Merriam-Webster Defines a Genealogist as “a person who traces or studies the descent of persons or families”

It seems like a ridiculous question to ask, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people ask me what a Genealogist is after I tell them what my website is all about.  The simple answer I usually give is that a Genealogist is someone that builds family tree’s and studies family history, but it is not that simple.

The fact is that a Genealogist is a historical  detective.  You can not build a complete family tree without having a passion for it, and a detective will never solve a crime without that same passion.  If you are a Genealogist For Hire like myself, you have to have that special something inside of you that lets you organize all the little pieces of random information in your head, even if you do not really care about that family on a personal level, because you still care about solving the mystery.  This alone can drive you to spend a day in the New York Public Library researching that family.  In my case, when I have a genealogy case, I become slightly obsessed.  I want so much for that client to blown away by my discovery, that I can easily fill my time searching the New York Phone Books, Catholic Church and Catholic Cemetery records, New York City Housing Records, and countless other Marriage, Birth and Death Records.

I think it would drive most people mad, even if it were their own family.  There is no doubt you have to be persistent when you are stuck at that roadblock.  Genealogical Databases and Brooklyn Zip Codes are not naturally things you are going to have passion for.

A friend of mine, who happens to be an Arizona Genealogist and the owner of the “It’s All Relatives” Genealogy blog said the following to me:

“solving the question who are my ancestors, takes a methodical approach…bite off only small bits at a time. Most problems are better solved taking them apart into smaller sections. Develop your method, stay focused and have fun!”

Those are two very important points any beginning Genealogist will need to understand. You can not start off your research today, and expect to be 6 generations deep by tomorrow night. At times, I can make that much progress, but only if all the records are right where they can be found and everything is recorded accurately. And this is only after years of experience. This is why the advise of breaking your research down into small sections is so important to follow. My advise to a new Genealogist would be to uncover all the easily found records first. In a relatively short time you will be stuck for a few hours around the generation of your great grandparents. Relax, you have 3 other sets of great grand parents, and maybe one of them will allow an easier route to your great great grandparents. I think the most natural curiosity tends to the Paternal line, and it is the easiest line considering the Surname stays the same, but that does not always equal an easy passage. When you get to the first road block you are going to have to be dedicated. It may take months to make that breakthrough – to find the marriage, birth or death certificate, to find the missing census report that fills in the blanks, or to find that grave site that fits all the pieces together. Usually at this point I would recommend that you hire a Genealogist, but if that is not an option, understand that the information you need is hiding there, develop your method, as my friend told me, and have fun!

Italian Genealogy Research 

In my own family, as in many other families with New York Genealogies, you do not have to go far to find a 100% Italian Ancestor.  In my example it is my Grandmother, born in Brooklyn to parents from Palermo, Sicily.  I happen to be lucky enough to have a copy of the shipping manifest of my great parents trip to New York in the early 1900’s, and even more lucky to have an address and name of closest family member that remained in Palermo.

Birth and Death Records For Palermo, Sicily

Many Italian Americans are able to find their ancestors’ records at Ellis Island, but that is where the research stops.  For most people, when you get into the records in a foreign country, in that native language, you have reached what we call a road block.  Unless you want to invest hundreds of hours to learn a new language and learn an entire system of genealogical records, your best option is just to pony up with some hard earned cash and pay for a professional genealogist in Italy, or whatever your country of interest is.

For me, I would be stuck with nothing more then that address in Sicily, and the name of that ancestor that never made the trip to America.  I decided that I needed more details on this Sicilian branch of the family, and almost immediately my Italian Genealogist was able to provide me with the actual Italian surname of my family member, not the recorded, Americanized version, as well as his fathers name, and the name of a sister.

I usually recommend having a genealogist do your research even if you are a New Yorker searching for family in New York.  You can spend hours, days and weeks on end searching for records, while an experienced genealogist might be able to supply you with answers in just an hour.  Imagine coupling that difficulty with a language barrier?  No, it just makes sense to  hire a professional and get the job done correctly and efficiently.

If you have interest in making contact with family from Italy, you may be in luck.  Throughout the years I have heard from several people that made contact with distant cousins from various homelands that were very inviting to their American cousins, and welcomed them to visit.

If you have never looked past your grand parents, then hiring us at Brooklyn Ancestry is your first step to finding the link to immigration records.  At that point you have names, a home city or town, and it is time to turn over your research to a professional Italian genealogist.

Anybody that is willing to take that next step and truly have a greater connection to you family tree then you would ever reasonably expect, e-mail me at Genealogist@BrooklynAncestry.com, and tell me your story. Let me know if you need research in America, and I will assist you, and also let me know if you need research in Italy, and I will put you in touch with the Pro to begin your Italian discovery.

Visiting Sicily

Several years ago I was lucky enough to visit Sicily and I did my best to see everything I could manage.  At the time, I did not have the information on my ancestors that I have now.  I quick look at google maps tells me I was no more then a few blocks away from my great grand parents house in Palermo, and it’s entirely possible I actually drove past the very house they lived in.

When I realized that I was able to solve genealogical mysteries with a very high rate of success for many of my friends, I realized I had a knack for solving family history mysteries and decided to create this website.  Now, the ancestors of all 4 of my Grandparents came to Brooklyn starting in the 1850’s, from Sicily, Ireland and Spain, so throughout all the many hours of my own research I have spent virtually all of my personal research time searching in Brooklyn, which is why I targeted my services as a Brooklyn and New York Genealogist.  By the time I had solved my own case, I had many connections in cemeteries, churches, etc.  And I was able to unearth several incredible databases and sources of priceless information available on the internet that allow me to almost always find what I am looking for.  After I would find out that my grandparents or great-grandparents had brothers or sisters, I found myself so curious about the descendants of those newly discovered family members that I took a course on locating people in the modern day, and I have been able to help may people find their birth parents, long lost relatives, etc.

With all that being said, one of the first things I needed to do was come up with a rate to charge customers.  I love helping people, and honestly a lot of my sources are free to me, and I can sometimes find information very quickly.  I don’t need to be charging all that much money, so I decided at first to charge $15 an hour, with the first 2 hours free, if I wasnt able to find anything in that time.  The client was able to decide they did not have faith in me since I did poorly in the first 2 hours, and could just walk away without being invested and losing money.  Since that time I have had to change things up a bit, mainly do to all the “free” 2 hour introductory periods that people had me do only to tell me they didn’t have any way to pay me even when I did produce results ( my current $5 for the first hour is just to confirm the client has a paypal account), and my $25 hr rate for a 2 hour block is mainly to encourage larger blocks of time to be purchased.  It sometimes takes an hour of that time just to get all the information a client provides organized since it is a new case and the first time I am looking into this particular family.

I consider my rates to be pretty fair, and when I look around the net and see the prices these genealogy services are charging, it aggravates me.  I want to take a few minutes tonight and show my readers just how ridiculous some of the more popular Genealogy researchers are.

Heirlines.com

The first website I want to mention is Heirlines.com. The information is pretty straight forward. If you are only willing to pay for 10 hours of research, you better be willing to pay $800, $650 more then I would charge you.  The only thing I see on their site that I do not offer, is they send you a physical copy of the document.  I’ll tell you what, if you want me to print out the documents for $.05 a peice and mail them to you for an extra $650, just let me know and I will do it.  Or you can just print them out yourself when I E-mail them to you and save the $650.

Pro Genealogists

Your next option is from Ancestry.com‘s own “Pro Genealogists“.  As you can see in the Image above, the Pro Genealogist website considers their fee’s “affordably priced” and “Straightforward research” costs a Minimum of $65 per hour.  I would imagine no matter how straightforward your research is, they will have some reason to pump up your fee closer to the $135/hr range.  How many people have paid their hard earned money to have some “Pro Genealogist” log into Ancestry.com and pull up some census reports for $200?

LegacyTree.com

The last website I want to touch on is LegacyTree.com.  In the graphic you can see the minimum order is 20 hours, for $1250.  That is over four times as much as our rate.

To be fair, if anybody is getting in their car and spending a day in some records hall searching through files in order to find that one impossible link, then a rate much higher then my $15 / hr is called for. The issue I have is that most cases can be solved online, and if you are paying for 10 or 20 hours of research, in 90% of cases a genealogist would spend that much time exhausting all of the online resources and databases at our disposal, before ever getting into a car. After that point, it might make sense to charge the higher rate that travel expenses and the higher level of research expertise would call for. If you are going to hire a genealogist to build your tree from the start, breaking down those brick walls, finding distant relatives, or whatever else you might need, please look around before hiring one of these overcharging websites. It would be well worth the few hundred dollars a website like this one would charge before paying the thousands these other sites demand as a minimum and then can not even guarentee they will find the information you are looking for.