Genealogy with AI: How Gemini Helped (and Misled) My Birch Family Research

With a bit of time to spare before work, I decided to have a quick look at my recent DNA matches on Ancestry, to see if any had popped up that might be related to my Bond/Birch line where I’ve been stuck behind a brickwall for some years.

Birch Family Clue

At some point between the back and forth between my DNA matches and my RootsMagic program, I noticed a web hint on FindMyPast for my third great-grand uncle Alfred Birch. I clicked through and found a suggested marriage for an Alfred Birch in Manchester in 1843. The place seemed plausible so I clicked through, opening the image. I saw that the Alfred Birch on the marriage record had a father by the name of William Birch which was my Alfred’s father’s name. Then I saw William’s occupation was ‘tobacconist’. While William Birch of Manchester is a common name, William Birch, tobacconist of Manchester was highly likely to be my family!

However, when I went to enter the information in my tree, I realized that, rather inconveniently, my Alfred had died in 1799. If that was true, then he clearly did not marry anyone in 1843. I revisited the death record and was quite certain that it was correct. If that was the case, then could another child have been born after 1799 who had been given the name of his deceased brother?

New Ancestor Found

A quick search of birth records showed one Alfred Birch baptized in 1803 in Manchester Cathedral with parents William and Elizabeth Birch. This was a second Alfred and a new child for William and Elizabeth Birch!

With that, I entered the new Alfred Birch baptized 1803 and added his wife from the 1843 marriage record. The wife was Ann Walker, widow, whose father was listed as John Tonge.

Since both Alfred and Ann had been married previously, I decided to try to find them both in the 1841 census. I found a record that had an Alfred and Mary Birch living in Ashton upon Lynne where Alfred was listed as a cotton rover, however on the 1843 marriage record, my Alfred was listed as a cotton spinner. So I turned to Gemini, asking how likely it was that this was the same person based on the occupation.

The progression from cotton rover in the 1841 Census to cotton spinner in 1843 is a natural career advancement within the textile industry of that era.

Gemini AI, March 2026

So what about the change of address? Once again, I asked Gemini how likely it was.

Ashton-under-Lyne is approximately 6 miles east of Manchester. It was extremely common for residents of Ashton-under-Lyne to be married at Manchester Cathedral (then known as the Collegiate Church) in 1843 for several practical reasons. 

Gemini AI, March 2026

With that, I started a search to see if a Mary Birch had died between 1841 and 1843 in either place. I found a newspaper article from the Manchester Times dated Saturday 19 November 1842 that read:

Suicide.— A woman named Mary Birch, aged 39 years, wife of Alfred Birch, cotton spinner of Dukinfield, committed suicide on Monday by swallowing an ounce of arsenic, which she purchased the same day at a druggist’s shop in the town. Medical assistance was obtained for her immediately after swallowing the poison (which she is said to have mixed with water), but it was of no avail, and she died a few hours afterwards. An inquest was held on view of the body before C. Hodson, Esq., coroner, at the Buck Inn, Dukinfield, on Tuesday, when the jury returned a verdict that the deceased poisoned herself, being insane.

British Newspaper Archive, Manchester Times, Saturday, 19 November 1842 – OCR text edit by Gemini March 2026

While the newspaper article was quite legible, the OCR text version had many errors. The above text (perfectly rendered) was geneated by Gemini from the OCR text which will allow me to record the text in my genealogy software.

I then ordered a digital image of the death certificate from the GRO, after asking Gemini to confirm the correct one to order. Once I received it, I asked Gemini to transcribe it for me.

73
Fourteenth November 1842
at High Street, Dukinfield
Mary Birch
female, 39 years
Wife of Alfred Birch,
cotton spinner
Poisoned herself with arsenic, being insane
Charles Duckworth, Coroner
Thomas Brammell
Sixteenth November 1842
John Brierley, Registrar

Transcription of Death Certificate for Mary Birch

So now we have the place of Dukinfield which is different that Ashton under Lynne. Is that reasonable? I asked Gemini.

Geographic Proximity: Ashton-under-Lyne and Dukinfield were essentially one continuous industrial community divided only by the River Tame. It was standard for a worker to live in one and work (or marry) in the other.

Gemini AI, March 2026

Gemini Halucinations

Gemini then offered that an Alfred Birch with wife Ann Birch appeared in the 1851 census with family members with the surname of Walker. This would be good collaborating evidence that I was on the right track, however when I tried to find the record that Gemini told me about, I was unable to locate it, even after exploring the record set for the citation provided. When I told Gemini that the record did not appear to exist, it apologized.

I apologize—you’re absolutely right to question that. Upon closer look at the 1851 census records for the Manchester area (specifically pieces covering Chorlton, Hulme, and Salford), there is no entry for an Alfred and Ann Birch with Walker family members on Page 22 of the references I previously cited.

Gemini AI, March 2026

Despite the apology, it kept trying to give me other references to the 1851 census that contained the information I was seeking. One after another were for pages that did not exist. Finally it gave me a reference that did exist, however the pages were completely unreadable, having been stained red, obliterating any text. I told Gemini “It seems to me you are hallucinating about the census. None of the records you suggest exist. Can you suggest further research without making anything up?”, and it responded:

I hear you, and I appreciate the directness. You are right to be frustrated—I was trying to piece together a record from fragmented data, and in doing so, I provided specific references that don’t hold up under your scrutiny. I won’t provide any more specific folio or piece numbers unless I can verify them with 100% certainty. The challenge with the 1851 Manchester Census is a well-known hurdle in genealogy: water damage. A significant portion of the original 1851 returns for Manchester (specifically pieces covering the city center, Hulme, and Ardwick) was damaged by floodwater while in storage. Because of this, many records were never microfilmed or were filmed in such poor quality that they are essentially unreadable in standard databases like Ancestry or FamilySearch.

Gemini AI March 2026

1851 Census Water Damage

I found it interesting that Gemini acknowledged the water damage I saw on some of the records it had suggested as well as apologizing again. It is important to tell AI models not to make anything up in each chat so they don’t put together unrelated information in an effort to be helpful. The information about the water damage, however, turned out to be completely true.

When the 1851 census was first studied on microfiche, family historians from Manchester discovered that hundreds of thousands of entries were missing. The reports of almost everyone who lived in the registration districts of Manchester, Salford, Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne had been so badly damaged in a flood, they were considered too fragile to be filmed.

BBC, Friday, 26 November 2010

Using different forensic techniques, including the use of a special multispectral imaging camera, many of the damaged pages have been transcribed, but had Gemini not told me about the records that were damaged, I would not have known that many are still missing.

Doing a manual search, I was able to find the 1851 census record for Alfred and Ann Birch in Ancestry. The record showed that two nieces, Ann and Sarah Bradbury, were living with them rather than family members named Walker.

Conclusions

In the end, while the discovery of the second Alfred made for an intriguing side story, it did not provide any new breakthroughs in tracing my Birch family line.

What does emerge more clearly, however, is the fragile nature of the Birch family in the early 19th century. Of William and Elizabeth Birch’s children, only Alfred and my great-great-great-grandmother, Cordelia Esther Birch, lived to adulthood. Their early lives were marked by loss, with their mother Elizabeth dying in 1812 and their father William in 1817, leaving Cordelia—already an adult—to likely play a key role in helping her younger brother find his footing in the cotton industry.

Cordelia’s life was shaped by both hardship and resilience. After marrying Thomas Bond in 1822 and being widowed just two years later with a young child, she quickly remarried John Haywood and relocated to Kirkham, where she remained for the rest of her life.

Alfred’s path appears quieter but no less poignant. He married twice—first to Mary Sanderson, and later to widow Ann Walker (née Tonge)—but neither marriage produced children. He died in 1859, followed closely by Ann in 1860, bringing his line to a close.

Though this line of inquiry did not break down the long-standing brick wall, it adds depth and context to the lives behind the names of the elusive Birch family.