Beginning Your Family Story

Beginning your family story starts with you. Take some time to record your story. Just a couple of pages about your life, where you grew up, your best friends, favorite hobbies/activities, special memories, you get the idea. Then move on to your living relatives. Ask them about their lives and get the details you won’t find in any record. Ask them about their memories about relatives that are no longer living. This is the basis for your family story. If you would rather us contact your relatives, we will be glad to do that for an additional charge.

Next we will meet, either by phone or virtually, and talk about what form you would like the story to take. Perhaps you want to concentrate on one part of your family, or on one person. Maybe you want to begin with your grandparents and research your entire family before them. After we identify a target, we will complete 7-8 actual hours of research on that person or persons. If we find that research needs to be completed in the location your ancestor was living, we will contact you to discuss how you want to proceed. Your family story can take the form of a comprehensive family tree or a narrative about one person or branch of your family. If you choose a written report, we will take the information you have gathered about yourself and your relatives and add to it what we have discovered about your ancestors. All records we find will be cited in the report and will be available for you to download.