ANCESTRY WORSHIP - Genealogy BlogSpot contains a lot of 'how to' advice for those who are researching their own genealogy. However, not everyone who is interested in their own genealogy has the time or the skills set to do it. Or perhaps you started but had to stop and need someone else to continue the work. Or perhaps you just want a pro to help you get through a block. So if you are going to be working with a professional, here is some advice.
1) Gather up all the documents you can first, to present to the pro... Birth and death certificates, school diplomas, obituaries, bibles, whatever you have. While there may be more you find when the project has already begun, it is far more efficient and less expensive if you are organized and have these things to hand over or copy for the pro, who is going to be making some judgement on how to proceed. Also, any research that has already been done, charts, and so on, hand them over. These will be evaluated.
2) Also write out or plan a meeting in order to record or otherwise communicate any stories of the family history. We know that these stories can be important - or may eventually be dismissed in favor of research - and will be discussed again. You may remember or collect more but do try to have them ready to present at the beginning of the project.
It may be useful to tell a story about great-grandma fighting to get an 8th grade education, however, we need to be specific as to which great grandma that was, her name, and other details, to record the story properly and place it where it belongs.
3) Expect that there may be times when the genealogist will request that you send in forms or provide your signature. There are certain records that are going to require your participation to obtain, others that a letter from a genealogist will obtain without.
There is no way around this. If a genealogist asks you to fill out, sign, or send in a form, do so without delay. You can't put it all in the hands of the pro because of the policies determined by governmental agencies that, for instance, only a child of a person in the military can obtain the information. That you know the date of someone's death is not the same as having a copy of a death certificate.
(Currently I have a project held up for months. The client said she already had a certain vital record but had not found it or presented it to me, and we needed a certified copy for her International purposes. I thought the delay was Covid closure related, but after six weeks wait, it turned out she had not followed my instructions.)
4) Fees to governmental agencies and archives are your responsibility and also require your participation in the project. It's a good thing. A genealogist does not profit from these fees, such as charging you $35 when the fee is $25, and you'll have a sense of where things stand on your project. (However, a genealogist's charging to write a letter or filling out forms that require your signature is valid.)
5) If you have done some of the work, expect that the genealogist will need to review it and get their bearings on the project. Also, don't expect the genealogist to remember every date and every detail, especially if you are starting and stopping the project. What a pro will do is keep research copies to refer to. If more than a few months has gone by since you requested work last, expect another review process to start back up.
The pro will want to obtain copies of all documents possible in order to proof. There can sometimes be wait times of weeks or months when newly ordered or requested from archives. While the pro will use databases and some results come quickly compared to the old days, no database has it all and there are still times when other resources will have to be used. Census records are important and easy, but there may be other records that are only available to an immediate family member.
6) Communicate about how it is best to communicate with you. Are there certain hours or days in which you want to talk on the phone? Do you prefer e-mail? While there may be times when a quick message will be best, you may need to do in person meetings as well.
What hours does the genealogist work? (I had one client who acted as if he was the only person I worked for, as if he owned me, who started calling inappropriately late, on Sunday mornings, and so on. as if pestering would make it all happen faster. Needless to say, I ended working with him.)
At the same time, if you are too hard to get, that may be frustrating for the genealogist who is excited about the assignment and wants to buzz along.
If the genealogist is working out of a certain archive or library (though not necessarily an employee of it) realize that they may be there working for another client and you still need to respect an agreed upon meeting time. Do not interrupt them with questions and break their concentration before or after your meeting time.
7) Discuss privacy. For instance, I never post my work for a client on internet or databases.
That said, someone else that is related to you might put their work up there - without proofing it - which is, in my opinion, one of the worst aspects of the whole 'sharing' aspect of databases. There is so much unreliable data that may even look official. One database I looked at had eight people doing charts relying on information about one person that had never been proven and I knew they had to be all following each other along.
Original work is most often the best because you are paying for a pro's time and I know I find the time looking at other people's work can be time consuming. Do I ever? Yes, but judiciously and usually only if the usual methods seem to not be bringing up useful data but then I'm going to question it. If something is posted that is not proofed - say that certain people were born in a certain place in Germany, I'm going to want to find those documents in Germany but only after the link to them has been proofed first.
Get a general idea of the pros and cons of exposing information for potentially millions of people to see and use but understand what may or may not be under the genealogist's control or your own control.
8) Be realistic. This one is difficult to define. I love shows about genealogy of celebrities and watch them, sometimes learning from them, however, what you see on these shows appears almost miraculously. Sometimes several or many researchers who are experts in niche areas spent hundreds of hours working behind the scenes obtaining what you see in twenty minutes on the show. Also, I have the instinct that there may be situations in which, if the genealogy research is not going well for a certain person or proves to be not so interesting, that show might not proceed. Putting together these shows is expensive and they want the stories that will hook you.
Also, the genealogist is not to blame if they themselves run into what is called "the brick wall" or "block" in which they must accept that the trail of ancestors can go no further or must "go around another way" which can be tricky, inconclusive, and expensive. I've done this for my own family research, for instance, because records kept in church books only went back to the early 1800's, following other family with that surname to see if there was a connection just to add one more generation to a chart. If I did that for a client I'd have to bill out an easy thousand.
9) There is no such thing as a "rush job" in genealogy. There may be bits of information that can be obtained quickly, but in general, you have to go with the flow, as well as your agreement on how much time and money you want to spend.
Do not blame the genealogist if the finding is that no, that information does not exist.
Here is an example: I found the Irish ancestors on the boat coming to America for one side of a client's family in less than an hour, but when I went to the other side, I found twelve candidates, all with the same names. This is further confused because on the ship manifest they reported the port as their last address and this was likely true because they first left a village and then worked for some time around the port to pay for the ticket...
The client had no identifying information at all, so I knew I would have to do much more traditional research that would take time. For instance, I would have wanted to find the family on census, pull from the Catholic archives of Boston, and also looked to see if perhaps any of the children had left clues on their documents. Anything that would give names of the parents, county of origin, would be helpful, though the request was to find so and so on the boat. Of course this would be more expensive and if the database wasn't pulling it up fast (and cheaply) then his interpretation was that this was my fault.
10) Be prepared for questions and surprises. Sometimes information comes up that refutes memory or oral history and that has to be brought up.
I've come up against this a few times, and frankly most often when it was a question of a missing or questionable birth parent.
So, I may not officially be able to be the spokesperson for every pro genealogist here, but it's my experience that a genealogist has seen and heard it all. Maybe more than your hairdresser or bartender. Stolen children, murders, lies about who the birth parent is, confusion over ethnicity... speak up about your concerns!
In trying to find a way to the truth, we often speculate to ourselves or with our client.
In one sensitive situation, the client implored me "just the facts" but speculation can be helpful as we try to situate ourselves in that missing ancestor's shoes, their era, their ethnic culture, their family.
Remember that a genealogist is not a therapist, so if you're having a problem processing that is being discovered, consider that the genealogist can't change what has happened in the past.
All for now!
C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy
