With over 30 years of doing genealogical research, I have accumulated extensive knowledge of online, library, and government office research. Most vital records (birth, death, marriage, and wills) have been maintained by county and state governments since the later 1800s; the farther east you travel, the more likely the records were maintained from much earlier dates. But there has been a huge variance in records compliance and converting documents for online access.
The services I offer include:
I will perform online research for clients anywhere in the United States and a few other countries. I can travel to libraries and government offices within a reasonable distance of my home in northwest Indiana. In many cases, I can advise clients on how to retrieve documents located near to them. There are issues, though. Courthouse fires have destroyed records in a number of counties, in Indiana and elsewhere, and the 1890 Federal Census was almost entirely destroyed.
It is also important to realize that different states have different laws on who is entitled to access government records of someone other than themselves. Indiana and Illinois have essentially open record access. New York, on the other hand, balks at releasing records even to the children of the person being researched.
The services I offer include:
- Extensive online searching using a myriad of sources
- Library research when the documents of interest are known to be held by that library and the library is accessible to me
- Government office record retrieval
- Assistance in completing lineage society applications
I will perform online research for clients anywhere in the United States and a few other countries. I can travel to libraries and government offices within a reasonable distance of my home in northwest Indiana. In many cases, I can advise clients on how to retrieve documents located near to them. There are issues, though. Courthouse fires have destroyed records in a number of counties, in Indiana and elsewhere, and the 1890 Federal Census was almost entirely destroyed.
It is also important to realize that different states have different laws on who is entitled to access government records of someone other than themselves. Indiana and Illinois have essentially open record access. New York, on the other hand, balks at releasing records even to the children of the person being researched.