Out now, the Irish Genealogical Society International’s The Septs April 2026 issue featuring my article “Reading Between the Lines in Ancestral Journeys.”

I have a complicated relationship with Artificial Intelligence. Most people who know me have heard at least one rant about the dangers of using it indiscriminately. My cynicism isn't without cause; I worry about the staggering environmental impact of massive data centers and the "cognitive offloading" that happens when we stop doing the hard work ourselves—much like the documented cases of professionals whose skills atrophied after relying too heavily on automated tools.

And yet, I’m not a Luddite. I use Alexa in my home, and I’ve collaborated with AI like Gemini to help streamline locality guides or draft complex citations.

But there is one area where my skepticism hits a hard wall: the use of AI to "restore" our ancestors.

Today, a quiet, mostly empty park in Michigan stands where my ancestors lived for generations. In 1835, Toussaint Drouillard was granted just over 76 acres in what is now the Detroit area of Michigan — land he had been on for years already, but shifting borders and ownership of the area meant he had to re-affirm it was his. It wasn’t easy to locate the correct site of the Drouillard property I was looking for, in part because the area was home to many Drouillards. When my 2x great grandfather Peter Francis (also sometimes Pierre Francois) Drouillard died in 1947, his obituary in the Ecorse Enterprise stated that he died in the home where he was born, at 1130 Goddard Road in Lincoln Park, Michigan.

You may have seen the headlines: Canada’s citizenship laws have changed. These updates profoundly affect descendants of Canadians living abroad—especially those of us in the United States, where border crossings historically were incredibly common.

As of 15 December 2025, Bill C-3 removed the "first-generation limit" for passing down Canadian citizenship to children born outside Canada.

One of the things that is perhaps less known about Michigan is that before the assembly lines and the bustle of the modern Motor City, there was a quiet river settlement defined by "ribbon farms" and French-Canadian grit along with Native cooperation and business. To truly understand Detroit’s heritage, we have to look back to 1701 and the founding of Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit.

This is, from left to right, my great grandmother Claudia Caron, her sister Anna Caron, and their mother Margaret (Morin) Caron. I’ve always been fascinated by my great grandmother in part because I see parts of my face and appearance in her, such as her eyebrows and chin and hairline. Genetics are fun!

Claudia lived an interesting life.

On Saturday, May 30 at 1:00 p.m. Central, I’ll be presenting Irish in the Great Lakes for the Wheaton Public Library, co-sponsored by the DuPage County Genealogical Society. This free webinar is open to all, and registration is now open here.

If you have Irish ancestors whose movements you want to understand better, who appear suddenly in Midwestern records—or who seem to move fluidly between the U.S. and Canada—this talk is designed with you in mind.

Online family trees can feel like a gift. With a few clicks, entire generations appear—names, dates, places, even stories—already assembled by someone else. It’s tempting to assume that if a tree exists on a major genealogy website, it must be accurate.

But in reality, online family trees are starting points—not proof. If I could emphasize anything to new family historians, it would be that.

Platforms like Ancestry and FamilySearch allow users to share and copy trees freely. While that collaboration can be incredibly helpful, it also means that errors spread quickly, often without anyone realizing it.

Probably unsurprisingly, there’s overlap between photography and genealogy. My interest in different photographic methods means I can identify different types of film and photos and use them to date photos (my interest in historical fashion is also helpful here). I’m also the person at family gatherings who is most likely to be taking photos and pulling out old family albums to talk about who’s who. Even as a kid, I loved getting out old photos and asking questions about people I didn’t know or moments I wasn’t around for. In many ways, photography and genealogy have always been intertwined for me.

One of my favorite parts of living in Madison, Wisconsin is that this is a city full of history. Delightfully, if you are interested in history and stop by the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Headquarters in downtown Madison, you’ll be immersed in it from the stones of the building to the library and archives it contains.

Thinking about the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks topic for this week, "A Record That Adds Color," I decided to go a little literal.

This map of DeKalb County, Indiana was created in 1863 (digital is from the Library of Congress), and showcases detailed land ownership in the county at the time. DeKalb County is one of three counties in this area that a branch of my maternal line spent generations living in.

I was connected to my Aunt Marie before I even knew it. Marie O’Rourke was my great aunt, the sister of my paternal grandmother, and I grew up seeing her as often as I saw my grandparents. It was her first name that connected us, as my parents gave it to me as a middle name, in part to honor her as well as another family member. But along the way, I found much more that connects us.

Hello! My name is Janelle Asselin, and I have spent nearly my entire adult life researching my own family history while I worked as an editor. As my passion and dedication to genealogy has grown, it led me to decide to pursue genealogy more deeply. I love the written word and always will—but diving into research to help history come alive for myself or others is so fulfilling and enjoyable. Thankfully, it’s important that good genealogists are also good writers, editors, and critical thinkers… all skills I’ve been developing in my editorial career. I plan to use this space to write about my personal research, subjects and areas of genealogy I’m interested in, and genealogy tips and tricks. I love how supportive the genealogy community is, and I want to honor that with my own writing.