recognition for Genealogy](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-ai-is-transforming-genealogy): AI handwriting recognition can now give you a usable first draft of many old records, but where you meet it decides what it can read, and the script matters more than the brand. Here is how it works, what the published tests show, and what it still cannot do.
- [Introducing KleioBase: AI-Powered Genealogy Research](https://kleiobase.com/blog/introducing-kleiobase): KleioBase uses AI to extract, organize, and connect your genealogy documents into a unified knowledge base. Built by a genealogist.
- [How to Organize Old Family Photos and Documents Digitally](https://kleiobase.com/blog/organize-family-photos-documents-digitally): How to digitize and organize old family photos, letters, and certificates - from scanning basics to building a structured research workflow.
- [How to Read Old US Census Records, 1790-1950](https://kleiobase.com/blog/reading-old-census-records): From 1850 the US census named every free person in a household, 1880 added each person's relationship to the head, and 1900 added the year of immigration. Here is what each census from 1790 to 1950 recorded, what "do", "Na" and "Al" mean in the columns, and how to read an enumerator's handwriting.
- [How to Move a Family Tree With a GEDCOM File](https://kleiobase.com/blog/understanding-gedcom-files): A .ged file is plain text you can open in any editor, and most programs still export version 5.5.1, drafted in 1999, rather than GEDCOM 7 from 2021. Here is what the file holds, what gets lost between programs, from citations to images to non-Western names, and how to check an import before you trust it.

Canonical: https://kleiobase.com/blog