Frequently asked questions

Genealogical research is a skill, like any other, and it's learned the same way — by doing it for years and making the mistakes so you don't have to. People new to it tend to accept the first record that fits, trust someone else's tree, miss the ancestor hiding under a misspelled name, and then hit a wall with no idea where to look next. What you're paying for is expertise: knowing which records exist for a time and place, how to find them, how to tell a reliable record from a misleading one, how to resolve two documents that disagree, and what the right next step is when the obvious one runs out. The hours are the work we do on your behalf — searching the same online collections you'd use, and going beyond them only where it adds value — and the expertise is what makes those hours count. Everything comes back cited to the Genealogical Proof Standard, so you can see why each conclusion holds and build on it.

No — and anyone who does is selling something other than research. The records decide the answer, not us. Some questions can be answered fully, some partly, and some not at all because the records never existed or didn't survive. What we can promise is thorough, documented work: what we found, what we didn't, where we looked, and our honest assessment of what the evidence supports. A documented "the records don't resolve this" is a real, complete outcome, and we'll tell you up front how researchable we think your question is.

Every engagement is priced from its own written research plan, so you know the scope before you commit. Engagements are fixed-fee blocks of research hours; record fees and certified copies are billed at cost and capped at an amount you set. A founding-client rate is available to our first clients. The consultation is free, and the quote comes with the plan.

It depends on three things: the nature of your questions, how many ancestors and records are involved, and the repositories. A single focused question about one person on a well-documented line is a different engagement from a brick wall that touches four generations and three states. Where a county clerk or state archive has to fill a request, that can add weeks, so those requests go out first while the online work proceeds. Your research plan comes with an estimated timeline for your specific questions, and we keep you informed along the way. As a rule of thumb, we expect most engagements to run from a few weeks to a few months.

A written research report with full citations — findings for each of your questions, labelled as documented fact, working hypothesis, or family tradition, with conflicts in the evidence shown rather than smoothed over. You also receive copies of every record we obtained, organized to match the report; a plan for what could come next, so you can continue with us, pursue it yourself, or stop; and a walkthrough call to go through it together.

Your question, and whatever you already have: names, dates, places, documents, photos, and the family stories as they were told to you. Don't worry about organizing it. One thing to know: existing family trees and prior research — yours or anyone's — are treated as leads, not facts. We re-verify from original sources before any conclusion rests on them, which is how errors stop getting copied forward.

It happens — an unexpected parent, an earlier marriage, a record that doesn't match the story. Before research begins, you decide how you want that handled: told everything in the report, or told that a sensitive finding exists so you can decide whether it goes in. That choice is yours, made once, in writing, and we follow it.

Not currently. We don't offer DNA testing or analysis, and we don't collect or store DNA data. If you've already tested and want your results to inform the research, you can share them with us through your testing platform's own sharing feature; we view them there, copy nothing, and state anything we draw from them as a conclusion, not as data.

Yes. What you share and what we find is shared with no one but you — including relatives who contribute materials, unless you direct otherwise or the law requires it. Living people appear in deliverables only with their consent and as you elect. We keep our working files for a stated period for professional-standards reasons and never publish or use your family's story as a case study without your written consent.

Yes, the way any professional uses a reference or drafting aid — to widen searches, transcribe hard-to-read documents, keep the research log, and draft text for revision. What AI does not do is the research: every record is evaluated, every citation checked, and every conclusion reached by the researcher, and nothing a tool produces enters your report until it's been verified against the source. A tool's suggestion that can't be verified is a lead, never a finding. We're members of the Association of Professional Genealogists and work to its code of ethics.

Yes — that's what the next-steps plan is for. Every report ends with a prioritized list of what could be researched next, which repositories hold it, and what it would likely cost in record fees. You can authorize another block of research with us, take the plan and pursue any of it yourself, or stop there with a complete, documented piece of work in hand. Additional research is always a new, written authorization, never an open-ended meter.