Is John Smith My Name?
What if the world’s most common name carried a secret?
Is John Smith My Name? is part detective story, part family road trip, and part experiment in how emerging AI can bring history to life. Civil engineer John Oliver Smith and storyteller Davar Ardalan set out to confirm his English or Irish roots — only to uncover a hidden German-American story stretching from the Shenandoah Valley to Württemberg, Germany.
At the center is CK, Catherine Kessler AI: both a Custom GPT archivist and a Voice AI persona powered by Amazon Polly. Built on transcripts, archives, and research, CK makes history interactive, letting listeners ask questions, hear ancestral voices, and explore German-American contributions in real time.
Relaunching ahead of John’s research trip to Germany, the podcast blends genealogy, archives, and cutting-edge AI into an immersive story that asks: What does it mean to truly know your name?
You can engage with CK, the AI companion to this podcast on ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-68c1b698d690819186f512e0100547ae-ck
Is John Smith My Name?
The Schmidt Thread Revealed
The search comes full circle in Rockingham County, where church records link the family back to Johannes Albrecht Schmidt (1729–1798) of Württemberg, Germany. With CK’s voice woven into the narrative, the story expands from one family to millions of Germans who crossed the Atlantic, contributing to printing, farming, education, and democratic reform movements like the Revolution of 1848. Yet the story is also one of struggle, from the burning of county courthouses and lost records, to waves of anti-German sentiment during World War I, when names like Schmidt became Smith. The episode reflects on the tension between assimilation and identity, asking what it means to reclaim a name and carry its history forward into the present.
You can engage with CK, the AI companion to this podcast on ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-68c1b698d690819186f512e0100547ae-ck
- Kinship Family Resource Center
- Rocktown History, VA
- VAGenWeb Project
- Frieden’s Church
- Germans in America
- German Immigrants and American Politics
- US Census German American
- Jackson Center, Ohio
- John Smith Remembering the Moon Landing
- Juanita Smith 70th Class Reunion
Executive Producer: Davar Ardalan
Host: John Oliver Smith
Genealogist & Curator: Jean Conte, Abigail Koontz
Historian/Researcher: Dale MacAllister & Margaret Hotchner
Sound Design: Javier Perez
Podcast Art: ChatGPT
AI Marketing Assistant: ChatGPT
