Rooted History exists for a very simple reason: I was tired of only interacting with genealogy as names, dates, and locations. Granted, it was cool to see a birthdate of someone in the 1600s living in Scotland, but I needed more. I needed context. I needed to know what life was like when and where they lived. I wanted to know what they ate, how they lived, and what constraints defined their world.
I was also tired of not being able to see my family tree on my terms. All of it, without boundaries. Even the lines that exist because of oral tradition. I wanted to be able to ask questions about ancestors that were interesting to me in the moment. My professional background as a cybersecurity consultant pushes me to understand patterns within data. I wanted to be able to do the same within my family tree.
The lack of context didn’t fully hit me until I started traveling globally. There have been a few times where I was able to return to where my ancestors lived. Seeing the climate, the space, even some of the old structures from that time made me realize I wasn’t just slightly outside of a context window, I was fully outside that context window. Even within the United States, I visited places that left me wanting deeper understanding. I have an ancestor that was at Haun’s Mill, a site of a tragic massacre back in the 1800s. Today, it is a field next to a stream in the middle of Missouri. What was I missing?
Why couldn’t I see all the countries ancestors were from? Why couldn’t I easily see occupations, average ages of milestones such as marriage or the first child? Why couldn’t I easily see who had the most children or who was the oldest?
I wanted to see patterns and ask any question that popped into my head, no matter how small or strange. Which ancestors from Europe were in the US during the American Revolution? Did anyone move from one country to another in the 1400s? Who was likely involved in dowry marriages?
One of the first biographies I generated was an ancestor born in Denmark in the 1800s. Not in Copenhagen, but on a small island called Bornholm. He later converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was baptized in January. I saw those facts. But a line in the biography changed my understanding of them:
On 15 January 1853, Jens was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Bornholm, Denmark. The ice had to be broken for the baptism—a detail that speaks to both the severity of a Danish winter and the intensity of his conviction. To step into freezing water through a hole chopped in the ice was no casual act; it required determination that burned hotter than the cold.
This resonated with me. It caused me to think about my determination. It brought him to life. In a way, I was there on that frigid bank, watching him enter into freezing water because of his faith.
I could not go back to just facts with this understanding, and I wanted others to experience this as well.
What have I found as I’ve introduced this concept to others? A desire for more. People want to connect with their ancestors. They want to see them in their time and place. Their stories, their existence, provide meaning.
We are also in the perfect technological era for this to happen—at scale and across languages.
The idea of writing biographies about ancestors isn’t new. For generations, professional genealogists have been able to pull together data and combine it with known historical records. But that process is time-consuming, expensive, difficult to scale, and hard to do across language barriers.
AI changes what is possible. I can provide a similar output for a fraction of the price in a timeframe that is laughably fast across 80 languages.
Once I saw what was possible for me—and what it could mean for others—I knew I had to build it.
We can finally connect with our ancestors in a way that has not been possible. I have taken great care to ensure that their lives are given respectful treatment, and that their culture and way of life are not judged by modern standards. I wanted to give people the chance to slow down, walk an old dusty road, and see a great-great-great-great grandfather working to provide for his family.
Our ancestors were never just names, dates, and locations. They lived real lives in real places, shaped by the realities of their time. Rooted History exists to help bring that life back into view, turn our hearts to our ancestors, and connect with them in a more meaningful way.
