When Should You Hire a Professional Genealogist?

My ancestors' welcome party.

Why are your working on your family tree?

Are you finding out about the roots your family never discussed? Is it a giant puzzle that makes a complete picture of you? Is it simply a really fun hobby? Or are you trying to prove kinship for legal purposes?

For me, it's been all about the fun. The discovery. The confirmation of my deep roots in four Italian towns.

After 15 years or so and access to a treasure trove of Italian vital records, I've built my tree up to more than 19,000 people.

As amazing as my progress has been, many of the Italian documents I need for a few of my branches are not available online. Some of my branches are at a standstill.

So what happens next? Is it time for me to make the leap and hire a professional genealogist?

Genealogy is a hobby that will fill as much time as you're willing to give it.

So, even if you consult a professional to work on your tree, there's still tons of fun research for you to do on your own. For the rest of your life!

I've reached that point. I've gotten as far as I can with some branches. It's time to call in the pros.

I found someone I trust who specializes in research in my ancestral Italian region.

If you're thinking about hiring a pro, consider these points to get the best bang for your buck.

• Which branch of your family tree is at a standstill and is the most important to you? For me, the branch that contains the relatives I grew up with is proving to be the most difficult to trace.
• Which ancestor's roots can only be traced by searching records at the source? For example, have you traced your tree back to the beginning of civil records? Can you go further back in time only by accessing church records at the local parish?

When you choose your area of focus, create a full report of everything you know and how. Share the report with your professional genealogist. Be very specific about what you want to learn.

Do you have a family story you'd like to prove or disprove? Do you want to learn details about an ancestor's life? Do you want to build out their tree with all their siblings and several generations?

Going through this exercise of preparing to tell someone all you know and what you want to know will be very helpful. It will show you where you can benefit the most from hiring a professional genealogist.

I'm starting this process now. It will be some time before I can tell you the results, but I promise to share the details and lessons learned with you.

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These 4 Simple Rules Will Improve Your Genealogy Research

I created this blog with a single thought:

If we amateur genealogists follow some basic rules, our family trees will be so much better.

I listed out the primary keys to high-quality genealogy research:

1. Know exactly where your people are from
2. Analyze each document carefully before attaching it to your tree
3. Cite your sources as you go
4. Develop a strong, logical system of document-naming and filing

Let's take a look at how you can put these keys to work for you today.

Know Exactly Where Your People Are From

If you don't know exactly which town your ancestor was born in, you can't find their birth record. You may not find their marriage record. You might download records from a genealogy site and never know they're for the wrong person.

My late step-grandmother's naturalization papers told me her story.

Look for evidence of the town of origin right away. It may be on military records, a passport application or naturalization papers. Knowing that town, you can now reject hints pointing to someone from the wrong place.

Analyze Each Document Carefully Before Attaching it to Your Tree

My tree has so many people with the same name. My grandfather had two first cousins. All three of them were named Pietro Iamarino.

So before you attach a record to your tree—even if you think it's such a unique name—analyze all the other facts. Does everything about this record make sense for your ancestor? Or are there too many facts you know don't match your person?

Keep some basic logic in mind. A dead woman can't give birth or get married. A woman can't give birth to two babies a month apart. A man can't become a father more than nine months after he dies.

Cite Your Sources As You Go

You can add facts to your images.

When we begin this genealogy hobby, we're excited by each new name and date we find. And, oh, those ship manifests and census forms! They couldn't make us any happier.

It's common to grab those facts and documents and forget about citing your sources. "It's the 1930 census. Isn't that good enough?"

No, it isn't. Picture this: One day you realize your uncle lived on the same street as your grandmother. You can't find him in a search. If you could just get back to her census form online, you're sure your uncle would be on the next page. If only you'd recorded some facts and a URL.

Put a stake in the ground today. Going forward, you're going to add citation info to each fact and document you add to your family tree.

And then spend a few weekends cleaning up your early work. Make that tree better.

Develop a Consistent System of Document-naming and Filing

Develop your logical filing system.

At the start of my research, I developed some rules:

• My computer's FamilyTree folder contains a sub-folder for each type of document:
  
  • census forms
  • vital records
  • city directories
  • draft cards
  • ship manifests
  • naturalization papers, etc.
• Each file name follows the same format. Generally, it's LastnameFirstnameYear.jpg. Since I keep all vital records in one folder, they are more specific: LastnameFirstnameBirthYear.jpg or LastnameFirstnameDeathYear.jpg.
• Census records are named for the head of household: LastnameFirstname1930.jpg. This is true of a ship manifest containing a whole family, too: LastnameFirstname1922.jpg.

When I learn something new at work, I try to apply it to my genealogy hobby. For example:

• I work with Excel all day long. So I catalog my thousands of genealogy records in a single spreadsheet.
• I store work files on OneDrive so I can access them from another computer. Now I store my tens of thousands of Italian vital records in a OneDrive folder so it's backed up instantly.

Be smart, logic and efficient in your hobby. You'll still have all the fun you want, but you'll leave behind a priceless legacy: Your impeccable family tree.

Grandpa's Journeys Shed Light On My Own

My grandpa, Pietro Iamarino, in New Brunswick, NJ.

My Grandpa lived in the same house from the time I was born until two years before he died. Whenever my family was in the Bronx, we stopped in to visit him. All those weekend visits to the orthodontist when I was a kid with braces, my dad and I would stop in to visit Grandpa. Years later when I was grown, I made the trip from New Jersey to visit Grandpa.

He was always there.

Yet Grandpa had been so many places. In 1920, at age 18, he left home in Italy to come to America. After Ellis Island, he went north to a Boston suburb. There he joined his mother's brother, Antonio Pilla.

Grandpa was quick to declare he was staying in America.

A short time later, Grandpa was in western Pennsylvania working as a laborer. There, in 1924, he filed his Declaration of Intention to become a citizen of the United States of America. He was still in Pennsylvania three years later when he became a citizen.

Now an American citizen, Grandpa didn't seem to have a steady job or profession. His next move, I think, was his family's suggestion. Grandpa moved to Ohio.

Within eight months of becoming a citizen in Pennsylvania, my grandfather, Pietro Iamarino:

• had taken a job as a laborer in the Carnegie Steel Mill in Youngstown, Ohio
• was a boarder in the home of Pasquale Iamarino (his father's second cousin)
• married his landlord's daughter, and his third cousin, Lucy Iamarino.

But Grandpa wasn't finished with his travels. After the steel mill he worked for the railroad along with Pasquale Iamarino. He famously said his railroad job "stinks on the ice," so he packed up his wife and two kids. They moved to the Bronx, New York, and lived for a time with Grandpa's uncle Giuseppe. Grandpa became a jeweler—a much cleaner job than working in a mill or a railyard.

He continued his nice, clean jeweler's job in the Bronx for almost 15 years. But he wasn't finished moving. My grandmother became ill and wanted to move back to Ohio near her parents. So that's where they went. On her deathbed in 1954, my grandmother told my dad to go back to the Bronx and marry his childhood sweetheart—my mom.

By 1955, my parents had married and had a child. They invited Grandpa to live on the first floor of their townhouse in the Bronx. Yup. He was back in the Bronx.

In 1959 Grandpa remarried and bought the house where I would visit him for the rest of his life.

I wanted to map out Grandpa's travels from Italy to New York to Pennsylvania to Ohio to New York to Ohio to New York for one reason.

My Southern Italian grandfather did NOT take a ship from Naples to New York like all my other relatives. That would have been too direct for him.

Grandpa sailed from where?!?!?

When I began my genealogy research in 2003, the first document I found was Grandpa's ship manifest. I didn't understand why, but his manifest didn't say "sailing from Napoli". It said "sailing from Cherbourg". That's in France. Northern France.

Cherbourg is a 24-hour car ride from Grandpa's hometown of Colle Sannita, Italy. And you know 18-year-old Grandpa didn't take a car that distance in 1920. I imagine he traveled for weeks to get to northern France. And then he spent 12 days on the Atlantic Ocean.

I have no documentation of that part of Grandpa's journey. He never spoke about his early life.

Judging by the rest of his travels, I'd like to think he acted like a student backpacking his way through Europe. He traveled for a while, stopped to do some odd jobs for money, and continued his way north.

Oh, he did make one other journey. In 1958, before he remarried, he made a trip back home for the first time since 1920. His father Francesco had traveled back and forth from Italy to America five times! He had visited Grandpa in Ohio in 1929. But Francesco died in 1951.

Grandpa did get to see his mother one last time during that visit to Italy. Imagine that? He left home as an 18-year-old boy and didn't see his mamma again until he was a 56-year-old man.

Aha! Now it seems like fate that I've lived in New York, California, New York, Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. I am, after all, an Iamarino.

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