[Here’s an audio excerpt from my latest exploration.]
This past weekend I visited the historical society to learn more about the home we just purchased. Ed, the research librarian, was incredibly patient with me. He pulled materials, showed me how to navigate genealogy books, taught me to read old maps. Later he mentioned that this kind of thing makes up the majority of his work — city mouse buys a place in the country, wants to know its story. If he was exhausted by yet another one of us showing up wide-eyed with questions, he didn’t let on. But I was definitely that person.
I spent an hour reading, taking pictures of pages I couldn’t check out, and mentally plotting my return trip. “We’re open Wednesday through Saturday, 10:30 to 3:30,” he told me. “I’ll be in touch,” I said on my way out. I wonder how many times he’s heard that.
Since then I’ve gone a little deeper. I found a reprint of one of the books I was reading on eBay and ordered it — it should arrive this week — but then I discovered the PDF online anyway. That led me to start writing some code (read: AI wrote some code) to search records, synthesize government land documents and permits, and extract information from that PDF.
And that’s when the question hit me: using AI as a research assistant, could you actually generate a podcast about the history of your house?
A few weeks ago I wrote about the window we’re in right now — this brief period where AI feels like a toy, before it becomes obligatory. Where you can build things not because you have to, but because you wonder what would happen if.
This is what happens if. You point an AI at two centuries of land records and it helps you find the story. I’ve included an audio excerpt of an early draft and some show notes below.
The onion king who went bankrupt. The house was built in 1840 by Joseph Hyde Wakeman — farming royalty whose family had been here since 1648. He died an insolvent debtor due to the Panic of 1857.
The woman who doesn’t exist. Frances R. Brooks bought the place in 1935 and doubled its size. Butler’s pantry. Library. Park-like grounds. But I can’t find her anywhere — census records, social registers, newspapers. She’s a ghost.
The painter who changed his name. André Gisson, born Anders Gittelson. An American Impressionist who lived here from 1985 to 1999, painting the French countryside while looking out at Connecticut.
Three owners. Three layers of reinvention. The Puritan farmer who lost everything. The mysterious woman who reimagined his farmhouse. The painter who reinvented himself.
A podcast about the history of your house? Maybe. I’ll let you know what Ed thinks — assuming he remembers me.
