[Merry]

If you hire a professional you must get recommendations from people you trust. I have been in touch with several people over the years who have been fooled by the research of 'professionals' who have not done their job properly, most likely because they were being pressured for an answer within a time frame or concerned that they might not be paid if they didn't find an answer to a problem. To resolve the dilemma they just made an educated guess which turned out to be wrong, when the right answer was there if they had only approached the issue in the right way.

A professional genealogist may not be an expert in every field of research (I would probably be concerned if they said they were). If you don't want to do the research yourself you may find you have to hire several people for different elements of your tree.

I don't know anything about research in El Salvador, or if your ancestors were from that country, but one of the biggest issues in many countries is that there is no central database for records and/or there are few or no online records or indexes. This means you may have to guess when and where an event happened in order to have any chance of finding it. This may not be too much of a problem when you are looking for your parents and grandparents records, if you know about their lives already, but becomes very problematic as you get further back. Of coulse it will be just as problematic for a professional as it would be for you!

It may all sound very daunting right now. That is why you should stop thinking about getting back to 1524 and concentrate on recording what you already know about your parents and grandparents, as either you or a professional is going to need this information to make a start. You should speak to as many relatives as possible, in particular older relatives and also cousins, aunts and uncles to find out what they know about their immediate ancestry to get the fullest picture you can and also see if there are discrepencies in the information you are given. Then you need to record all this information and decide what you need to know next to check the accuracy of what you have been told and/or progress back another generation.

Good luck!