Genealogy Chat

how/where/who do i contact in order for someone with huge experince to research fully my tree....(do all the hard work which im banging my head with cos of my inexperience and time)......i know i will need to pay for this but not sure who to contact.
thanks

There are some very knowledgable and helpful people on here.I would give them the information first before paying a huge fee to some one

If you do end up going down that route then do not use the resident genealogist on this site. Load of rubbish.

One member used him and I and another member proved his research was so wrong but unfortunately the member who posted the thread would not believe our findings.

Agree with Linda on this one. I've seen so many people say they've paid out loads of money to professionals and then been disappointed with the results.
Inexperience is no excuse Victoria - we all have to start somewhere and as a newbie who has only been doing this for 6 months or so I would say that there is tremendous satisfaction to be gained in finding things out for yourself. You can take as much time as you want over it. I'd say that when I've been struggling and finally found a missing link, either through my own efforts or those of other helpers on GR there is a great satisfaction that I don't think I would feel just by having someone else give me a file and say "there you are".
Also think about whether you just want a tree with loads of names on it or do you want to get into the social history of the time - how did your ancestors live - what did their occupations entail?
Don't waste your money - let us help you

anyway


even if you do pay someone a large amount of money to research your tree


how do you know it will be accurate??



and as GB and Julia say ...................... you can't always trust the results even of a professional.


You should always double-check,

and I for one would hate to pay out money knowing that I have to check all the results anyway!!




sylvia

duplicate thread on General

www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.asp?wci=thread&tk=1197851







Victoria ...............................


it is actually against GR's conditions to post more than one thread per topic ....... you should delete one of these threads before they do it for you.



sylvia

I have seen the results of a professional researcher's efforts. It was full of "this might be him" or "could be the son of" etc. Also "I am unable to find".
I know the ones in my tree that I am confident about because I did all the checking. If I make a mistake then I almost enjoy the back tracking to put it right.
I think it is just a patience thing. You need to concentrate on short bits of research at a time. If you get frustrated then move on to another bit. Even if you have quite a large tree there is always something to discover so you will never really finish it!

I agree with all that's been said, think very carefully about what could prove to be a very costly mistake by going that route.

I was given information by so called "professional genealogists" (fortunately paid for by a distant cousin) but when checked by myself against parish records etc proved to be mainly guesswork by the genealogist and bore very little resemblance to our family ancestors.

There are some wonderful people on this site who are only too happy to help, post some information and see what they can find.

On a personal note, I can see very little satisfaction in being given a list of names who may or may not be family, you will never get to "know" these people or what made them tick.

maybe if you tell us which area you need to look for info members on here can give you some help

I can recommend a very good researcher who has obtained army records for me.

However, in the meantime, please return and let us know where you are stuck and we shall try to help you.

Happy hunting :-)

It is a bit like 'Pay as you Go' you don't know what it is you will get until you have parted with your money. Don't forget you are paying for time spent, not for results.

Sometimes ther is little option but to use a researcher. I know someone in Australia whose ancestors were from Dublin. At the time there was nothing of significance on the internet so he had no option but to use a local researcher.

The way he worked it was to agree a fixed sum of money, equating to time to be spent and to decide broadly what the aims were for that particular spend. He then had to decide whether it was worth spending more to get further on with the research

Results were promising but not fully conclusive, but nevertheless thought to be worthwhile.

I work as a volunteer on the family history desk at the local studies dept and recently a man came to see if we were able to find any further information about his family who were of Portuguese origin.he was amazed that it didn't take too long for me to verify the information that he already had plus some more and to give him guidelines for his own further research

He had paid £200 to a researcher to get the info that had taken me about 30 minutes and was free

I agree with Lorraine.

I am relatively new to family history, now totally addicted, and get great satisfaction of finding things out for myself. I have hit a brick wall and considered using a proffessional researcher to help. I then posted on TTF and although I have not found the birth I need, I got amazing help from fantastic members on here who did their best to help me and also got me thinking outside the box.

On one line, it was only by buying a marriage certificate that I knew for certain which was my direct line as I had found two females with the same name living in the same street who were the same age. The marriage certificate was the only way of knowing for certain which was the right one. Certificates are a must.

As others have suggested, put info your struggling with on here, you will be amazed at what others find. It's only by asking for help that you will be given help and advice as to how to find the answers.

You will get far more pleasure from finding the answers yourself after being helped how to do it than being handed a file with the info in it which may or may not be accurate. Unless it's accurate, what's the point in doing it.

Chris

I agree about confirming your findings with purchasing copies of birth marriage and death certificates it is the only way you can be sure of following the right line. A professional would still have to buy the certificates the same as you. Good luck Irene

Having proved that information provided to others by a professional researcher to be wrong on a couple of occasions, I would be wary of using one unless as an absolute last resort.

Brian,

This was my earlier point. You don't know until it is too late and you have paid your hard earned away. It could go either way.

If the results had been a success for you, would your view of professional researchers be any different?

I think that if I was using a professional I would insist on full documentary evidence of their findings and not just be presented with a tree without backup.

I've been doing this for seven years, so am still a learner.

However, sending for my great grandfather's death certificate opened up a new line as the informant was a daughter I had never heard of, so far as I was aware he only had four sons, which I had "proved" right at the beginning.
Some digging on Freebmd and a few more certificates led me to believe that he had changed his name and started a second family.
Looking in the phone book provided an address for his supposed grandaughter, a letter to her was passed to her niece and I am expecting to meet her (the niece) and her mother on Sunday for the first time.

So it's much more exiting putting the pieces of the jigsaw together yourself!

So, Victoria, who are you wanting us to find for you? You have an army of experienced people here who do it for free and check each other out.

We're raring to go!

Margaret

wonder if she doesn't know how to find her thread again? :)))