Questions

Every project begins with a baseline consultation to review your existing records, define a clear target line, and make sure the foundational research meets the Genealogical Proof Standard. From there we help you choose the level that fits — starting with a Level 1 research report that breaks through a wall, or answers a question that will direct research you are conducting yourself, or moving to Levels 2 through 5 to preserve your lineage across generations in a custom heirloom book.

If you go on to commission a book within six months of your report's delivery, in full, the report fee comes off the price.

Because depth is fixed and width is what you choose. Every book reaches the great-great-grandparent generation — for most American families that lands somewhere between 1800 and 1860, which is where the records begin to thin and research slows considerably.

Holding every level to the same depth is what makes a fixed price possible instead of an open-ended one. A book that promises to go “as far back as possible” cannot be quoted at a fixed price.

If you want one particular line traced further — to the ancestor who crossed the ocean, to a soldier, to a colonial founder — that is a Deep Line Extension, available at every book level and quoted separately.

Sixteen is a ceiling, not a promise. Adoption, unknown parentage, destroyed records and the 1871 fire mean some lines cannot be traced at any budget.

Your book states which of your sixteen were reached, which were not, and why. That is a finding, not a failure, and it is written into the volume rather than left out of it.

Level 1 reports are a fixed fee, set by which report you commission. Genealogy books start at $4,750 for the Couple Study and rise with width. Milestone books start at $2,500.

Every book is quoted on its own scope. You receive a fixed figure in writing before anything is signed — not an estimate, not a range. What moves the number is how many lines you want covered and how cooperative the records turn out to be.

Reports run four to seven weeks. Books run from about two and a half months for a Couple Study to six months and beyond for the Comprehensive Saga.

Those windows are properties of the work, not of how busy the studio is. Rush is possible by written agreement and carries a premium.

Half on signing, and the balance staged against the work. Smaller commissions are half on signing and half on completion; the larger books add payments at the midpoint and, at the top level, at scope and outline.

Research expenses — certificates, repository copies, archive fees — are pre-approved above a threshold set in your agreement, billed at cost, with no markup.

You are told, and you are shown why.

Where two sources disagree, both appear in the report or book, along with the reasoning that favors one. Where the family account cannot be supported, it is recorded as what it is — an account, reported and not adopted. Nothing is quietly smoothed over. A book that hides a contradiction is worth less to a grandchild than one that shows it.

Family history turns up illegitimacy, bigamy, institutionalization, crime, slaveholding, and children who did not survive. It is better to decide in advance how you want such findings handled than to meet them in a draft.

That conversation happens before research begins, and what you decide is written into the agreement.

There is a DNA report at Level 1 for making sense of AncestryDNA results, and a DNA add-on available with the two largest books.

There are firm limits, stated up front: no haplogroups from AncestryDNA data, no segment analysis without a separate upload, no health or trait interpretation of any kind, and no percentage presented as more precise than it actually is.

Living people are handled carefully and are not written about without consent. Your agreement sets out what you are warranting on that point, and it is worth reading rather than skimming.

Photographs of living people never appear in marketing material. Consent to appear in a private book is not consent to appear on a website, and the two are asked for separately.

They make different claims, and that is the whole reason they are separate.

Genealogy is research-led. It works from records, it is conducted to the Genealogical Proof Standard, and every conclusion is cited.

Milestone is testimony-led. It is built from interviews and the photographs a family chose, attributed to a named speaker and dated. It does not perform archival research and does not claim to. It is a record of what was said and what was kept.

The two can be commissioned together, and often should be.

Yes. Every volume is structured so that later findings can be added as a supplement without reprinting the whole book, and the levels are built to stack — the unit you add is a family line.

Further work is a short schedule added to the same agreement, not a new contract.

You own the volume and the research findings within it. The full position on copyright and on the reproductions in the book is in the Terms & Conditions, which are attached to every agreement and are yours to read before you sign.

That a particular ancestor will be found. That a family story will turn out to be true. That a brick wall will come down — some of them are brick walls because the records burned.

What is promised is that the search will be reasonably exhaustive, that the reasoning will be written out, and that you will be told plainly where the evidence stopped.

Yes. It is available alongside any report or book, in either service line, and for many families it is the part that makes everything else possible.

Digitization process includes secure custody transfer. Your items travel by insured carrier against a signed photographic inventory made before anything is packed — so both of us know exactly what was sent, in what condition. Originals are returned together with the files made from them.

Fragile things are assessed before they are handled. Brittle newsprint, flaking tintypes, photographs stuck fast to album pages. Anything unlikely to survive the process is returned undigitized and you are told first, rather than after.

And organized, not merely scanned. Files are arranged by family, person and record type, indexed, and delivered to a secure download area that is yours alone and stays open for ninety days, so you can pull everything down at your own pace.

Restoration — retouching, repairing damage, rebuilding a torn corner — is separate work, quoted on what the photograph actually needs.

Above the federal standard. Documents and prints at 600 dpi, anything smaller than four by five inches at 1200, 35mm negatives and slides at 2400 — against the FADGI benchmark of 400 ppi used by the Library of Congress and the National Archives.

You receive archival TIFF masters to keep and ordinary JPEGs to send around the family, named to one scheme so a filename tells you what the file is. Infrared dust and scratch removal is applied to color film and slides where it improves the result, and deliberately not to black-and-white silver negatives or Kodachrome, where the process is ineffective or does harm.