At Heritage Consulting Genealogy Research Services, we receive calls every day about the scope of our professional genealogy research. Some of the more frequent questions posed to us are:
- How much does it cost?
- How many generations can we get for that price?
- Where do you perform your research?
- Can you do foreign research?
We are proud to have a staff of seasoned professional genealogists who have many years of education and experience. They are not hobbyists or beginners. We select research specialists who consistently succeed in solving tough research problems and writing excellent client reports. As with any professional service, there is a cost involved. Some people call, expecting us to provide this service for free. This is how we pay our bills and feed our families. And besides, we love it! Our current hourly rate is $80, which includes the research time, report writing, clerical prep, copies and mailing. Most of our competitors charge more. The largest competitor charges 50% more than us for the most basic, post-1850 U. S. research, and their prices go up for pre-1850 or foreign research, while ours does not. Their researchers are not better than ours, period.
How many generations can we get in a typical ten hour research session? We cannot guarantee a number of generations or names found in a certain time frame, as there are so many variables. Those variables may include: the time period from which we start, the availability of records in the geographical location in question, or whether the ancestor has a common name (John Smith is harder to trace than Herman Schmutzlefutz). We do guarantee that we will utilize the full amount of time contracted to search diligently for the desired information. Each research project is unique. One can go to our website at www.heritageconsulting.com and peruse our ‘Testimonials’ page for client reactions. We have had very few dissatisfied customers. In the ten years that we have owned Heritage Consulting, only one client asked for a refund. We know our business grows by repeat customers and referrals.
We research mainly at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the largest repository of genealogical records in the world! This library does not have everything, but almost. We have agents in the field who can retrieve documents for us as needed. For example, we have a researcher in Washington, DC who visits the National Archives for us, to obtain copies of military service and pension files for our clients. The cost is reasonable, and we do not tack on an additional fee for those services.
We have excellent foreign research specialists, including skills with records of Canada, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Italy, Germany, France, and other European countries. Two whole floors of the Family History Library are devoted to records of foreign countries.
At Heritage Consulting, we love what we do for a living. Our desire is to provide our wonderful clients with the best possible product for their investment. That is our passion, our mission statement.
Stan & Raquel Lindaas, Heritage Consulting
