Officially In Business

I’ve begun offering genealogy and family history research services. I am excited and also nervous at the same time. I know that I do good research, so that helps me not be as nervous.

Here are some of the things I offer:
– general newspaper and other repository searches
– family tree work
– family group sheets (which cover direct line ancestors and general information on each of their children)
-Direct line ancestor mini biographies
– local history research

I look forward to supporting you in bringing your ancestor’s lives to life again.

How I started. How it’s going.

Recently Paul Chiddicks over on bluesky (@chiddickstree) asked how we all got started on our genealogy journey. History has always been a topic that interested me even when I was a small child. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along the shores of the Grand River, just south of the city, are Native American burial mounds (known as the Norton Mounds). There had actually been some in the main part of the city at one point. They were removed, but years later the city decided to recreate them as a memorial to the history. I saw the recreations at some point in my childhood and wanted to learn more. I remember taking out books on Native American history.

In high school I was appointed to the Grand Rapids Historical Commission as a student commissioner. While a student commissioner I was involved in several history events in the city, but most importantly was mentored by Dr. Gordon OIson, city historian, and Jo Ellyn Clarey, another historian. With the help of Jo Ellen I organized a history speaker series during Women’s History Month in my high school that was well attended. I started out a history major in university. It was in my first year of college that I started doing genealogy research on my family. Those early years in online genealogy research were so different than they are today. There were no online repositories like there are today. It was all based on what you could find from other researchers who had done research in archives.

Life took me in another direction for awhile, but after a few journeys around the world I found my way back to genealogy and family history. That was in 2011, not long after my mom died. I got pretty deep in my own family tree, but then realized that I wanted to help others find their ancestors. I’ve volunteered with WikiTree, created a One Place Study on the neighborhood that I grew up in back in Grand Rapids, finding my first paid history research work. I especially like building out people’s Mothers Lines because history has forgotten our mothers so often. My favorite thing I’ve done so far is build out family trees for friends and acquaintances who didn’t know their family history because of the Holocaust and the Transatlantic Slave Trade and it’s aftermath.

The year is almost over, but it’s been an ok year with progress that I’ve made in my research. For 2025 I will be working on spending more time doing my research and not get distracted. My history project plate is completely full, but when I get some of my friends research projects done and the information sent to them then I can start adding more projects, paid ones especially. Consistency will be the word for 2025 (starting now, though 🙂 ).

(Follow me on bluesky at @free2l and my podcast at @theirvoicespod)

My First Research Report

I have a lot of trees that I have been working on for friends and have wondered what the best way would be to share my research with them. There are several types of reports that genealogists use that can help share the details of my research with people, but I think the best one for the work I’ve been doing so far is a hybrid of a narrative family history and a general report that includes all the records.

The hybrid nature of the reports I plan on doing bring in important features of the reports I mentioned above.

General Research Report – The reason I am not specifically doing a typical report is because I’m starting out with trees that have several generations that are easily found without needing to write up a detailed report with research questions. There will likely come a time when I work on someone’s tree who has a brick wall they need me to work on, but right now my focus is on sharing the story of the ancestors. What will be included are:
- The records that I find for each direct ancestor.
- Further research suggestions.
Narrative Family History – The reason I have chosen this as my main focus of my reports is that I plan on including information from secondary sources that fills in the blanks for the family. One example is in a report I have been working on recently. A client’s Dutch ancestor’s WWII military records show his education. It shows he did 7 years at L.O., 3 years at M.M.L.O., and 2 years at an advanced school. Through research I was able to find out details about the Dutch education system in the early 1900s and explain what each of these acronyms meant and explain what their ancestor likely studied. This part of the report would also include a compiled lineage. Emphasis will be put on the direct ancestor of the client unless there are interesting bits of information related to the direct ancestor’s other children. One good part about using a compiled lineage also means that a client can visualize who all the children of their direct ancestors were. I may do more of a family group sheet here instead of a Burke’s Peerage format, but it could be a mix of the two. Each direct ancestor will have a profile specifically about their life. I need to figure out how I will combine the stories of both the husband and the wife together, possibly a chapter on both of their lives.

My very first report is for one of my high school English teachers who is now a friend of mine. I chose her because she is mostly Dutch, like me, but the difference is she is also Jewish. I am learning how to access Amsterdam and North Holland archives and am learning more about the Jewish experience in the Netherlands. Of all the international genealogy research I’ve done I feel most comfortable working with Dutch archives because of all the work I’ve done with my own family. Another reason is that I have the support of an online community of Dutch genealogists. And a few of them have done research on Dutch Jews so that will help me a lot.