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  #21  
Old 06-06-21, 19:00
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You could try contacting some from Cyndi's List Central and South America section:

https://www.cyndislist.com/central-a...professionals/

It doesn't specifically say El Salvador for any of them, but some say generally Latin America.
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  #22  
Old 06-06-21, 19:23
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There are some links on this Family Search page that may help you understand what records are available, so you know if a professional has the right level of expectation about what might be possible.

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en...ador_Genealogy
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  #23  
Old 06-06-21, 20:17
Olde Crone Olde Crone is offline
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I would be inclined to do this in parts rather than commissioning someone to do 500 years worth of research. You may find a few generations back, that your ancestors were not from El Salvador at all, for instance.

And remember, just because someone calls themself a professional genealogist doesn't mean they are, I have seen some terrible research done by a "professional" who had no qualifications at all. In the UK, there are recognised professional qualifications, but I don't have a clue about any other country.I

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  #24  
Old 17-06-21, 03:43
monicaregister monicaregister is offline
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But if i were to hit a brick wall/s, should i hire a pro or not? What should i do in this case??
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  #25  
Old 17-06-21, 06:59
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Quote:
Originally Posted by monicaregister View Post
But if i were to hit a brick wall/s, should i hire a pro or not? What should i do in this case??

This depends on the nature of the brick wall and the quality of the professional.


My local transport system is plastered with pictures of boys who went missing decades ago. The best efforts of family and police have failed to find them. Unless the individual comes forward or the proverbial shallow grave is found, such brickwalls will never be knocked down.



Less dramatic modern brickwalls are often resolved by asking family/friends/co-workers/neigbours for information.


You would need to consider in each case (and brick walls multiply with each generation you go back) in detail. Reasons could be:


Event not in expected place
Individuals not recorded in expected names or misrecorded/mistranscribed

Event did not take place
Event not recorded
Records do not survive


Professionals can sort out some of these issues but you are much better placed to resolve others.
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  #26  
Old 17-06-21, 09:31
Olde Crone Olde Crone is offline
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When you hit a brick wall, ask advice on a forum such as this one. There are several members on here who are as good as many professionals and better than some professionals. At least they can point you in the right direction. Sometimes it does pay to use a researcher for a specific piece of information that would be too expensive for you to access in person.

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  #27  
Old 17-06-21, 21:05
monicaregister monicaregister is offline
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Did native americans keep written records or only european settlers?? European colonization began in the early 16th century, what about before that?
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  #28  
Old 17-06-21, 21:35
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Having googled, there's plently of information on Native American records in the US, but very little for El Salvador, so the answer may be no.

Firstly you need to concentrate on establishing the first two of three generations of your tree. If you get something wrong in this part you could find yourself studying the wrong lines altogether!
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  #29  
Old 18-06-21, 07:36
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I know nothing of the climate of El Salvador. Unless carved in stone, records will be subject to fire, flood, mould, rodents and insect damage. If a governing system is overturned, there will always be a hiatus, even if previous records are valued.

In England, our civil war led to a hiatus, if not the loss of earlier records. A change of religion a century earlier means that except for a vanishing few examples, nothing survives of any birth marriage or death records kept prior to 1538.

Reasons to make and preserve records are usually to demonstrate ownership of land, or to collect taxes. Would European settlers be interested in Native Americans and preserving their records?

In this country, those of us with English ancestors know that we must have had ancestors living in England in 1500, potentially thousands of them, but we are remarkably lucky if we can name a single one.
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  #30  
Old 18-06-21, 09:07
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In general it is probably easier to construct a family tree for ancestors from the UK than for many other countries. That said, my own tree, which I consider to be fairly typical for ancestors born in England, looks like this:

I have all my ancestors going back to all my 32 3xg-grandparents - most were born in the late 18thC through to the first few years of the 19thC.

Moving back three more generations to 6xg-grandparents, where you might expect 256 ancestors (though likely a few less because of cousin marriages), I only have 41 people recorded.

Going back another three generations to my 9xg-grandparents I only have four people recorded. Two of those were probably born around 1600, but I have not been able to find anything about them before they married.

There are other people on this site who have got back further, but in general it would only be on one or two lines and of course if you are lucky enough to be able to go back a long way on a line or two, you won't know which lines that might be on until you have done all the research you can on all the lines from yourself going back! Some people just search their father's paternal line. If I had done that I would have got back to my 5xg-grandfather who was probably born in the 1750s.

Of course we can't research our ancestors in isolation - any attempt to do that is extremely likely to lead to mistakes or restrict the number of ancestors you can find - I have a little over 200 ancestors on my tree but in order to find them it has been necessary to research extended family groups and in some cases whole villages of people, so my full tree has a total of just under 10,000 individuals.
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