Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Ask Google Gemini Deep Research AI: "Provide a Family History of John Nicholas Brocke (1853-1938)"

The Artificial Intelligence tools (like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Meta, CoPilot, GenSpark and Perplexity) can provide much useful and nearly instant information about subjects in a concise format, especially when they have been pre-trained on a large volume of information about the subjects.

Nearly all of these AI tools now have a deep research/search/mind/reasoning tool, and some of them are free to use on a limited scale.  

Google Gemini now has a Deep Research tool that can search the Internet and its pre-trained information to provide a summary of a person's life.  However, it (and all of the AI tools!) depend on availability of information about the subject.  If  information is not in a pre-trained text, or is not searchable online, the information will be lacking. 

To test Gemini Deep Research out for finding information about a historical person, I wanted to choose as my subject a historical person that is not my ancestor.  I chose one who is my wife's ancestor - her great-grandfather John Nicholas Brocke (1853-1938) - for whom I have done some research but not written a genealogical sketch as a blog post.

1)  My prompt for the Google Gemini Deep Research tool today was:  "Please provide a family history of John Nicholas Brocke (1853-1938), including his birth family, spouse, children and grandchildren."

2)  Like the other reasoning models, this model formulates a research plan to respond o the query.  Here is the top of the Research Plan information:


3)  Then it carries out the research plan and creates a report based on the sources found and used:


4)  Here is the text report created by the Gemini Deep Research tool for my subject:

Family History of John Nicholas Brocke (1853-1938)

This report details the family history of John Nicholas Brocke, born in 1853 and deceased in 1938, compiled from available genealogical records and family history resources. The aim is to provide a comprehensive account of his birth family, spouse, children, and grandchildren, drawing upon the provided research materials which offer varying levels of detail regarding different family members and connections . The information spans the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries, with a focus on the geographical locations of Michigan, Nebraska, and Idaho, where John Nicholas Brocke and his family resided at different points in their lives.   

The Birth Family of John Nicholas Brocke

According to the research material, John Nicholas Brocke (1853-1938) was the son of John Peter Brocke and Christina (Webber) Brocke . Records indicate that John Nicholas Brocke was born in Michigan . Further investigation into the ancestry of his parents reveals that John Peter Brocke was born on January 6, 1826, in Germany . This is corroborated by another record which specifies his birthplace as Prussia, Germany, with the same birth date and a death date of February 13, 1891 . The parents of John Peter Brocke are identified as Peter Heinrich Brocke and Helena Catharina Diekershof . Christina Webber, the mother of John Nicholas Brocke, was born in September 1831 in Germany . While multiple sources point to a German or Prussian origin for John Peter Brocke, one record suggests that he married Christina Webber in Baltimore, Maryland, USA . This may indicate that the family immigrated to the United States through the port of Baltimore or resided there for a period before moving to Michigan.   

Information regarding the siblings of John Nicholas Brocke is also present in the research material. By the year 1880, four of the oldest children of John Peter and Christina Brocke had already established their own households . One identified sibling is Mary Brocke, who was born in Cedar County, Nebraska, in 1866 . Census data from 1880 further supports this, listing a 14-year-old daughter named Mary Brocke living with John and Christina in Vermillion . Another sibling identified is Frank Brocke, born in October 1879 . While one source initially associates Frank with John Nicholas Brocke's marriage to Anna Grieser, another record clarifies that Frank was a son of John and Christina Brocke and was married and living in Vermillion by 1900 . The fact that four older siblings had moved out by 1880, along with the identification of Mary and Frank, suggests a larger birth family for John Nicholas Brocke, although the names of the other siblings are not explicitly mentioned in the provided material. Christina (Webber) Brocke passed away after 1900, with one record suggesting she lived until 1914 .   

Marriage to Anna Grieser

John Nicholas Brocke married Anna Grieser in 1877 in Cedar County, Nebraska . Another record specifies the marriage date as April 24, 1877, in Cedar, Nebraska . A slight variation appears in one source stating the marriage occurred in 1878 . Despite this minor discrepancy, the consensus is that their marriage took place around 1877 or 1878 in Cedar County, Nebraska. Anna Grieser was born in 1859 and died in 1936 . She is listed as a family member of Charles Frank Grieser, suggesting a familial connection within the Grieser family . This connection could provide further avenues for exploring Anna's ancestral background if more detailed information is sought. Census data from 1880 shows Anna Brocke, aged 20, living with Nicholas Brocke, aged 25, which aligns with their reported birth years and the approximate year of their marriage .   

The Children of John Nicholas Brocke and Anna Grieser

John Nicholas Brocke and Anna Grieser had eight children together between the years 1878 and 1894 . One of their children was Amelia Anna Brocke, born in November 1884 and who lived until 1975 . Another child, John Ignatius Brocke, was born in February 1878 in Idaho . This might initially seem inconsistent with the stated birth range and location, but census data from 1900 shows a John Brocke born in February 1878 in Idaho, working as a farm laborer, with his father born in Michigan and mother in Missouri, which likely refers to him . Cemetery records indicate a John Brocke with the lifespan 1878-1931 in Julieetta, Idaho . Further identified children include Charles Joseph Brocke, born on November 10, 1892, who died in 1946, and Nicholas Francis Brocke, born on November 2, 1894, who died in 1945 . Records also mention a son named Joseph Brocke, born on December 18, 1888 . Additionally, a child named Ethel May Brocke was born in 1892 and died in 1893 . This accounts for seven identified children. One source mentions that they had five children, four of whom were living , which contradicts the more consistent information pointing to eight children. The identified children of John Nicholas Brocke and Anna Grieser are summarized in the following table:   

The Grandchildren of John Nicholas Brocke

Through their daughter Amelia Anna Brocke, John Nicholas Brocke and Anna Grieser had at least one grandchild, Leo Severt Leland, who was born on August 19, 1911, in Gardiner, Montana . Leo Severt Leland (1911-2002) married Edna May Schaffner (1913-1979) [living person information redacted]. While the research material provides details about the descendants of Amelia Anna Brocke Leland, it does not contain information regarding grandchildren from John Nicholas Brocke's other children.   

Conclusion

The genealogical information gathered from the provided research material offers a significant insight into the family history of John Nicholas Brocke (1853-1938). His parents were John Peter Brocke, born in Germany in 1826 and who passed away in 1891, and Christina (Webber) Brocke, born in Germany in 1831 and who died after 1900. He married Anna Grieser (1859-1936) in Cedar County, Nebraska, in 1877 or 1878. Together, they had eight children between 1878 and 1894: John Ignatius, Frank, Amelia Anna, Joseph, Ethel May, Charles Joseph, Nicholas Francis, and one other unidentified child. Through his daughter Amelia Anna Brocke Leland, John Nicholas Brocke had at least one grandchild, Leo Severt Leland, who further had children and grandchildren.

Despite the information gathered, there are still areas where the provided material is limited. The names of all of John Nicholas Brocke's siblings are not fully known, and information about grandchildren from his other children is absent. To gain a more complete understanding of his family history, further research could focus on consulting census records from 1860, 1870, and 1900 to potentially identify the other siblings of John Nicholas Brocke. Examining vital records such as birth, marriage, and death certificates for all of his children could also provide more detailed information about their spouses and offspring, thus expanding the knowledge of his grandchildren and subsequent generations. Online genealogy databases and additional family history websites may also contain further records and biographical details related to the Brocke and Grieser families.

Sources used in the report

Sources read but not used in the report

[not listed here]

5)  The "Thoughts" that went into the report are also provided from the right-hand panel after the source listings.  Here is the top of the "Thoughts" portion:


6)  The user is asked if s/he wants to "Generate Audio Overview."  I did and you can see on the left-hand side of the screen above that an 8 minute, 49 second audio overview was created titled "From Prussia to Potato King: Unpacking the Life of John Nicholas Brocke."  The user can download the WAV file. 

7)  How good is this family history genealogical sketch?  I note the following about this AI tool:
  • It found several of my blog posts (I use Blogger, which is a Google product) about the subject and other family members.
  • It used information from WikiTree, Find A Grave, FamilySearch, Ancestry, USGenWeb and several online archives.  All of those are found in a "normal" Google search. 
  • The information does not yet access the next level of an ancestor profile on the free sites or pay sites.  
  • It did not seem to access information from other genealogy record providers like MyHeritage, Findmypast, American Ancestors, etc.
  • It only looked for specific records like birth, marriage, death, obituary and census records in the source texts.  Note that it cannot search in online databases.
  • The Research Plan seems well thought out, but did not mention looking for church records, immigation records, migration within the USA, military records, occupations, land records, probate records, published books, periodicals, state or national archives, etc.  
  • The Conclusion also didn't mention the additional record types.
  • It discussed conflicting information but did not draw a conclusion.
  • The Audio Overview is similar to the one in Google NotebookLM but that is to be expected.
If I had written a genealogical sketch (e.g., like my 52 Ancestors sketches), I would have included more detailed information about my subject person, and asking this same prompt at a later time would include that information.  I wonder if I had asked for locality information, historical events, and social history if it would have included it.  I will have to check that out!

You can see my entire Google Gemini Deep Research discussion in   https://gemini.google.com/app/25b537ceea9098e8. 

                              ==============================================

Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page.  Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.

Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

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