Getting Started You Don't Need Much. But Here's What Helps. The number one concern potential clients have when they reach out to me is that they don't think I have enough information to get started.  Most of the time, they have more than they realize, and even when they don't, that's rarely the obstacle they think it is. People come to me in all sorts of states of readiness. Some arrive with a shoebox of old documents, a family Bible, and a list of questions going back four generations. Others come with a first name, a country, and a feeling that something in their family story has never quite added up.  Both are great starting points. Here's why. Most official records, births, marriages, deaths, census returns, are sealed for 100 years. Which means that no matter how much information you walk in with, my only objective is to connect them to someone who was around 100 years ago.  That said, the more you can tell me at the outset, the faster I can start pulling o...

Real Research Stories A Soldier, a Tenement, and a Family Found: The McDonalds of Abbey Street  Dublin, Ireland  ·  1896 – 1979 It started with a Commonwealth War Graves certificate and a name: Corporal Christopher McDonald, who died on 8 July 1916, age 19. What followed was one of those research conversations that reminds me exactly why I love this work. A client reached out with a photograph of a memorial certificate, the kind issued by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. On it: a young soldier, buried at St. Patrick's Cemetery, Loos, France. Son of Francis and Catherine McDonald, of 143 Abbey Street, Dublin. She had one question: could I find anything about Christy and that address on the census? It seemed simple enough. What unfolded over the next 48 hours was anything but. The conversation that started it all This is how a lot of my research begins, not with a formal brief, but with a message, a photograph, and a family's curiosity. Here's how it went: AW Amanda ...