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I see a lot on-line about logs and "unverified" trees, etc. What prevents a genealogist from just making a whole bunch of crap up or them going in a totally wrong direction?
Has this happened to anyone when hiring another party to do your genealogy?
More than half of the surnames in my hx are EXTREMELY common in the area i live in and in their respective originating countries.
I see a lot on-line about logs and "unverified" trees, etc. What prevents a genealogist from just making a whole bunch of crap up or them going in a totally wrong direction?
Has this happened to anyone when hiring another party to do your genealogy?
More than half of the surnames in my hx are EXTREMELY common in the area i live in and in their respective originating countries.
When you want to hire a professional genealogist, you should first do a little bit of homework and research their credentials. In my experience "real" professionals are associated in some way with valid historical and/or genealogical societies (either members of one or contributing members of one) which would make total sense because a "real" professional is very, very interested in history and genealogy. You might consider hiring a professional through a historical and/or genealogical society depending on location. Example for me, if I was to hire, I'd go through the NEHGS.
But your "job" doesn't end there. If once you hire someone, he/she should ask you a lot of questions about what you already know for fact. If he/she doesn't and only asks for your data and your parents' names, then he/she could very easily, as you fear, go off in the wrong direction.
And still your "job" doesn't end. Once a professional comes back to you with a family tree, it must have sources, and real primary or secondary sources. A true professional genealogist will be a stickler for that, and will not include anything on a family tree that "might be so", "could be so", "seems to be so".
What we do not see on shows like WDYTYA are the sources the historians used to complete the celebrities' trees. All we see are the fancy scrolls they create or the computer graphics delineating a tree. But you can be rather assured that these historians checked for dotted i's and crossed t's before jeopardizing their reputations on national TV.
When you want to hire a professional genealogist, you should first do a little bit of homework and research their credentials. In my experience "real" professionals are associated in some way with valid historical and/or genealogical societies (either members of one or contributing members of one) which would make total sense because a "real" professional is very, very interested in history and genealogy. You might consider hiring a professional through a historical and/or genealogical society depending on location. Example for me, if I was to hire, I'd go through the NEHGS.
But your "job" doesn't end there. If once you hire someone, he/she should ask you a lot of questions about what you already know for fact. If he/she doesn't and only asks for your data and your parents' names, then he/she could very easily, as you fear, go off in the wrong direction.
And still your "job" doesn't end. Once a professional comes back to you with a family tree, it must have sources, and real primary or secondary sources. A true professional genealogist will be a stickler for that, and will not include anything on a family tree that "might be so", "could be so", "seems to be so".
What we do not see on shows like WDYTYA are the sources the historians used to complete the celebrities' trees. All we see are the fancy scrolls they create or the computer graphics delineating a tree. But you can be rather assured that these historians checked for dotted i's and crossed t's before jeopardizing their reputations on national TV.
Have you not seen the episodes where they are at the library or courthouse, etc looking at the actual old documents used to substantiate the trees ?
I see a lot on-line about logs and "unverified" trees, etc. What prevents a genealogist from just making a whole bunch of crap up or them going in a totally wrong direction?
Has this happened to anyone when hiring another party to do your genealogy?
More than half of the surnames in my hx are EXTREMELY common in the area i live in and in their respective originating countries.
A professional genealogist should be certified with either the Board for Certification of Genealogists or with the National Genealogy Society. Anyone with those credentials is unlikely to be careless with their research and documentation.
Have you not seen the episodes where they are at the library or courthouse, etc looking at the actual old documents used to substantiate the trees ?
They do show this sometimes but equally, there are times when they jump back many generations without showing how they accomplished it, probably because the researchers did not find any story of great interest.
Have you not seen the episodes where they are at the library or courthouse, etc looking at the actual old documents used to substantiate the trees ?
Oh, I have! and envious :-) To many of us, just seeing the few old documents that time allows is "proof" that ALL parts of the celebrity's tree have been substantiated with primary and secondary documents. But to viewers who are new at genealogy or have never done any research but are just interested, and just seeing a few docs, it may not be as obvious to them that that is how a professional historian/genealogist works.
It's often best to hire a genealogist close to the source of the primary documents, i.e. if your ancestors came from South Carolina, hire a researcher who lives there.
It's often best to hire a genealogist close to the source of the primary documents, i.e. if your ancestors came from South Carolina, hire a researcher who lives there.
I've found this to be most effective, because you HAVE to do legwork at some point.
Even the "best, most credentialed" ones will make glaring mistakes (those who believe that the Family History Library in Utah has "90 percent of all information" -- a direct quote from the first professional I hired).
I was super-excited because she agreed to take on my project, and she'd been "on TV," but she farmed my project out to one of her staffers, who incorrectly documented that a certain "Jane Doe" had married three times -- but the tipoff was that each time, her name remained "Jane Doe" -- if she had married three times, she would not have kept her maiden name each time, and this was WAY back in the day.
I later found someone who DID the legwork and found some really incredible things that the "TV genealogist" would never have found. He went right to the source -- the court houses, the state history libraries, etc.
So, I would hire someone local to the area of interest -- but always trust your instincts. I remember thinking, "that seems strange" when I got the report back re: Jane Doe, but I let it go and put blinders on because, well, they were the "experts." But common sense overrules that sometimes.
Just wondering if someone would tell me about what a researcher costs? Ball park figure more or less. Thanks!
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