Over the past two months I have off and on tested the MyHeritage GAIA (Genealogy AI Agent) feature, having been granted early access in exchange for feedback on the feature.
Details about GAIA are available on the MyHeritage introduction blog post -- https://blog.myheritage.com/2026/11/introducing-gaia-myheritages-groundbreaking-genealogy-ai-agent/.
I want to write a series of blog posts about my explorations into this artificial intelligence tool that is different from all of the others -- It is a research tool. It is not an LLM, it is not skilled in social history.
I pondered which exploration to write about first. I decided that I should use GAIA to explore what a beginning genealogist might use it for -- how can it help me find out information about the life of a person who is not in my family tree.
(AI Google Gemini Notebook Infographic - Testing MyHeritage's GAIA Research Agent)
I chose my one-time neighbors on 30th Street, Willet and Ruby LaTourette. When I knew them in the 1960s they were elderly, childless, and seemingly happy. Until I did this exploration, I didn't even know when they were born, married, or died.
Here is the GAIA opening page at https://www.myheritage.com/research/ai-research (on MyHeritage, click "Research" > "Search all records" > Research Agent):
The suggested topics in the middle of the page are:
- "I want to research a specific person."
- "Am I related to anyone famous?"
- "Where did my family come from?"
- "Help me verify a family story or rumor."
In the prompt box to "Ask a question about your family" I typed:
"Willet J LaTourette (1876-1968) was a neighbor of mine in San Diego. What information can you find about his birth parents, grandparents, spouse, and children?"
Note that when I picked Willet to research, I searched the California Death Index for his name, birth and death dates in order to give GAIA a starting point.
GAIA went right to work and spoke to me:
Here is what it said in the first response:
I'd enjoy digging into this one — LaTourette is a distinctive Huguenot-derived surname (from a French family that settled early in New Jersey/New York), so a man born in 1876 with that name and a specific lifespan should leave a fairly traceable paper trail. San Diego in his later years also suggests he may have migrated west, possibly from the New York/New Jersey area where that family name concentrated.
With a full name, a precise birth year, and a death year, I have enough to search well. Let me lay out how I'd approach it:
Direct records on Willet himself — census, vital, and tree records should surface his parents and birthplace, and later records (marriage license, death record) should surface his spouse and possibly children.
A household/census record is especially valuable here since it could capture him as a child with both parents and siblings in one shot.
A web search on the LaTourette surname and his life can fill in context MyHeritage's catalog might not hold — e.g., if he's connected to the historic Huguenot LaTourette families, or if there's a San Diego-area obituary.
Let me get started on the records search and the web context in parallel.
Good progress — the records converge nicely on one person. Here's what I'm seeing:
Willet J. LaTourette himself — the California Death Index and Social Security Death Index both confirm birth September 1, 1876 in Iowa and death June 14/15, 1968 in San Diego, matching exactly what you gave me.
His parents — both the 1880 and 1910 census records independently name his parents as Wilbert LaTourette and Mary J. LaTourette, with the family in Iowa (1880) and later in Denver, Colorado (1910). Two independent census records agreeing on the same parents is a solid signal.
Siblings — the 1880 census also lists brothers Arthur and John G. LaTourette in the household.
His spouse — a 1923 Denver city directory lists his wife as Ruby E. LaTourette, and he's shown working as an engineer in both Denver and Detroit directories across the 1910s–20s.
I don't have his children yet, and I haven't pinned down grandparents — that would need to go back a generation from Wilbert and Mary. On the web side, I didn't find a direct obituary yet, but I did find several solid finding-aids pointing to where a San Diego 1968 obituary likely lives (newspaper indexes and the county vital records office) — useful if we want to chase his death record and obituary directly.
Let me show you the core records first.
Sources for Willett J Latourrette: Direct mentions (5)
Records and web pages that name someone in your research. The relevant ones also appear on the Sources tab of the Overview panel.
- Historical record
- California Deaths, 1940 - 1997
- High Confidence
- People: Willett J Latourrette
Historical record
- U.S. Social Security Death Index (SSDI)
- High Confidence
- People:
- Willett J Latourrette
- Show more (3)
[NOTE: These are from MyHeritage record collections.]
[NOTE: It did not provide the exact birth and death dates from these records. Granted, I didn't ask for exact dates nd places.]
Leads (4) -- Promising web sources the agent found but couldn't access, like an archive, index, or catalogue. A starting point for you to explore yourself.
This is a good checkpoint — I now have Willet's confirmed vitals (matching what you gave me exactly), his parents Wilbert and Mary J. LaTourette, two brothers (Arthur and John G.), and a likely wife, Ruby E. LaTourette, from a Denver city directory. I haven't yet confirmed his grandparents or found any children.
Since this is new information I found rather than something you confirmed, I want to check: does Wilbert and Mary J. LaTourette as his parents, and Ruby E. LaTourette as his wife, sound right to you — or is this the first you're hearing of these names?
A few threads worth pulling next: digging for Wilbert's own parents (Willet's grandparents) going further back in Iowa records, searching directly for any children of Willet and Ruby, and chasing down that 1968 San Diego obituary which could name surviving family in one shot.
I'll pause here for your read on these names, since this is new ground I'm building on. Once you confirm (or correct) the family, I can push forward on his grandparents, his children, and that obituary.
[NOTE: The text above calls him "Wilbert" not "Willett" but the records say "Willett"
My second Prompt was then: "Yes, that matches the limited information I have. Ruby's maiden name was Mitchell, I think."
The second GAIA Response was:
Great — glad the parents and siblings line up with what you knew, and thank you for the maiden name on Ruby. That confirms the core family: Willet's parents were Wilbert and Mary J. LaTourette, with brothers Arthur and John G., and his wife was Ruby E. (Mitchell) LaTourette.
Now let's push into the two open threads: his grandparents (Wilbert's own parents, further back in Iowa) and any children he and Ruby had. Let me search both angles.
Both searches turned up strong leads. Let me walk through them.
On the grandparents — I found good news. A FamilySearch tree record pinpoints Wilbert LaTourette's own birth: May 25, 1841 in Fountain, Indiana, and his death June 1, 1914 in Muscatine, Iowa. That same tree record names his parents — Willet's grandparents — as John LaTourette and Eliza (Bogart) LaTourette. This is tree-sourced rather than a vital record, so I'd treat it as a strong clue rather than settled fact, but it's a specific, checkable lead with real names attached.
On children — nothing names Willet and Ruby as parents directly yet, but one record stands out as a strong candidate: a FamilySearch tree entry for Nina Jean LaTourette, born March 14, 1926 in Colorado, died May 22, 2010 in California. The Colorado birth (matching Willet and Ruby's known Denver years) and the eventual California death (matching Willet's San Diego years) fit the family's migration pattern well — but that record names her mother as "Irene Elizabeth McArthur," not Ruby, so I'm not at all confident this is their daughter rather than another LaTourette family's child. I don't want to attach her as a confirmed child on this alone.
Let me show you both so you can weigh in.
I need to fix that — confidence should be an array. Let me also hold off on writing Nina Jean as a confirmed child since the mother's name doesn't match.
Sources for Wilbert La Tourrette:
Direct mentions (1) -- Records and web pages that name someone in your research. The relevant ones also appear on the Sources tab of the Overview panel.
- Family Tree -- FamilySearch Family Tree
- Medium Confidence
- People: Wilbert La Tourrette John La Tourette +3
Sources for Nina Jean LaTourette:
Direct mentions (1) -- Records and web pages that name someone in your research. The relevant ones also appear on the Sources tab of the Overview panel.
- Family Tree -- FamilySearch Family Tree
- Low Confidence
- People: Nina Jean LaTourette Irene Elizabeth McArthur
[NOTE: These are from MyHeritage record collections.]
So here's where things stand:
Grandparents (tree-sourced, not yet record-confirmed): A FamilySearch family tree names Willet's grandparents as John LaTourette and Eliza (Bogart) LaTourette, with Wilbert born May 25, 1841 in Fountain, Indiana and dying June 1, 1914 in Muscatine, Iowa. This is a good, specific lead — but since it comes from someone else's tree rather than a census or vital record, I'd treat the names as a strong clue to verify rather than settled fact.
Children — nothing confirmed yet. I found one tempting candidate, Nina Jean LaTourette (b. 1926 Colorado, d. 2010 California), whose life pattern matches Willet and Ruby's known movements neatly. But that record names her mother as "Irene Elizabeth McArthur" — not Ruby — so I think this is more likely a different LaTourette family entirely, and I haven't added her as a confirmed child.
A few ways to keep pushing: I could search Iowa vital/church records to try to confirm John and Eliza as Wilbert's parents with a primary record rather than a tree; or search more specifically for a Willet/Ruby LaTourette household in a 1930 or 1940 census, which would be the most direct way to catch any children living with them.
Let me know which thread to pull, or if you have any detail — a child's name, a place they lived — that could help narrow things further.
My third Prompt was: "I doubt that Nina is a daughter. Can you find Ruby (Mitchell) LaTourette's birth/death and parents?"
GAIA's third Response was:
Agreed on Nina Jean — I'd already set her aside given the mismatched mother's name, and your instinct confirms it. I'll leave her out of the family entirely.
Now let's turn to Ruby's own line — her birth, death, and parents (the Mitchell family). Searching now.
Ruby Mitchell turns out to be a very common name combination, and this search came back as a crowd rather than a focused match — "Ruby E Mitchell" alone surfaced 128 name-group hits across dozens of collections, with no record directly linking a Ruby Mitchell to Willet LaTourette as spouse. That's the key gap: nothing in this batch independently corroborates "Ruby E. Mitchell" as his wife's maiden name beyond what you told me.
One candidate is worth flagging on its anchors: a Ruby Mitchell born circa 1890 in Colorado, daughter of Ruben A. Mitchell and Jessie Mitchell, with siblings Sam L. and Vivian C. Mitchell, appearing in the 1910 census. Colorado birthplace fits well with Willet and Ruby's known Denver years — but "circa 1890" is just an age estimate from one census, and nothing here names a husband or ties her to Willet, so I'm not confident this is the same woman.
I don't want to attach either of these — the Ruben/Jessie Mitchell family is a plausible lead but unconfirmed, and the broader pool is too undifferentiated to pick from safely.
Sources for Ruby Mitchell:
Direct mentions (1) -- Records and web pages that name someone in your research. The relevant ones also appear on the Sources tab of the Overview panel.
- Historical record -- U.S. Census
- 1910 United States Federal Census
- Low Confidence
- People: Ruby Mitchell Ruben A Mitchell +3
[NOTE: These are from MyHeritage record collections.]
A birth year around 1890 would narrow this sharply — right now I only have Ruby appearing in a 1923 Denver directory with no age given, so I can't tell which "Ruby Mitchell" in Colorado's census records is actually her. Do you happen to know roughly when she was born, where she was from originally, or anything about her family — her parents' names, or where she and Willet might have married? Any one of those would let me pick her out of the crowd with confidence rather than guessing.
My fourth Prompt was: "Searching records, I found Ruby's birth was 5 Apr 1884 in Scotland, death 22 June 1978 in San Diego (from the California Death Index). Also the 1908 passenger list for Ruby ES Mitchell with parents and siblings into New York City aboard Columbia. Parents are George and Elizabeth Mitchell. The 1901 Scotland census shows the family in Glasgow, Scotland."
GAIA's fourth response was:
That's a great find — this reshapes Ruby's story quite a bit from what I had. So Ruby wasn't from Colorado at all — she was born April 5, 1884 in Scotland, appears with her family in the 1901 Glasgow census, and emigrated to New York aboard the Columbia in 1908, traveling with her parents and siblings. Her parents were George and Elizabeth Mitchell. She died June 22, 1978 in San Diego, per the California Death Index — meaning she outlived Willet by a decade.
I have these facts noted now, tagged to your research. Since you found these yourself from records (the passenger list, the 1901 census, and the death index), do you have the actual record identifiers or sources handy, or did you want me to search MyHeritage directly to locate and attach these same records so they're properly backed in the file? I ask because right now these details are logged as what you've told me, but pulling the matching records myself would let me verify them independently and strengthen the file with proper source citations.
I ran this both ways — searching specifically for the passenger list, census, and death record you described, and separately for any corroborating mention of the Mitchell family's emigration — but neither search independently turned up the specific records you cited. "George Mitchell" is an extremely common name, and nothing I found matches the Columbia voyage, the Glasgow 1901 census entry, or a death record pairing Ruby Mitchell with San Diego 1978.
That doesn't mean your find is wrong — it very plausibly means those records sit under a name-group or spelling my search didn't happen to surface this pass (e.g., if it's indexed as "Latourette" rather than "Mitchell," or a slightly different name spelling). For now, I've logged what you found as your own research — Ruby's Scottish birth, the Glasgow 1901 census, the 1908 Columbia passage, and the San Diego death — attributed to you rather than to a record I've independently verified.
If you still have the record itself open, or know the ship's exact spelling or the port of departure, I can try a sharper, more targeted search — passenger lists specifically, narrowed to the Columbia and a Glasgow departure around 1908.
Let me know which thread to chase, or share any extra detail you have — the exact ship spelling, departure port, or a sibling's name — and I'll zero in on the right record.
My fifth Prompt was: "I found them on Ancestry. Did not look on FamilySearch or Findmypast. Which of those records are not on MyHeritage? Your company should have all of those records".
GAIA's fifth Response was:
I hear the frustration — you did real work finding those records, and it's fair to ask why my search didn't turn them up the same way.
I should be straightforward with you: I can't check what a specific competing service holds or compare its catalog to MyHeritage's — that's outside what I can look into here. What I can tell you is what happened on my end: when I searched for the Columbia passenger list and the Glasgow census under the Mitchell name, nothing matched closely enough for me to surface with confidence. That can happen for a few reasons — indexing quirks, a name spelled slightly differently in the original record, or the record simply not being the one that surfaced from the search terms I used.
Rather than guess at why, let me try a sharper, more targeted pass now that I have more precise anchors from what you found — the ship name Columbia, 1908, departing from Scotland, and the 1901 Glasgow census specifically. That's a much more specific search than my earlier broad one.
This time it worked well — the sharper search with the full "Ruby E S Mitchell" name and both parents' names found exactly what you'd described. I found:
A 1901 Scotland census record for Ruby E S Mitchell, born circa 1885 in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, with mother Elizabeth S. Mitchell.
An 1891 Scotland census — a decade earlier — for the same Ruby E S Mitchell, born circa 1884 in Cathcart, Renfrewshire (a district on Glasgow's south side), parents George Mitchell and Elizabeth S. Mitchell.
A matching MyHeritage family tree entry with the same birth and parents.
One small discrepancy worth flagging: the Searcher's notes mention the 1901 census household appears to have been resident in Edinburgh on census night, not Glasgow — which doesn't contradict a Glasgow birth, since families moved, but it's worth keeping in mind rather than assuming "Glasgow" describes her full upbringing. The birth year wavers slightly too — 1884 in one record, 1885 in the other — which is a minor, typical census-rounding discrepancy, not a red flag.
This is a strong match: two independent Scottish census records a decade apart, both naming the same parents, both fitting the April 1884 birth date you found on Ancestry.
Sources for Ruby E S Mitchell:
Direct mentions (2) -- Records and web pages that name someone in your research. The relevant ones also appear on the Sources tab of the Overview panel.
- Historical record -- U.K. & Ireland Census
- 1891 Scotland Census
- High Confidence
- People: Ruby E S Mitchell George Mitchell +7
- Historical record -- U.K. & Ireland Census
- 1901 Scotland Census
- High Confidence
- People: Ruby E S Mitchell Elizabeth S Mitchell +4
[NOTE: These are from MyHeritage record collections.]
That confirms it well — I now have two independent Scottish census records (1891 and 1901), a decade apart, both naming George Mitchell and Elizabeth S. Mitchell as Ruby's parents, which lines up with what you found on Ancestry for the 1908 passenger list and the Glasgow household. That's a solid, record-backed foundation for her family of origin now, not just your own research notes.
Here's where the whole LaTourette picture stands:
- Willet J. LaTourette (1876 Iowa – 1968 San Diego) — confirmed by two independent indexes.
- Parents: Wilbert LaTourette and Mary J. LaTourette, confirmed by two census records a generation apart.
- Siblings: Arthur and John G. LaTourette.
- Grandparents (Wilbert's side): John and Eliza (Bogart) LaTourette — still resting on a single family tree, not yet a primary record.
- Wife: Ruby E. S. (Mitchell) LaTourette, born c. 1884 near Glasgow, Scotland, emigrated 1908, died 1978 San Diego — now backed by two Scottish census records in addition to your own find.
- Children: none confirmed. The one candidate (Nina Jean LaTourette) was ruled out.
The remaining open threads are Willet's grandparents (verifying John and Eliza Bogart LaTourette with an actual Indiana/Iowa vital record rather than just a tree) and Ruby's parents' own backstory, plus still an open question of whether Willet and Ruby had any children at all.
Let me know which direction to take, or share anything else you've turned up — I'm glad to keep building this out with you.
Where to take this next
Verify the LaTourette grandparents with a vital record
Search San Diego records for children of Willet and Ruby
I have more details
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At this point, I stopped because it had answered my question and even answered the question about his spouse. And this blog post is very long. I could have asked for more information about the ancestral lines of the LaTourette family or the Mitchell family. It turns out that Willet LaTourette is a distant cousin of mine based on the FamilySearch Family Tree profiles and my research indicating I have a LaTourette family in New York State in the early 1700s.
Here is the Google Gemini Notebook Video Overview of this blog post (also on my YouTube channel):
Some Opinions about GAIA:The GAIA tool is very responsive -- it wants to please you (like most AI tools) but it needs the user to make decisions and provide direction at times, and in this particular case, do research on another website.
GAIA treats online trees (e.g., MyHeritage and FamilySearch) as clues for further research, and then can use those clues to research MyHeritage records.
To its credit, GAIA found the conflict between the names of Ruby and Nina's mother, and concluded that more information was required.
If I had requested it, GAIA would have added this information to my MyHeritage Family Tree.
This GAIA agent is an excellent "helpmate" to a researcher -- it answers the question, offers suggestions, finds records on MyHeritage (but no other site), and asks the researcher for direction and more information.
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Disclosure: I receive a complimentary PremiumPlus subscription to MyHeritage, and have received other material consideration in past years. I uploaded my autosomal DNA raw data to their DNA product. This does not affect my objective analysis of MyHeritage products. I am a paid subscriber to Family Tree Webinars and love it.
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