Handwriting Recognition, Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch.org, and Gemini 3

 

This post used AI to generate the above image and to support the research herein. Further, all the information in this post is supported by the short bibliography of sources at the end of the article. 

As a long time genealogist I have spent countless hours trying to decipher old handwriting, some dating back to the 15th Century and before. I have also studied Paleography and many different languages. I am painfully aware of the challenges faced by genealogists to decipher handwritten, valuable genealogical documents. I am now thankful to have lived long enough to see this perpetual obstacle to research partly resolved. 

Let's go back, with the assistance of Google Gemini 3, to a short history of handwriting recognition. 

1950s - Origins: The concept began with "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR) for machine-printed text. Early attempts to read handwriting (like the "Perceptron" neural networks) were largely theoretical or limited to single, clearly written digits.

1989 - The Neural Network Pivot: Yann LeCun and colleagues at AT&T Bell Labs developed the first effective Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to read handwritten zip codes for the US Postal Service. This paved the way for modern deep learning.

1990s - The PDA Era: Devices like the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot popularized "online" handwriting recognition (tracking pen movement in real-time), though accuracy was often the subject of ridicule.

2010s - Deep Learning: The shift to deep neural networks allowed computers to recognize "offline" static handwriting (images of text) with much higher accuracy, enabling the transcription of historical documents.

What happened to supercharge this long history? The answer is the real breakthrough in 2025. The new Gemini 3.0 model has demonstrated a massive leap in handwriting recognition, achieving a 0.56% Character Error Rate (CER) on 18th-century manuscripts. This is considered "expert human" level and is a significant improvement over previous models (which hovered around 4% error rates).

Both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org have been implementing advanced handwriting technology. Once again, here is a summary to their attempts from Gemini 3. 

The application of AI in genealogy has been defined by two distinct but complementary approaches led by Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.

Ancestry.com focused its efforts on solving the problem of scale and speed, particularly for the release of the 1950 US Census. To handle over 150 million names, they developed a proprietary AI trained on documents that were digitally "aged" with synthetic coffee stains and rips, teaching the machine to read through historical damage. This system utilized a confidence score approach: the AI transcribed the clear text, and only flagged ambiguous entries for human review. This technology has since evolved into a consumer-facing "Transcribe" feature, allowing users to apply the same powerful recognition tools to their personal family letters and recipes.

In contrast, FamilySearch has focused on depth and context through their "Full-Text Search" experiment. Moving beyond traditional indexing—which only extracts specific details like names and dates—FamilySearch’s AI transcribes every single word on a document page. This shift fundamentally changes research by allowing users to search for occupations, descriptions, or incidental mentions (such as "blacksmith shop") rather than just names. This method is currently being aggressively expanded to unlock complex, unstructured documents like land deeds and wills, which have historically been the most difficult for computers to parse.

 These development add another layer of complexity to the role AI plays in actual genealogical research. AI is a tool, not a fad or a gimmick. However, I can only be useful if the user knows how to ask it questions and interpret the answers. The obvious extraction of this principle is that people who cannot read and write cannot use AI effectively and I would add that those people who lack advanced computer skills are also unable to use AI for accurate historical and genealogical research. This is not an elitist statement it is reality. 

Here are some supporting sources for the information above. 

“A Journey Through History: The Evolution of OCR Technology.” Accessed November 26, 2025. https://www.docsumo.com/blog/optical-character-recognition-history.

“Ancestry® Proprietary Artificial Intelligence-Powered Handwriting Recognition Technology Processes Over 150 Million Records from the 1950 U.S. Census in Only 9 Days | Ancestry Corporate.” Accessed November 26, 2025. https://ancestry-prod2.adobecqms.net/content/ancestry-corp/en-us/blog/ancestry-proprietary-artificial-intelligence-powered-handwriting-recognition-technology.

“Ancestry® to Apply Handwriting Recognition Artificial Intelligence to Create a Searchable Index of the 1950 U.S. Census.” Accessed November 26, 2025. https://ancestry-prod2.adobecqms.net/content/ancestry-corp/en-us/blog/ancestry-apply-handwriting-recognition-artificial-intelligence-create-searchable-index-1950-us.

“BREAKING NEWS Ancestry Released NEW Handwriting Recognition & Transcription from YOUR IMAGES.” Genealogy TV, August 27, 2025. https://genealogytv.org/breaking-news-ancestry-released-new-handwriting-recognition-transcription-from-your-images/.

FamilySearch Full-Text Search: A Genealogy Game Changer - Genealogy Bargains. Bargains. August 21, 2025. https://genealogybargains.com/familysearch-full-text-search/.

Guinness World Records. “First Neural Network to Identify Handwritten Characters.” Accessed November 26, 2025. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/760232-first-neural-network-to-identify-handwritten-characters.html.

“Performance and Its Stunning,” Google’s Large Model Rarely Creates “Momentum” before Its Release, Will Gemini 3.0 Debut This Week? “‘Performance and Its Stunning,’ Google’s Large Model Rarely Creates ‘Momentum’ before Its Release, Will Gemini 3.0 Debut This Week?” Accessed November 26, 2025. https://longbridge.com/enhttps://longbridge.com/news/266095506.

“The Release of Google’s Gemini 3.0 Pro Model Card Demonstrates Significantly Enhanced Multimodal Capabilities, Surpassing Competitors.” Accessed November 26, 2025. https://news.futunn.com/en/post/65096729/the-release-of-google-s-gemini-3-0-pro-model.

“The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition.” October 10, 2025. https://newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-writing-is-on-the-wall-for-handwriting-recognition/.

Wikipedia. “Handwriting recognition.” October 3, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Handwriting_recognition&oldid=1314898544.