Affordable Professional Genealogy Services

Genealogy has been growing in popularity over the last few years - everybody wants to know where they came from, but many people don't know where to start or what resources are available online, or just don't have the time to devote to the research – that’s where I come in!

Hire a Genealogist You Can Trust

I have been successfully building my own family tree and the trees of many family and friends for more than 15 years. Since I began providing genealogy research services to the general public in November 2013, I have helped more than 200 clients grow their family trees. I have been the author of a genealogy blog, Threading Needles in a Haystack: the genealogy journey, for more than five years.
I am currently a member of the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society and the Raynor Family Association. I am a past member of the National Genealogical Society and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. , and I attended the National Genealogical Society Conference in Charleston, South Carolina in 2011, the New York State Family History Conference in 2020 and Rootstech in 2021.

Genealogy can be an exciting but frustrating hobby – even 15 years in I still get goosebumps when I make a new discovery, but I also continue to hit brick walls that seem impossible to get past. It can be time-consuming – many records are not indexed and have to be looked at page by page – and sometimes the records no longer even exist. There are NO GUARANTEES in genealogy, so I can NOT offer refunds if no results are found, but I can guarantee to do my best and to at the very least leave you with some suggestions of alternative avenues to pursue.

Lastly, I specialize in genealogy research for the New York metro area, early colonial New England, and in German-American ancestry. I am most familiar with these areas of research but am by no means limited to them. I am happy to help you, regardless of the location of your family history. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about me or my services.

I look forward to working with you and helping you discover more about who you are and where you came from!

Research Your Family Tree

Passenger list manifests
Probate records, including wills, letters of administration, guardianship papers
Census records
Marriage records
Birth records
Baptismal records
Land records, including land grants, property purchases, property transfers
Naturalization records
Newspaper articles
Obituaries
Cemetery records
Prison records
Military records, including pension applications, muster rolls, and draft registrations
Photographs
City directories
Family correspondences, such as postcards and letters

Though I specialize in German/German-American, New York metro, and colonial American genealogy research, I have also helped clients with ancestors who lived in:

Family Tree Research in California, Alaska, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, etc.

Canada
Mexico
Honduras
Dominican Republic
France
England
Ireland
Poland
Denmark
Sweden
Spain
Italy
Jewish genealogy in various locales

While I have my areas of expertise, the only things that limit my ability to look for your ancestors anywhere in the world are the availability of records, legibility of writing in said records, and language barriers. I can read English, Spanish and Italian as well as German for genealogy purposes. Western European languages such as French, Polish, and the Scandinavian languages are also common enough that I have a good chance of familiarizing myself with and being able to pick out the important words and facts in those records.

My Genealogy Services

Private professional genealogists or genealogy services such as Ancestry ProGenealogist will run you thousands of dollars to hire. They will attempt to use every resource at their disposal. That is the advantage of hiring them. But many of us are on a budget, and I can save you those thousands of dollars and a more cost-effective and affordable option. I can do this by doing my family tree and genealogy research using online resources and databases or resources accessible through the use of the Internet. If there is a 200 year old book sitting in the archives of a small town in Germany that mentions your ancestors, I can’t use that to help you. If the book is mentioned on a website and I can ask someone to email me scanned copies of the pages that mention your ancestors, I can use that to help you. If I can find that book on a scanned microfilm that I can look through myself, I can use that to help you.

You are welcome to order as much time as you think will be necessary to research who or what you are looking for, but I always recommend discussing with me first your research needs – if you are looking for one person, it will take less time than if you are looking for a whole branch of your family. If you are looking for a complete picture of an ancestor – who his parents were, where he lived, what he did for a living, if he served in the military, who his wife and children were, where he is buried – it will take more time than if you are just trying to find out who his parents were. If you are looking for someone from 200 years ago, it might take longer than if you are looking for someone from 100 years ago. I can let you know if there are resources readily available, if I will have to use resources that are not indexed (in which case I will have to go page by page to find your information – an often rewarding but often time-consuming search), I can let you know if I don’t think I am the right fit to conduct your search, I can let you know how long I think the search will take (a five hour search doesn’t necessarily mean that if you place your order at 1 pm on Tuesday you will have your results by 6 pm – but we can decide on a reasonably amount of time by which I will respond to you).

Whether you are looking for one fact about one person or to discover as much of your lineage as possible, I am so excited to work with you and to see what amazing things I can uncover for you and your family!