DETAILED ARTICLES (Linked from FAQ)

Our Geographic Coverage: Where We Can Help

United States — All 50 States

US research is one of our core specializations. This includes every state: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Some states present unique research challenges. States with burned courthouses — where historical records were destroyed by fire, war, or disaster — require creative workarounds and alternative record sources. States with limited vital record availability before certain dates require different strategies. These are not obstacles that necessarily prevent research; they're realities that a trained genealogist knows how to navigate. Andre can discuss the specific challenges and opportunities for your state during a consultation.

British Isles

The British Isles is one of our core areas of specialization. This includes:

England — All historic and ceremonial counties, including but not limited to: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, London (City and Greater London), Middlesex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex (East and West), Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire (East Riding, North Riding, West Riding).

Wales — All counties, including: Anglesey (Ynys Môn), Brecknockshire (Breconshire), Caernarfonshire, Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Glamorgan, Merionethshire, Monmouthshire, Montgomeryshire, Pembrokeshire, Radnorshire.

Scotland — All historic counties, including: Aberdeenshire, Angus (Forfarshire), Argyll, Ayrshire, Banffshire, Berwickshire, Bute, Caithness, Clackmannanshire, Dumfriesshire, Dunbartonshire, East Lothian (Haddingtonshire), Fife, Inverness-shire, Kincardineshire, Kinross-shire, Kirkcudbrightshire, Lanarkshire, Midlothian (Edinburghshire), Moray (Elginshire), Nairnshire, Orkney, Peeblesshire, Perthshire, Renfrewshire, Ross and Cromarty, Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, Shetland, Stirlingshire, Sutherland, West Lothian (Linlithgowshire), Wigtownshire.

Ireland — All 32 counties across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland: Antrim, Armagh, Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Derry (Londonderry), Donegal, Down, Dublin, Fermanagh, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois (Queen's County), Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly (King's County), Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Tyrone, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow.

A note on experience levels: As with any researcher, my depth of experience varies by county and region. Some areas I've worked in extensively; others I may be encountering for the first time on your project. This is true of virtually any genealogist you speak with — no one has worked in every county of every country. When I'm less familiar with a specific area, I invest non-billable time learning about the available resources before your project clock starts. I don't charge you for my learning curve — I charge you for competent research in that area once I've done my homework.

Scandinavia

Sweden and Denmark are core specialization areas. Andre holds his ICAPGen accreditation specifically in Swedish genealogy. For Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, or other Nordic research, Andre can discuss your project during a consultation — in many cases we can handle it directly or connect you with a specialist.

Other Countries

For research in countries not listed above — Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Mexico, or anywhere else — contact us for a consultation. We can often handle the research directly after familiarizing ourselves with the relevant record systems, or we can work with qualified specialists who have deep expertise in that area.

A Note About Finding the Right Expert

Sometimes the ideal genealogist for your project is someone who has spent decades working in one specific region. If that ultra-specialized expert exists and is available and affordable, you should absolutely hire them. But here's the practical reality: you and I could spend hours searching for that person — and we might not find them, or they might not be taking new clients, or their rates might exceed your budget.

If I'm not your dream genealogist for a particular project, I can at least help you find the right one. I know what questions to ask, I know what qualifications to look for, and I'm building a network of researchers and specialists across different regions and specialties. In the end, we all have finite time and resources, and sometimes the best use of both is working with a competent, credentialed professional who can get started now — rather than spending weeks or months searching for a slightly more specialized one.

How Remote Genealogy Research Works

The Modern Reality of Professional Genealogy

Professional genealogy has always been a remote profession. The vast majority of genealogical research is conducted without ever visiting a local repository in person. Here's how it works in practice:

Most commonly accessed records are available remotely. Billions of historical records have been digitized and are available through online databases, institutional websites, and subscription platforms. Census records, vital records indexes, military records, immigration records, church records, newspaper archives, and much more can be researched from anywhere. Repositories with digitization programs typically prioritize their most frequently accessed collections first, which means the records genealogists need most often are increasingly available online.

Correspondence with repositories. Professional genealogists routinely work with courthouses, archives, churches, and libraries by mail, email, and phone — requesting copies, asking reference staff to check specific entries, or arranging for materials to be pulled. This kind of correspondence-based research has been a cornerstone of professional genealogy for generations.

Inter-library loan. Published periodicals, books, and some microfilmed materials can be accessed through inter-library loan programs. However, it's worth understanding that microfilm distribution is increasingly restricted. The materials used to duplicate microfilm are no longer manufactured, which means existing collections are increasingly kept on-site and guarded against loss while institutions prioritize them for digitization. This is one of the realities of modern research — the field is a mix of methods from decades past and new digital norms, and knowing how to navigate both is part of the professional skill set.

The FamilySearch Library advantage. We are located near the world's largest genealogical library in Salt Lake City, which holds an enormous collection of microfilm, books, and records from around the world — including materials that have not yet been digitized and may not be available anywhere else. This gives us access to resources that many genealogists in other locations cannot easily reach.

Collaboration with local researchers. When a project requires someone with physical access to a specific repository, professional genealogists work with trusted colleagues and record agents in those areas. Before sending someone to a repository — or making the trip ourselves — we do our homework: identifying exactly what we need, locating finding aids that help navigate the collection, and exhausting all remote options first. This ensures that any in-person visit is as focused and efficient as possible.

Research Planning Is a Major Part of the Work

One of the things that makes professional genealogy more complex than people expect is that we're not just asking "what records should we check?" We're also asking "in what order?" and "how do we access them?" Accessibility is often a major factor in planning and conducting a search.

Sometimes we know a particular source is so valuable that it's worth immediately making arrangements to access it — paying a local researcher to pull it, or making a trip if practical. But unless it's that clear-cut, a competent genealogist will usually consult more accessible collections first, looking for information that can be turned into evidence before investing time and money in harder-to-reach sources. This strategic approach keeps projects efficient and cost-effective for clients.

In-Person Visits Are a Last Resort

Many repositories actually prefer or require that researchers check digitized or microfilmed copies before requesting access to originals. Jumping straight to an in-person visit before doing remote homework often means paying premium prices for work that could have been done more efficiently — or arriving unprepared because you didn't know what the collection contained.

The reality is that most genealogical projects involve records from many different locations — multiple states, multiple counties, sometimes multiple countries. No genealogist lives in all of those places. The skill is knowing where the records are, how to access them most efficiently, and how to analyze what they contain. That expertise travels with the researcher, regardless of where they're based.

Professional Qualifications in Genealogy: What to Look For

Why Qualifications Matter

The genealogy field has a wide range of practitioners, and not all of them have the same training, standards, or accountability. Some describe themselves — or are described by clients — as "semi-professional" genealogists. That term covers an enormous range. Sometimes that person is a highly skilled researcher who follows rigorous professional standards but is simply being modest. Other times, it's an enthusiastic hobbyist who has been doing genealogy for years but has never had formal training in research methodology, evidence analysis, or professional standards.

Experience is a valuable teacher. But at some point, a professional needs formal education — not just years of practice, but structured coursework where someone with expertise lectured them on standards, reviewed their work, gave feedback, and verified they understood those standards in both theory and practice.

What Formal Training Looks Like

This doesn't have to be a college degree, but it should be something substantive:

Extended institute courses like the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG), the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR), or similar multi-day programs with structured curricula, homework, and instructor feedback. These are immersive educational experiences — not casual webinar viewing.

Intensive workshop programs like "Research Like a Pro" or similar bootcamp-style courses that require participation, assignments, and demonstrated understanding. A certificate from a program with attendance and homework requirements means someone formally evaluated that person's understanding.

Credentialing through a recognized organization like ICAPGen (accreditation) or BCG (certification), which involve rigorous testing, skill demonstration, and evaluation by experienced professionals. These credentials mean an organization of national or international reputation conducted multiple layers of testing and determined that person meets professional standards.

Neither training nor credentials alone are a guarantee of quality — but together, they give you a meaningful reason to believe the person knows what they're doing. There are, unfortunately, many people who start genealogy businesses without any formal training. They may be passionate and well-intentioned, but passion alone doesn't teach someone how to properly evaluate evidence, resolve conflicting sources, or conduct a reasonably exhaustive search.

Andre's Qualifications

Andre has completed multiple formal training programs over several years, including SLIG and other intensive coursework with structured curricula and professional evaluation. He then pursued and earned accreditation through ICAPGen — the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists — with a specialization in Swedish genealogy. That process involved multiple layers of rigorous testing and demonstrated skill evaluation. ICAPGen doesn't hand out credentials casually — they thoroughly vetted his research methodology, his analysis, his writing, and his adherence to professional standards.

He is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists and bound by their code of ethics. His work follows the Genealogical Proof Standard. Every project includes complete documentation — research logs, source citations, and analysis — that any other professional can review and verify.

If I'm Not the Right Fit

If after our conversation you feel you need someone with deeper expertise in a specific area, I respect that completely. I can help you find the right person — I know what qualifications to look for, what questions to ask, and I'm building a network of researchers across different regions and specialties. In the end, we all have finite time and resources, and the goal is getting you the best research possible, whether that's from me or someone I can point you toward.

Our Services in Detail

Family tree research — Tracing your ancestry through historical records, building and documenting your family tree with proper source citations and evidence analysis.

DNA analysis and genetic genealogy — Helping you understand DNA test results from any platform and using them to answer specific family history questions, including unknown parentage cases.

Lineage society applications — Researching and documenting your lineage for organizations like the DAR, SAR, Mayflower Society, and others, including navigating their specific compliance requirements.

House history research — Researching the history of a property, including previous owners, construction history, and the stories behind the people who lived there.

Heir search / forensic genealogy — Identifying legal heirs for probate and estate matters. These projects require attorney involvement and have specific requirements. [Contact us to discuss.]

Unknown parentage research — Helping people discover biological family through a combination of documentary research and DNA analysis.

Research reports and documentation — All projects include professional research reports, sourced documentation, research logs showing every source consulted, and relevant charts (pedigree charts, family group sheets). FamilySearch and Ancestry tree updates available if desired.

Coaching and guided research — For experienced hobbyists who want professional guidance while doing the research themselves. Andre can review your work, suggest new directions, teach techniques for navigating difficult records, and help develop research strategy. This is a paid service — not free mentoring — but can be a more efficient use of your budget if you have the skills and motivation to do the legwork yourself.

Pricing and Packages

Our pricing depends on the scope and complexity of your project. We offer several packages to fit different needs and budgets:

Starting point: Our most accessible option is a Premium Consultation at $59.99, which provides a preliminary assessment of your research question.

Flexible entry points: Unlike many larger genealogy firms that require a minimum commitment of 20 hours, we offer 3-hour and 10-hour packages so you can start without a large upfront investment. Not every question needs 20 hours to answer.

Larger projects: For comprehensive research, we offer 20-hour and 40-hour packages that provide more runway for complex problems.

Checkpoint option: On larger packages, you can pay 50% upfront and review progress before authorizing the remaining work. This keeps you in control of your budget.

An Honest Conversation About Package Size and Expectations

We offer smaller packages because we believe some questions deserve a professional answer without requiring a massive financial commitment. That said, Andre will always be direct with you about whether a smaller package is realistic for your specific problem.

Here's the reality: some genealogical questions genuinely require 20 or more hours of professional research to produce meaningful results. Complex brick walls, unknown parentage cases, international research across multiple countries, lineage society documentation — these are not 3-hour problems. When a client insists on a small package for a large problem — against the researcher's recommendation — the most common outcome is disappointment. Not because the researcher failed, but because the scope was never sufficient for the magnitude of the question.

This is, frankly, why many professional genealogists refuse to take small projects at all. The risk of disappointing a client who chose an insufficient package is high, and even when expectations are set perfectly — in writing, in conversation, in the signed agreement — clients tend to forget or minimize those warnings when the results don't include the breakthrough they hoped for. It's human nature. But it's also a real business risk for the researcher.

We still offer smaller packages because we believe in accessible entry points. But we pair them with honest advice:

• If Andre recommends a larger package, it's because your question genuinely needs more time — not because he's trying to upsell you.

• If you choose a smaller package against that recommendation, Andre will document the conversation and include it in the service agreement. You'll know going in exactly what the trade-offs are.

• A small package on a big problem means less runway. If we hit complications — and in genealogy, complications are normal — there may not be enough hours left to work through them.

• The absence of a breakthrough in a small package does not mean the research failed. It means the budget was exhausted before the problem was solved. The research log documenting what was searched and ruled out still has real value — it prevents the next researcher (or a future project) from duplicating that effort.

Andre would rather lose a sale by being honest about scope than take your money knowing the package is insufficient. If your budget is firm and the problem is large, he'll tell you what's realistic within that budget and what isn't — so you can make an informed decision.

Andre provides specific pricing recommendations after understanding your project during a consultation. The goal is always to match the scope of your question to the right amount of research time — not to sell you the biggest package possible, and not to take your money for a package that won't serve you well.

How We Work: Our Process

Step 1: Consultation. Andre learns about your research question, your goals, and what you already know. This is a conversation — not a sales pitch. The goal is to understand whether your question is something we can realistically help with and what the right approach looks like.

Step 2: Recommendation. Based on your project's scope, Andre recommends a package. He'll be honest about what's realistic within different budget levels and what trade-offs exist if you choose a smaller package for a complex problem.

Step 3: Agreement and deposit. You sign a service agreement that spells out the scope, deliverables, timeline, and cost. You pay a deposit to lock your project into the schedule. No work begins until both are in place — this protects both of us.

Step 4: Research. Andre conducts the research according to the Genealogical Proof Standard. Depending on the project, you may receive progress updates along the way.

Step 5: Deliverables. You receive a professional research report summarizing findings and methodology, a research log documenting every source searched (including sources that didn't yield results), source citations for all records used, and relevant charts. If desired, Andre can update your family tree on FamilySearch or Ancestry.

If you'd like to organize what you know before the consultation, visit our Getting Started page and download the Family Tree Research Packet under Step 2.

About the Free Consultation

The initial consultation is free, and that time is never billed — even if you go on to hire us. It is a longstanding policy, both at the firms where Andre trained and in his own practice, that no charges apply until a formal research project agreement has been reached.

We ask that you respect the purpose of the consultation. It's designed to help us understand your research goals, assess what's possible, and recommend the right approach. It is not a research session.

If it seems like we move quickly toward getting agreements and deposits in place, here's why: Andre genuinely cannot begin formal work until that happens. Every hour spent before an agreement is reached is time given freely — and while some of that is a necessary part of building a relationship with a new client, it has to be balanced against the reality of running a business.

For context, many of the larger genealogy firms have dedicated sales teams that handle all pre-engagement conversations, and you may never speak with the actual researcher until after you've paid. We try to be more personable than that — Andre handles consultations himself so you're talking directly to the person who will actually do your research. But that also means his time before an agreement is especially valuable, and we appreciate clients who respect that.

What Professional Genealogy Actually Involves

The Honest Picture

Many genealogical problems are time-consuming and present challenges that require careful consideration and skill to navigate. Sometimes what a professional does may look miraculous from the outside — but it's usually not magic. It's serendipity born from knowledge and experience meeting record availability and finding aids that the researcher is aware of and knows how to navigate and utilize better than the average hobbyist.

If you had unlimited time and resources, you might find the answer yourself. Most people don't have unlimited time, and that's where a professional comes in — someone with specialized skills, experience, and access to resources who can potentially shortcut the path to the results you're looking for.

But here's the honest flip side: there are many situations where all the low-hanging fruit has been picked. The easy options are exhausted. The indexed databases have been searched. At that point, a professional may be flipping through the same unindexed, non-keyword-searchable volumes that you would have to. The difference is that the professional is trained to do it efficiently, knows what to look for, and can recognize evidence you might overlook — but the work itself is still painstaking and time-consuming regardless of who does it.

When Hiring a Professional Makes the Most Sense

You have no idea how to start. If you're looking at your family history and don't know where to begin — what records exist, where to find them, how to evaluate what you find — hiring a professional makes a lot of sense. You're paying for someone to navigate a complex landscape that took them years of training to learn. The alternative is spending weeks or months teaching yourself things a professional already knows, and potentially making mistakes along the way that cost you time and lead you in wrong directions.

You've hit a wall you can't get past. You've done solid work on your own, but you're stuck. A professional brings different tools, different training, and sometimes different access to resources. They may see angles you haven't considered or know about record collections you didn't know existed.

You need it done right for a specific purpose. Lineage society applications, heir searches, legal documentation — these require professional methodology, proper evidence standards, and deliverables that meet specific requirements. This is not DIY territory.

You have more money than time. Your time has value. If you can afford to pay someone with specialized skills to work on your behalf, that frees you up for other things — including the parts of genealogy you enjoy doing yourself.

When Hiring a Professional Might Not Be Right for You

You've already done significant research and you're worried the professional won't add meaningful value. If you've gotten your hands dirty, searched the major databases, and you're sitting there thinking "I could have done that myself — why are they charging so much for that work?" — a full research project might not be the right fit. That doesn't mean a professional can't help you, but it might mean a different kind of engagement is more appropriate.

You enjoy the process and just need guidance. Some people don't want someone else to do the research for them — they want to learn how to do it better themselves. That's a legitimate preference, and it deserves a different service model.

Coaching as an Alternative

If you're an experienced hobbyist who wants professional guidance without handing the research over entirely, talk to Andre about coaching. This is a different kind of engagement — Andre can review what you've done, point you in new directions, teach you techniques for navigating difficult records, and help you develop a research strategy that you then execute yourself.

Coaching is still a professional service, and Andre's time is still billable — this isn't free mentoring. But it can be a more efficient use of your budget if you have the skills and motivation to do the legwork and just need an expert's eye on your approach.

Two Ways to Think About It

Think of it like hiring a guide for a difficult trail:

Option 1: The guide hikes it for you. You tell them where you want to go, they do the work, and they come back with photographs and a detailed report of what they found. This is a standard research project.

Option 2: The guide walks with you. You do the hiking yourself, but they help you navigate the hard sections, point out things you'd miss on your own, and keep you from wasting time on dead-end paths. This is coaching.

Either way, you're paying for expertise, experience, and trained judgment. The question is which model serves you better given your skills, your time, your budget, and what you actually want out of the experience.

The Three Variables That Determine Every Project's Outcome

There's an unspoken truth in professional genealogy that rarely gets discussed openly: the outcome of any research project is not primarily determined by the researcher. It's determined by the interaction of three variables — and the researcher is only one of them.

Variable 1: The Client

This is often bigger than anything the professional brings to the table, and it doesn't get paid enough attention. The client's circumstances, background, education, values, expectations, what information they have ahead of time, what research they've already done (or haven't), how organized their existing knowledge is, what records they can provide, how realistic their expectations are, what their budget allows, and how they communicate — all of this shapes the project before the researcher ever opens a database.

A client who comes in with organized records, a clear question, and realistic expectations creates the conditions for a successful project. A client who comes in with no records, a vague goal, a tiny budget, and the expectation of a miracle creates conditions where disappointment is almost inevitable — regardless of who does the research.

Variable 2: The Researcher

This is the variable most people focus on, and it matters — but it's only one piece. The researcher's training, knowledge, experience, access to repositories, familiarity with the specific region and time period, analytical skills, writing ability, and professional methodology all contribute. A well-trained, credentialed researcher with relevant experience will generally be more efficient and more thorough than someone without that background. But even the best researcher in the world cannot overcome the limitations imposed by the other two variables.

Variable 3: The Research Problem Itself

This is the variable nobody controls, and it's often the most decisive. The circumstances of the problem include:

• The time period. Earlier records are scarcer, less standardized, and harder to access. A researcher working in 1700s colonial America faces fundamentally different challenges than one working in 1900s urban New York.

• The region. Some areas have rich, well-preserved, well-indexed record collections. Others have burned courthouses, destroyed archives, scattered repositories, and gaps that can never be filled.

• What clues were preserved and what wasn't. History is selective about what survives. A family that left a paper trail — land records, church records, military service, census entries — is researchable. A family that didn't may be nearly invisible regardless of effort.

• Whether surviving clues can be found on documents that can be readily located. A record might exist but be buried in an unindexed collection, stored in a repository with limited access, or sitting behind a paywall that exceeds the project budget.

• DNA factors. If DNA is involved: have the right people tested? If we identify likely descendant lines, will those people agree to testing? You can't force someone to spit in a tube. The absence of the right match in the right database can stall a project indefinitely — and that has nothing to do with the researcher's skill.

• Repository accessibility. Archives, courthouses, churches, and libraries all have their own rules, hours, staffing levels, and willingness to work with outside researchers. Some are incredibly helpful. Others are slow, understaffed, or uncooperative. Many have paywalls. Records are often scattered across multiple repositories, each with their own access requirements and timelines.

• Finding aids. Whether adequate finding aids exist to navigate a collection can be the difference between a productive search and hours of fruitless browsing. Some collections are meticulously indexed. Others are boxes of unsorted documents with no guide to what's inside.

Mix all of these variables together — the client's circumstances, the researcher's capabilities, and the nature of the problem itself — and you get the predictable outcome of a research project. And this is only scratching the surface of the variables involved.

Why This Matters for You as a Client

Understanding these three variables helps you set realistic expectations and make better decisions about your project:

• You can improve Variable 1 by being organized, providing what you have, being honest about your budget and expectations, and listening when Andre tells you what's realistic.

• Variable 2 is what you're hiring — and Andre brings formal training, accreditation, experience, and professional methodology to the table.

• Variable 3 is what it is. Nobody controls it. The best researcher in the world, working with the best-prepared client, can still be stymied by records that don't exist, repositories that won't cooperate, or DNA matches that haven't tested.

When a project doesn't produce the hoped-for breakthrough, the answer is usually somewhere in the interaction of these three variables — not in any single failure by the researcher. Understanding that going in makes for a healthier client-researcher relationship and more realistic expectations about what any professional can deliver.

Documentation and Accountability

Regardless of which model you choose, a professional provides documentation you can verify. When you research on your own, it's easy to lose track of what you've already checked, miss sources you didn't know existed, or draw conclusions without sufficient evidence. A professional documents everything — what was searched, what was found, what wasn't found, and what it all means. That documentation has value whether or not the research produces the answer you hoped for, because it prevents the next person (including you) from duplicating effort.

About Free Volunteer Help Online

There are volunteer genealogy communities that sometimes help for free, and for straightforward questions, they can be a great resource. They'll search commonly available databases and get back to you. If they find your answer — great. But understand that was charity. They volunteered their time with no obligation to follow through, and there are definite limits to how much help they can provide or how complex a problem they'll take on.

A professional genealogist has built a career around this work. It's a full-time practice with credentials, professional standards, and a family to support. The time and expertise you're paying for isn't just the hours spent on your project — it's the years of training and experience that allow those hours to be spent effectively.

Living Person and Unknown Parentage Research

We can help with many aspects of biological family and unknown parentage research. However, it's important to understand the distinction between two very different goals:

"I want to know who my birth family is" — This is genealogy. We research family history through records and DNA analysis. This is core to what we do.

"I want to find and contact a living person" — This may cross into private investigator territory depending on the circumstances. We can attempt some outreach with a legitimate genealogy reason, but we cannot guarantee responses, we cannot be persistent, and if someone doesn't respond or says no, that's where it ends.

Andre would need to discuss your specific situation to give an honest assessment. Contact us for a consultation.

Lineage Society Projects

Can you help me join the DAR, SAR, or another lineage society? What should I expect?

Yes — but let me give you the honest version of what's involved, because most people come in significantly underestimating the scope.

The "I already have a tree" problem

Most family trees, even well-built ones, are made up of derivative sources: transcriptions, published indexes, digitized summaries, other people's trees. Lineage societies want original contemporaneous records — documents created at or near the time of the event by someone with direct knowledge. For some societies and some registrars, that means they want to see the original handwriting, not a transcription.

Sometimes that's straightforward because the record has been microfilmed and that microfilm is online. Other times it means contacting repositories directly. And in some cases — including in New England, which has better records than most of the country — the original is still in private hands and has never been microfilmed or digitized at all.

For DAR or SAR, your qualifying ancestor is typically eight to ten generations back. Vital registration didn't exist in most states until the late 1800s. So at least several generations in your line fall into a period where you're working from probate records, land transactions, census records, church registers, newspaper notices — whatever survived and is accessible. When those records exist and are findable, the work is painstaking but doable. When they don't, you're making a documented case from circumstantial evidence and hoping the registrar agrees it's sufficient.

My own SAR application, on what I'd describe as a reasonably clean New England line, still took over twenty hours to complete properly. That's with things going well.

Finding hard records isn't just about searching — it's about knowing what to look for

One of the more underappreciated parts of this work is that before you can find a record, you have to figure out whether it exists at all. For church records in particular — which are often the only contemporaneous documentation for pre-civil-registration generations — that means knowing where to look for the record's existence before looking for the record itself.

The most useful resource for this is a set of surveys conducted by the Historical Records Survey under the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and 1940s. These surveys systematically identified churches across virtually every state and documented what records each congregation had at the time — whether they maintained vital registers, or only minutes, or something in between. They're granular, they're state-by-state, and for a professional researcher, they're often the starting point for determining whether a church register ever existed for a particular congregation and time period.

Even with that foundation, the trail gets complicated fast. A register documented in a WPA survey may have been transferred to a denominational archive, donated to a historical society, digitized privately, or still be sitting in someone's possession. The survey tells you it existed. Finding it today is a separate problem — one that typically involves correspondence: contacting repositories that may hold it, asking whether access copies have been made available to local societies or archives, and working through the chain of custody to find the best available version.

That process takes time. And if a record is genuinely in private hands and the holder hasn't made copies available, you may reach a dead end even if you know exactly what you're looking for. This is the category of work where hours accumulate quickly. It's not inefficiency — it's what the research actually requires at that level of difficulty.

Where your ancestors lived makes a big difference — and that's nobody's fault

Record survival varies significantly by region, and that variation is entirely outside anyone's control — the client's, the Contractor's, or the ancestors'. It is a product of history: when vital registration began in a given state, whether a courthouse burned, which denominations kept registers and which did not, whether a community was in a well-settled area or on the moving frontier. Nobody chose where their great-great-grandparents lived, or what their county courthouse did or didn't preserve, or who took responsibility for church records and when. We're all just the product of where our ancestors happened to be.

New England has the most consistent early American record coverage — town vital records, church registers, and probate files. But "consistent" is relative. Even New England records are spotty once families moved to the frontier; some records remain in private hands to this day, and what's available online is heavily weighted toward derivatives rather than originals. It's the best situation you can be in for this era, but it still takes real work.

Frontier and western movement is a universal challenge regardless of where your line started. A lot of Revolutionary-era soldiers either didn't live long enough to apply for pensions — which are among the most useful national-level documentation for proving patriot service — or survived and moved west into territories that kept civil records at best. If your ancestor fought in 1776 and spent the next forty years in Kentucky or Ohio or Tennessee, you may have very little to work with, and what exists is scattered across jurisdictions that matured at different rates. Spotty records on the frontier are not the exception — they are the rule.

Regions with less consistent early-record infrastructure pose the hardest research problems. The systematic record-keeping that developed in some parts of the country simply doesn't exist uniformly across all areas, particularly in places settled later or where institutional record-keeping developed more slowly. What survived is less consistent, less digitized, and the specific record types lineage societies most want to see are frequently absent. Some lines that are genealogically arguable on circumstantial evidence still may not clear a registrar's bar because the preferred documentation never existed in the first place. If your line passes through regions with sparse early-record coverage at critical generations, budget accordingly — I often recommend planning for a 40-hour engagement from the start. If the work comes in under that, you've simply finished early. But I'd rather have the budget in place than hit a wall at 20 hours with the job half done.

Religious affiliation matters too

Baptist ancestors present a recurring documentation problem. Baptist theology doesn't involve infant baptism, so there are no baptismal registers, which are the primary source of birth documentation for much of early American genealogy. What Baptist congregations typically produced were meeting minutes. Minutes can be useful in narrow circumstances, but they generally don't give you birth dates, death dates, or the direct generational evidence a registrar wants to see. Other frontier denominations have similar gaps. If your ancestors worshipped in communities that simply didn't prioritize vital record-keeping, that's a real and often unresolvable constraint. There are many Protestant denominations that often kept no vital registers for their congregations, only minute books, which are of marginal genealogical value for vital events, which is what most lineage societies care about.

The registrar relationship

National standards are published, but every application goes through a chapter and state registrar before it reaches nationals — and registrars make judgment calls. What one registrar accepts without comment, another may flag. Preferences aren't always fully captured in the published guidelines, and they can vary meaningfully across chapters and states.

I make it a point to connect with your registrar early in the process, before the documentation packet is assembled, so I can align with their expectations rather than uncovering a mismatch after the work is done. That registrar relationship is part of the service — not an add-on.

If a state-level issue genuinely can't be resolved locally, there are paths to national oversight. But that process is its own complication and should be a last resort, not a first move.

What this means for scope and pricing

If you have already gathered and properly sourced original records for every generation and just need help assembling them into the correct packet format, a Mini Project consultation may be sufficient. If you're starting from a family tree and a belief that you probably have qualifying ancestors, you're looking at a minimum 20-hour engagement — and for lines passing through regions with sparse early record coverage, complex frontier ancestry, or denominations with poor vital record coverage, realistically more.

A consultation is the right first step: not to give you false confidence, but to give you an honest read on what your specific line is actually going to require.

For projects where the honest estimate is a range rather than a fixed number — which describes most lineage society work — ask about the checkpoint option during your consultation. It's designed exactly for this situation: you deposit at the floor, I work to the ceiling, and before I reach it, I stop and report back so you can decide what happens next. Nothing proceeds past your deposit without your explicit say-so.

Family History Books

Can you create a family history book? What does that involve?

Yes — the research and manuscript preparation phase. Let me explain what that means in practice, because there's more to it than most clients initially picture.

What I provide

A family history book is a research project first and a publishing project second. The content — verified records, sourced narrative, historical context, photographs of places and significant events — has to be built before anyone touches layout or print production. Good family history writing means placing your ancestors in context, not just listing facts. That requires the same depth of original documentary research as any other project.

My deliverable is an organized, editable manuscript: narrative text, source citations, photograph captions, and structural notes, formatted so a designer can begin layout without needing to interpret raw research notes or reorganize content. The goal is that the designer's time is spent on design, not on figuring out where things go.

Published histories, narrative accounts, and family tradition are starting points for investigation — not sources to cite. A family book that says your ancestor was born in 1832 in Ohio is a lead to follow up. The research still needs to locate the original records and verify the story independently.

What I don't provide — and why

Book layout, design, editorial production, printing, and binding require specialists with different tools. Once the manuscript is complete and I've answered any clarifying questions from the production side, I'll introduce you to a trusted editorial contact who handles design and production. At that point, you work with them directly on proofs, layout approvals, and production specs.

There's a specific craft to getting something ready to look beautiful in print — page design, typesetting, image placement, binding specifications — that I don't pretend to have. The right production person makes that side of it look easy. It isn't.

Two separate budgets

This is the most important thing to understand before you start: there are two separate budgets for a book project. What you pay me for research and manuscript work. And what you pay the production side for everything after. Both are real. Only the first is mine to quote.

Production costs depend on variables I can't estimate reliably: paper stock, binding style, print run size, and cover materials. The difference between a modest but professional softcover and a fully hand-bound archival volume with premium paper and sewn signatures is substantial — and those decisions belong in a conversation between you and the production person, not with me. I can give you a sense of the range when we talk, but the specific numbers should come from someone who knows them.

The scope question — which configuration fits your project?

Book projects come in three configurations. Knowing which one applies shapes the scope conversation significantly:

Configuration A — Research + Writing + Handoff: You have little or no existing documented research. I conduct original documentary research, build the narrative, source photographs and historical context, and prepare the manuscript for handoff. Most time-intensive.

Configuration B — Writing + Handoff Only: You've gathered materials — records, documents, photographs, family knowledge — and need them organized into a readable narrative. Less research-intensive, but still requires verifying that key claims are documentarily supportable before committing them to a narrative.

Configuration C — Format and Handoff Only: You have fully documented, sourced materials and just need them organized and formatted into a manuscript the designer can work from. The most bounded scope of the three.

Clients often believe they're in Configuration B or C when they're actually in Configuration A. The intake review will clarify which applies.

Pricing

Minimum for research and manuscript work: $2,500 as a floor, not a ceiling. If the research comes to light and the manuscript is straightforward, the total on my side may land near that floor. If the research is extensive, it will be even more extensive. Additional production costs are the client's responsibility.

For clients where the scope is uncertain, and the budget is a real consideration, ask about the checkpoint option during your consultation — you deposit at the floor of the estimated range, I work to that ceiling, and before I reach it, I stop and report back so you can decide whether to authorize more runway or close out with a clean documented handoff.

Heritage Travel Research

What is heritage travel research, and when does it make sense?

If you're planning a trip to ancestral homelands — particularly in the US, British Isles, or Scandinavia — I can prepare a research itinerary identifying the specific repositories, churches, courthouses, archives, and cemeteries most relevant to your family. The goal is that you arrive knowing exactly what exists, where it is, and how to access it, so your travel days produce records rather than guesswork.

Timing is everything — and it affects your cost

Your departure date doesn't move. The closer you are to it when you call, the more compressed everything gets — and compressed timelines cost more because I'm paying people to move fast rather than waiting for normal turnaround. Repository contacts that normally take two weeks get expedited. If I need to bring in a local specialist on short notice, they know they can charge more to provide me more expedited service than is standard for them. I'm not padding my margin on your urgency — I'm passing through what your timeline actually costs.

Timeline Before Departure

Status

What to Expect

90+ days Standard

Full itinerary, repository correspondence, and access confirmation at standard rates

60–90 days

Rush

Rush premium applies; some correspondence timelines may be tight

30–60 days

High Rush

Higher premium; specialist involvement likely if outside core wheelhouse; repository access not guaranteed

Under 30 days

Emergency

Feasibility conversation first — may not be possible depending on scope; if viable, emergency rates apply

What the itinerary covers

A heritage travel research itinerary identifies: which repositories hold records relevant to your specific family lines, what those repositories contain, and how to access them, any advance correspondence or appointment requirements, practical access notes (hours, fees, restrictions, parking), and recommendations for prioritizing your time if you have limited days on the ground.

If your trip is within my core specializations — the US, the British Isles, Scandinavia — I can usually handle the research itinerary directly. If it requires deep local knowledge of collections I'm less familiar with, I'll bring in a specialist, which affects both timeline and cost.

If you have a trip coming up

Reach out sooner rather than later. The first question I'll ask is how much time we have. The answer determines everything else — whether we're in standard, rush, or emergency territory, whether specialists are needed, and whether the scope you're hoping for is actually feasible on your timeline.