Discover My Family

Professional family history research by Clive Andrews

An introduction to

genealogical research

If you want to know about your family origins you have three basic options:

1.  You can undertake all the research yourself

This can be a very satisfying way to discover your family’s history

The disadvantages are:

2.  You can use a professional researcher to do the work

As long as you choose a researcher with appropriate experience and expertise you can be sure that the research will be thorough and the results reliable.

Picking a good genealogist is important.  Obviously you will not get the same quality of service from an amateur with a couple of years’ experience of researching their own family history as you will from a qualified genealogist with many years of accumulated knowledge and expertise.

3.  Share the research between yourself and a researcher

This is often a very good way forward.  You may have some family data already, such as your grandfather's birth certificate, a Family Bible, or information passed down in the family by word of mouth.  You might have done some research yourself on the internet.

But now you do not have the time to take your investigation further, or you live too far away from where the original records are kept, or you have hit a brick wall and just do not know where to look next.

You might have very basic information about a particular ancestor such as dates of birth and marriage but want to discover more about her.  Again, you might have heard an intriguing story about one of your forebears – perhaps one was a murderer, another descended from the aristocracy, yet another was with Nelson at Trafalgar – and you would love to have the truth of the story investigated.

Or perhaps you might have unearthed a family document, possibly an old will or the deeds to a property, and you are having difficulties reading it or understanding the implications of what it says.

In any of the above circumstances I recommend commissioning research work on an hourly fee basis.  This can be very flexible and tailored to your particular circumstances.  Click HERE for further information.

And finally a word of warning!

‘Genealogist’ does not mean ‘miracle worker’!  However much of an expert, however knowledgeable, thorough and diligent, there are times when a researcher just cannot find the answer.  Some births in the early years of Civil Registration immediately after 1837 were not registered (although baptism records may still exist).  A significant number of people seem to have been away from home on the night of the early Censuses and cannot be located elsewhere. Parochial records during the Civil War are often absent.  Some documents have been damaged or lost over the years, others might have become misplaced and are now hidden away deep in private collections still waiting to be unearthed.

I will always tell you if the trail has gone dead and will repay any unused fees paid in advance.