Over the last 10 years, family tree research has gone from being a niche hobby to big business. Why? The internet has made it easier to do your own research, and television has popularised it. Combine the two together, and there is now a huge mass of confusing information and a bewildering array of boxed software packages to buy, all of which promise to make it easy to research your own family tree.
Want proof? Check out Cindis List for yourself. Over a quarter of a million site and research service links for you to get lost in.
Well, I did get lost! I tried to do my own research, and got stuck. Seriously stuck. My family tree project halted due to confusion, and the fact I was going to have to spend real money to progress.
I nearly gave up my family tree research. What I needed was access to more information. I tried to buy birth, marriage and death certificates online. I found prices varied a lot for this service. I became skeptical. Some of these companies seemed to be severely overcharging. So I looked at Ancestry.com. Appears to be a good authoritative service, but it was expensive, and I wasn’t sure if I would be wasting my money paying for a service I would hardly use.
I remember seeing tv shows about small companies who pose as genealogists providing a family tree service for you. Problem was, the customer thought they were getting their personal family tree researched for them, but all they got back was a printed or photocopied list of dead people whose surname matched their own. Lots of them – unrelated people of course, but the surname matched. Personally I think this is a con. Who wants to be ripped off like this?
At this point I gave up for months. Until the day I heard someone at work mention that they had just had their family tree researched and showed me the presentation pack of personalised, family tree information they had received, along with birth, marriage and death certificates to prove the family tree data was correct. Frankly I was impressed.
So impressed in fact that I googled the researcher and checked out their website (it was called Family Researcher by the way). I emailed the researcher and explained I was stuck. Expecting to receive a standard quote for hundreds of pounds worth of work, I was pleasantly surprised by the response.
I got back a personal email, not a standard boilerplate text or quote. The researcher offered to spend up to three hours on my family tree to get me past the point I was stuck. The price was £36, which is a fraction of the cost of doing this myself. So I went for it. I was asked to supply the family tree info I currently had, and to point out where exactly I had got stuck.
True to her word, the researcher got back to me a week later with amazing results. I had made a mistake on one particular ancestor which meant that a large part of my family tree was full of the wrong people. The researcher posted me the actual marriage certificate to prove this, and indeed I could see for myself where I had gone wrong. I emailed the researcher to ask if I owed more money for the certificate. To my surprise I was told that she took the cost out of the £36 I had already paid, and she only spent two hours on actual research for me.
Only two hours? I had wasted days trying to do this myself! Impressed by the service I asked if my tree could go further back, and how much it would cost. Then I went for it. I chose to pay for small amounts of research at a time, so I was in full control of the costs. The more information that I got, the more interested I became.
I found out all about the different industries my ancestors worked in over the last three centuries. I found out which ones moved overseas, and which ones died in a mining accident. Bizarrely there were old fashioned police photos of some criminals in my past, from the turn of the last century. Fascinating to see that one of these rogues resembles my father! I found out from death certificates that several of my ancestors died of the same condition, and it is hereditary. Chilling, but I spoke to my doctor about it when I had an appointment, and they gave me some useful advice. I found out that two of my ancestors committed suicide. One guy had a surprising amount of children with different women. I never realised I came from such roguish stock!
The thing I liked the most was finding out that the oldest records indicated that my ancestors originated from a particular village in Warwickshire. I went to the village and examined the church and graves myself. It was am odd experience, but was fascinating. I could visualise my ancestors in and around the old church there, which is very old and still in use today.
Frankly, I love to look back at my personal family tree history, and I have kept all the information carefully preserved to pass on to my own children, and for them to add to. I think I was very lucky to find an honest and reliable family tree researcher to help me, and found the whole project both awesome and thought provoking. I feel I have a whole new perspective on who I am and where I came from.
I would highly recommend family tree projects to other people. Either do the work yourself if you have the time or patience, or find an independent researcher to help you out. My advice is to try to get a personal recommendation like I did, or test out their honesty and work quality with affordable pieces of work first. Although, having said that, with the benefit of hindsight I wish I had commissioned my researcher to do the whole thing from the start – she also offers full packages and presentation packs, family crests etc. Awesome!
