I’ve been dying to try out ChatGPT’s ability to transcribe handwritten text. I have a shoe box of letters, a huge folder of phone conversation notes with relatives who are no longer with us, and a gazillion pages of notes I’ve taken while researching. It’d be nice to make sense of them to share with…
52 Ancestors: When Your Marriage Is Illegal
Hawaii was a different world. Pretty much from day one, interracial marriage was acceptable. When my Azorean ancestors arrived in 1882, it only took one generation for the women to marry Japanese, Hawaiian, and Filipino men. What was okay in Hawaii was not okay in California though. The law was very much against them. The…
52 Ancestors: Pacheco Boys Are First in Line for War
Did you know that the University of Massachusetts has digitized Portuguese language newspapers? Did you know that this collection includes Portuguese language Hawaiian newspapers? Sometimes those Portuguese language newspapers are helpful and they lead to articles in English language newspapers. That’s how I learned about the Pacheco boys being the first on Kauai to sign…
52 Ancestors: My Mom’s Report Card
My mom always said that she hated school. She was sent to Catholic School and didn’t care for the strictness of the nuns. Yet, my mom was the first one in her family to graduate and she went on to be a successful secretary, bookkeeper, and office manager. So, she must have have learned something…
52 Ancestors: Pacheco Brothers Pick A Surname Out Of A Hat
Okay, they didn’t really pick their surname out of a hat, but they might as well have. When I began researching the Pacheco family who went from Achada, Nordeste, Sao Miguel Island, Azores to Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii, I was told that some of them were known by Algrava or Algarva depending on who I talked…