FAQs

My services include research services where clients might hire me to access a record that isn’t digitized but I can get locally, limited projects to locate one or two facts about a specific ancestor through online or in person research, or hundreds of hours of research and analysis for clients who love family history but don’t have time or ability to conduct all the research themselves. I can also work with clients who enjoy doing the research to assess their current documentation and suggest next steps to break through a brick wall.

I also create historical context reports for clients who want to understand more about the events happening around their ancestors but want to keep their focus on the genealogy side of things. I accept speaking engagements and writing assignments on genealogy methodology, best practices, and areas that I specialize in like writing/editing, photo management, and specific communities and heritages.

There isn’t an easy answer to this! For any client, you will be provided an estimate before we begin, including a maximum amount of hours and a budget for fees like purchasing vital records. You won’t be surprised by unexpected charges, ever. This is one reason I prefer to do a 30 minute free consultation before I get started, so we can discuss how much work is involved and agree on a rate and an amount of hours for the work.

I charge $35-$55 an hour for my research work, depending on the specific type of service you are hiring me for. For instance, if you just need to me get you a record from a Wisconsin state office near me, you will be charged a minimum of one hour at my lowest hourly fee along with any travel/parking and record purchase fees, as this is typically very straightforward, simple work. The more complicated a project is, the more it will cost, but I always want to work with clients to find that sweet spot between their budget and the value of my expertise.

For presentations, I usually accept a flat fee that can vary by location, length, and complexity.

If you hire me for a record retrieval, article, or presentation, you will get exactly what you have purchased. If you hire me for a research project, you will receive a research report detailing my findings, including an analysis of what I uncovered, copies of all records located, and suggestions for next steps in your research. If you purchase a historical context report, we will discuss what your needs are, and you will receive a report that matches your parameters.

Right now, I am able to start new client work within one week of the contract being signed, however the full timeline varies quite a bit based on how much work you are hiring me for — a straightforward research project where we have agreed on 5 hours of work will take me maybe two weeks once I get started, but if you have hired me for 20 hours of complex research and analysis, it can obviously take much longer.

Clients should also keep in mind that there are times when work is delayed as I wait to receive a record, since I am at the mercy of the repositories, societies, museums, etc. who might have limited staff or volunteers to retrieve documents.

Not at all! Typically, I ask for a deposit of 50% of the contracted hours to get started. Then, when the work is finished, I will ask you for the other 50% of my hourly fees as well as for reimbursement for any records I needed to purchase. Once I get that final payment, you receive your research report and all the records I uncovered.

For presentations, articles, and record retrievals, it depends on the specifics. We can discuss via email or on a call so you know what to expect.

I would love that! I actually sell hourly gift cards here, which you can purchase in whatever quantity you’d like. If the recipient doesn’t want to utilize research services, they can apply the hourly amount to cheaper services, and it will be prorated. So if you purchase two hours at $110, but the recipient prefers to just pay me to get a record and digitize some photos for them at $35/hour, they would get a little over three hours worth of this simpler work.

Confidentiality is important, and you should rest assured that unless you give me permission, your information and the details of what I researched for you remain private. As a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, I’m bound by their code of ethics, which includes rules about client confidentiality particularly for living people.

In my research contract, there is an addendum where you can opt in to the sharing of my research, where you can be very specific about what you are or are not okay with me sharing. For instance, you can say it’s okay if I use the research as a case study for professional certification but not for presentations, or not at all, and a variety of other options. You control what I share and where I can share it of this research, especially where it concerns you and your living relatives.

These include French-Canadian, Irish, Canadian, Scottish, and English heritages and locations in the American Midwest and Great Lakes region. I’m also skilled at researching women and LGBTQIA+ individuals throughout history, as they are often less documented.

I will evaluate your request and offer a referral if a different genealogist or professional would serve you better. I never accept an assignment that I’m not fully confident I can complete, and I’d rather clients get exactly what they are looking for than get paid.

Like most professional genealogists, I’m experienced in working with a wide range of records, from the common (census record, birth certificates, etc.) to the complex (land, court, probate, adoption and mental health records). I do particularly specialize in locating women in historical documents, as they don’t always appear as often as our male ancestors, or they might appear in unexpected ways.

In addition to the classic research services with research reports and analysis for clients, I’m an avid student of history, and I love to add historical context whether it’s within a report or as a freestanding historical context document. I’m always reading historical nonfiction about my focus areas or just that I find intriguing — last year, I read a book about the time between World War I and prohibition and the rise of racism and xenophobia; one about the Irish exodus to North America; and one about the complexities of Native American identity and tribal enrollment, and these are just a few of the over 100 books I read! I know not everyone has the time or interest to do this, and I like to leave my clients with an understanding of how the lives of our individual ancestors are intertwined with external events on a local, state, national, and global level.

First and foremost, genealogists typically abide by the Genealogical Proof Standard laid out in the Board for Certification of Genealogists’ Genealogy Standards, which requires “reasonably exhaustive research,” so rest assured, I will leave no stone unturned in my search.

Sometimes, there just isn’t documentation for a certain event or individual where we would like it to be. As an example of this, a recent client was looking for a birth certificate for her grandmother, but the state her grandmother was born in didn’t require birth registrations as stringently in those days, so while some people born at the time did get birth certificates, others never did. However, through researching the movements of the family and documents ranging from newspaper articles to land transfers, I was able to confirm a probable location where her grandmother was born as well as a likely birth date.

Even if I can’t get you that close to the information you were looking for, negative searches — where a genealogist digs into records and finds nothing — still provide important information in their absence, which would be discussed in any report you receive. I also provide all of my clients who hire me for research with next steps, so you might not have an answer, but you’ll have a plan for where to go next.

Whether you are an experienced hobbyist family historian or completely new to genealogy, we need to start with what you know. If you have never done anything with genealogy before, our 30 minute consultation is particularly important, as we can talk about what you are hoping to learn, and I will help you navigate getting me the information I might need to proceed. Sometimes, this is as simple as telling me the names, known locations, and relevant dates for your parents, and I take it from there. If you want to work on gathering information before you hire a professional, I have some tips for new genealogists here. I’m also happy to work with you as more of a consultant, guiding your research and making sure it’s done right including identifying what information you want to find, but with you spending the hours on doing the research itself.

When you are just getting started, it can be tempting to go on Ancestry or FamilySearch and just accept everything other folks have put onto trees there are factual and fully researched, but unfortunately, that’s just not true. The best way to put your family history research on firm ground is to always have at least two sources for any fact you record, particularly sources created at the time of the event or as near to it as possible. I talk about this a lot, so while I have some blog posts already up about it, expect more to come!

For example, imagine that you see an online tree that states your great grandfather’s mother’s maiden name was Jefferson, but it has no source connected to that fact that confirms it. Then, imagine that in your research, you find a death certificate for your great grandfather, where the person who provided the information (called an informant) stated his mother’s maiden name was Jefferson. You might think at this point you have your confirmation, but did the person who provided the information for the death certificate know your great grandfather’s mother? Or was it just something they heard? Now imagine you go further back and find a birth record for this great grandfather that was completed by his father and states the mother’s maiden name was Anderson. What do you believe? Which is most reliable?

That’s why you want as many sources as you can find for anything you state as fact in your family tree. If you kept digging into this family, you might find that Jane Anderson was first married to John Jefferson, was widowed, and then married your great great grandfather and had your great grandfather. So both Anderson and Jefferson were names she used, but only one is her family name, and that online tree is wrong. Imagine now trying to trace her family beyond her, but using what you found on someone else’s tree — you might follow the wrong records for years, and even talk with Jefferson “cousins” who actually have no connection to you.

Family history is worth doing right, and if you’re researching history, the best records are always the ones from when events were happening. And if you hire me, I prioritize original records over unverified online hints to ensure your family history is built on a solid foundation.

This comes down to personal preference, generally. I discuss some common options here, but I personally use both Ahnenblatt to have a version that lives on my computer and Ancestry to have something connected to my DNA testing and that family members can find. Ancestry is easy to use for records that you find on their site, but is more complicated when you have external records, so don’t get trapped into only using Ancestry records for this reason — there’s a lot of good information out there that isn’t on Ancestry! Also, be wary of shared trees like on FamilySearch, but other than that, just try out the various options to find what works best for you.

If you want to know what family trees are the easiest to collaborate with a genealogist on, Ancestry does allow you to give edit access to other people, so I can add records directly to your tree for you as I go. The availability of options like this varies depending on the site or software, so if this is an important feature for you, check if your preferred option includes it.

One of the most confusing aspects of genealogy for many is the common DNA testing that has been offered through sites like Ancestry or 23 and Me.

You might notice, for instance, that while your family is proud of Italian heritage, you yourself have only a small amount of Italian DNA — does that mean you were adopted? Not necessarily. The reality is that the DNA origin estimates on these sites are just that — estimates — and DNA is much more complex than the sites explain. DNA is an inheritance that happens through division, and it’s not an equal inheritance to each child. So you might have a brother who is 50% Irish and 50% Italian, while you are 20% Italian, 60% Irish, and 20% German, despite having the same parents. Similarly, your parents didn’t inherit the exact same DNA as their siblings. Think of DNA as a reflection of the heritage you carry in your body, but not a complete picture of your heritage. I myself am primarily French-Canadian by the records and actual individuals in my tree, but primarily Irish by DNA — and that’s reflected in the features I see in myself that my part-Irish grandmother also had. It doesn’t change that I have MANY French-Canadian ancestors, it just means I inherited more of the Irish genetics. And even that is based on comparing to the company’s database, so the more data they get, the more accurate that information will get. Take it all with a grain of salt!

Please note that DNA/genetic genealogy is not one of my specialties, although I do know how to use it to a certain extent to support research. If you are looking for a specialist in genetic genealogy, I’m likely to point you towards other professionals, but I do find it useful at times to reach out to known genetic matches for questions during the research process.