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Old 20-07-21, 17:48
monicaregister monicaregister is offline
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Default Technical assistance

If i want to make my own family tree but run into a brick wall and required technical assistance from a professional genealogist/expert, how much would they charge just to knock down this brick wall? If this was to be the case, shouldnt i just hire a pro from the very beginning?
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Old 20-07-21, 17:59
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If you want technical assistance, I don't think a professional genealogist would be the person to ask. You would want to find someone who was an expert with whatever technology you were having trouble with. Usually you can find online forums where people will give free help with technology. Or contact the support team for whatever technololgy it is.
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Old 20-07-21, 18:06
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No one can say how much it would cost to knock down a brick wall. Some brickwalls can be sorted easily (it happens quite a lot on this site with no professionals!), and some can take decades, or never be solved.
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Old 20-07-21, 18:07
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Of course you can hire a pro from the beginning if that's what you want to do and you have the funds available.
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Old 20-07-21, 19:57
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A professional genealogist (I mean one with recognised qualifications) will charge anything between £25 and £75 an hour depending on how easy/difficult your tree is. It therefore makes financial sense to do the easy work yourself but that won't be free either because you need to buy certificates and other documents to prove your research. You will certainly need a specialised researcher for your amerindian branches because I doubt any records will be easy to access if they are even available and such a researcher can really charge whatever they like for that.

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Old 21-07-21, 03:06
monicaregister monicaregister is offline
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Lets say the royal family could only trace their roots to the year 43 a.d., then how could they know what happened earlier??
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Old 21-07-21, 08:12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by monicaregister View Post
Lets say the royal family could only trace their roots to the year 43 a.d., then how could they know what happened earlier??
Every single family tree has a brick wall at the end of every line - it doesn't matter who you are. Not all lines will go back the same distance. I wouldn't be conviced by any tree that showed ancestors back to 43AD, royal or otherwise! Certainly the family tree of Queen Elizabeth II doesn't go back as far as 43AD (but I don't know which royal family you are referring to).

With advances in DNA testing some people have been able to fill in the odd blank on their tree which would have been impossible in the past, or prove they have the right line on their tree, but the donkey work of traditional family history still has to be in place before DNA testing can help much.

Have you started your tree? How far back have you got? Even if you intend to use a professional they will still want to know everything you can tell them about your family history and should then check this information for accuracy before attempting to go further back.
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Old 21-07-21, 08:47
Olde Crone Olde Crone is offline
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If you go back to the 1500s, that's roughly 20 generations ago, at which point you have about one million ancestors. Even allowing for lots of doubling up, cousin marriages etc, you are not going to be able to trace them all no matter what methods you use.

Concentrate on the recent part of your tree. That may bring you some surprises!

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Old 21-07-21, 14:45
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I wouldn’t pay for someone to break down a particular brick wall unless they have proven expertise in that area.

As said by others go onto forums and learn what can or can’t be achieved in breaking down your brick walls.

Many places the records haven’t survived or there’s too many possibles to be able to work out the correct one.
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Old 21-07-21, 16:50
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I've used professionals occasionally to access records that I can't access myself (usually because they're not online, and held in a different country where I couldn't easily visit the relevant archives).

I suspect you've been misled by some of the many trees online that claim to go back to ridiculously early dates. If you find a tree online with tens of thousands of people that claims to go back to Adam and Eve or whatever, you can be sure it's a work of fiction. These trees are then copied by well-meaning amateurs with no understanding of genealogy, and the more copies circulate, the more people assume they must be true.

People of royal descent in certain countries where there were good written records may be able to get back a fair way, but the vast majority of people researching their trees are actually descended from perfectly ordinary people, who won't appear in written records until relatively recent times.
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