I am a trained and experienced genealogist and historical researcher/consultant. Working directly with my clients (you), I use my research skills to help you to learn more about your ancestral roots, in whatever depth you are interested in exploring. We can work together to answer fundamental questions about the roots and branches of your family tree.
For example, who were your grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents? Where did they live? What did they do during their lives? Just as importantly, what is their relationship to you and to your family today? How can understanding more about them enrich your own life right now?
Beyond helping clients to ask and answer fundamental genealogical questions, I also specialize in solving specific genealogical mysteries that have so far resisted traditional genealogical research techniques. I have crafted and perfected my own lateral and horizontal research methods. These look carefully at the historical and genealogical past “in the round,” focusing especially upon people’s close social networks. These networks can be very revealing. Doing this kind of research is something like doing “contact tracing” but in the past tense, long before Facebook and other social media existed. Before the Civil War especially, our ancestors lived in tightly woven communities. To understand who people were, we need to understand the communities that they lived in. We need to know more about their closest friends, acquaintances, and neighbors.
If you need help with any genealogical project, no matter how large or small, I can help you to find what you are looking for. If you are just beginning your ancestral search, you may not know specifically what you are looking for until you begin digging deeper below the surface of the past, discovering surprising relationships or connections between family history and public history that you were not aware of before. Sometimes you find that you were aware of these relationships, but not yet consciously. The research process makes them conscious.
This kind of historical sleuthing is exciting, inspiring, difficult, challenging, and sometimes thrilling. The rewards are worth the time and effort. What you find and discover can literally change your life.