![]() The second category is those who do not have to live on their income. Their hourly rate has to include calculation for such things as tax, National Insurance, depreciation, rent of premises and secretarial help. The first category is those who take their whole living from the work. To understand why there should be this wide variation, it is necessary to bear in mind the two very different categories of people who are ‘professional’ genealogists. So how much does it cost to hire a professional? Most professionals charge on a basis of an hourly rate and these may vary from say £20 to £50 per hour and perhaps more or less. Others can afford to spend the money but not the time. Some people have plenty of time but can’t afford to spend much money. In genealogy, as in so many other types of ‘do-it-yourself’ work, you either spend your time or your money. Where is the fun in searching back twenty years in an unindexed register for a particular marriage or going through every Taylor will, say for a 30-year period to see if anyone mentions ‘my son Christopher’ or searching thirty years of burials for a large London parish, if you don’t trust the online indexes, ‘in case the widow died there’? It is very sensible to get someone else to do it for you. ![]() If you get a researcher to do the routine work you still have all the satisfaction of sorting the results and deciding what to have done next. Employing a professional after all need not mean that you miss out on all the fun of tracing your ancestors. By employing someone else to do the donkeywork you can use the results at home in peace and spend the warm summer days tracking down the ancestral farm or visiting newly found relatives. Moreover if you intend to go yourself, you may have to wait for the summer and persuade spouse or children to go with you. If you know fairly clearly what needs to be done it is probably cheaper to employ a researcher to go through certain parish registers or extract particular wills than go yourself. If you have to use your holiday, pay out for petrol or rail fares, book accommodation and buy meals, you may find that two or three days research at the other end of the country can be very expensive. Many people live far away from the areas where their ancestors lived and yet most of the original records relating to any area of England will be found in that area or in London. Many people are hindered in tracing ancestors before 1700 by not knowing Latin, being unable to read the old handwriting or understand the legal terms others are put off even beginning by lack of familiarity with record office and library systems. You may know perfectly well what needs to be done without being able to do it. A professional assessment of your case can save a lot of wasted time. They are also likely to be realistic about admitting failure when the amateur, who after all is emotionally involved, feels in his bones that something is true and that proof simply ‘must be somewhere’. They know which websites to use, where the records are, what they contain, how likely they are to help and can suggest new lines of attack if the initial ones fail. Professionals, because of the many cases they have handled, are likely to see clearly the way to tackle a problem which baffles the relative beginner. In the nature of the case most amateurs are working on only one ancestry - their own. They can get help with the basic problems from online forums, textbooks, lectures at their local family history society or by chatting to friends. Either way, why pay anyone else to do work you can perfectly well do yourself? Many people who would like to know about their ancestors are perfectly willing to pay someone else to do the work and simply admire the finished article.įar more, many of whom are members of the Society of Genealogists or family history societies, essentially love to ‘do-it-themselves’. Most families have a certain amount of information about their origins and this may be supplemented by a great deal of flattering tradition.Įven these days when we like to think we have outgrown that sort of snobbery, many people approach a professional ‘knowing’ they are descended from some well-known historical figure and just wanting him to ‘fill the gap’. The College of Arms was set up in the 15th century because newly-rich families were using coats of arms to which they were not entitled and in the 19th century there was a steady trade in ‘tracing’ aristocratic ancestries for the middle classes.
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