Workflow

You begin by filling out a family history form. After I’ve reviewed this information, we follow up with a free 30-minute phone consultation. I’ll assess the feasibility of research on your family given where your ancestors were born, what records are available there, what languages they’re in, etc. We’ll also discuss your priorities: maybe you are interested in research on a particular branch of your family; maybe on all possible branches out to a certain number of generations; maybe on all of the descendants of a particular ancestor. We’ll develop a general work plan with these considerations in mind. Regardless of its details, you will learn not only about your direct ancestors but also your collateral relatives, the “horizontal” relations like aunts and uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews. This is because it’s often necessary to research them in order to uncover more about past generations.

I’ll work for an intensive three hours of preliminary research, for $450. I’ll review all available digital records in order to put together as comprehensive of a story of your ancestors as possible. In the early stages these records are often births, baptisms, marriages, divorces, deaths, burials, Census records, military enlistments and discharges, and possibly newspapers. The spirit behind these three hours is that a lot of new and eye-opening information is discovered in this initial period. At the end of it, I’ll invite you to view an online family tree, featuring timeline profiles for each relative, notes, and linked primary documents. I’ll write a brief report that present this information in different formats.

Once you’ve reviewed the materials, we’ll follow up with a second free 30-minute phone consultation, during which you can ask me questions and give feedback. You may wish not to continue the research, given whether it was relatively easy or difficult for me to research your family. (We may have hit some proverbial “brick walls.”) If you wish to continue, we’ll discuss how I’ll move forward, and I’ll switch to an hourly rate of $100 per hour. This can be an exciting period, when we delve into other sorts of records like land-related documents and wills, military pensions, historical writings, and others. It might be necessary to send away for paper records; we might see what photographs we can find.

My primary goal is to be transparent all along the way so that you learn as much about your family as possible. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions.

summary

  • Family history form

  • Free 30-minute phone consultation

  • 3 hours of preliminary research ($450)

  • Tree, documents, reports

  • Free 30-minute follow-up consultation

  • Further research ($100/hour)

R to L, Richard, Aurora, Ted, Vernon, Pat, Flave, Isabell O'Hagan_2.jpg
 
 

Great-grandparents Richard O’Hagan (1882-1956) and Aurora Enríquez (1896-1947) with five of their children, c1927