Pricing & Methods

Teaching to those not descended of enslaved persons: $75 per hour, payable in full at the start of each lesson. We can use Zoom.us or a phone call, as you prefer. We both need to be logged on and working in your tree simultaneously, or I need to be asking you questions to help me understand any problems you may be having. I only teach; I do not do research outside of the reparational realm. I can help you with Ancestry, FamilySearch, Newspapers.com, and other sites and issues.

Research for non-reparational projects: $150/hr

Reparational research and teaching: $0 per hour (for an explanation of Reparational Genealogy, go here)

Many online genealogy services charge $200-$350 per hour for research, without giving the client a clear sense of the scope of the work.

Ancestry.com will give you a free estimate, but their standard professional genealogical and family history research pricing starts at $2500-$3000, last I checked. That’s just to begin working with one of their professional genealogists.

WOW. That doesn’t make sense. And considering that a White-owned company is making millions of dollars on Black clients who are researching families torn apart by centuries of enslavement, Jim Crow, and generalized terrorism, it doesn’t seem right to me that I should be charging a descendant of enslaved people anything at all. It SHOULD be a reparation.

I believe that knowing one’s own history is a right, not a privilege. I want to give you my best and satisfy your individual needs. To clarify, here’s what I do and how I do it.

How do I do the work? First, I don’t take on too many clients at a time. There may be a waiting list. Once I start, though, here’s the order of business:

I INTERVIEW. All genealogy starts with family-held documents like letters, certificates, and newspaper clippings. It also starts with folklore. We kick things off with an interview in which we discuss the nature of what you do and don’t know. Then, I have a Google form on this site for you to fill out to gather the information I need. In order to do my level best for you, I need you to sleuth a bit first, but even guesses help. Click here to fill out the required form. It may take a few minutes, but without it, I can’t start the work.
I BUILD A TREE. With the data gathered in your form, I start an Ancestry.com tree. I send you an invitation to view the tree as I work. I enter the data and doggedly pursue all provided hints, then research further in Ancestry to attach all correct records to each of your ancestors.
I SHRUB. Instead of trying to go straight backwards, which yields limited data, I go sideways, gathering BMDD data (birth marriage, divorce, death) on aunts, uncles and cousins. Why? One classic problem in genealogy is finding a woman’s maiden name. All women are known in genealogy by their maiden names. A woman might change her name once in her life, from maiden to married, or if she has multiple husbands or partners, she may change it three, four or five times, going back and forth between names. I find all of a woman’s names, maiden and married, by examining the death-related records of all of her children. This allows me to include all husbands of a given woman, and her maiden name takes me back a generation to her father. Then, I do it all over again with her mother. This is how I build backwards. And if you are interested in finding far-flung living cousins, shrubbing is the way to go.
I CONNECT. I can connect your entire Ancestry tree to FamilySearch, a free world family tree site run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). They are the world leaders in family history research. This makes your tree free and available to you and your family so that you can get a free FamilySearch account and add pictures, write biographies, and make the information more personal and meaningful to your relatives.
I SCOUR NEWSPAPERS. If you are interested in finding in-depth facts about relatives, I can research names in Newspapers.com, clip articles, and attach them to your Ancestry tree (and put them in FamilySearch, too).
I TEACH. So that you can continue your work to getting records from local archives, newspapers and other holdings, I teach you the basics so that you can continue your work on your own. We’ll also brainstorm a list of next steps so that you know what you can do.
I DELIVER. If you want me to, I will deliver you a gedcom file (the computer file that contains all of the research in your family tree) so that you can upload it to a different online service, or work with it in freestanding software.
I HOOK YOU UP. I help you to use Family Tree DNA, Ancestry DNA, My Heritage DNA, LivingDNA and 23andme DNA (all paid services) to get your raw autosomal DNA data, and then upload it to GEDMATCH.com and DNA.land for free analysis (LivingDNA accepts gedcom and DNA files for free). Once you have your raw DNA, I can help you contact people who test closely to you so that you can find relatives. I can also upload your gedcom file (your family tree) to GEDmatch and LivingDNA for comparison to other people’s family trees. DNA information is particularly important for performing Reparational Genealogy.
I FIND GRAVES. I apply my findings to existing Find-a-Grave online records for your ancestors, linking children to parents and spouses to spouses so that you and other future researchers can use Find-a-Grave as a free, open source, online family tree.

Once this is done, you can take it and run with it, knowing more about your family than you ever have. And you will learn good things. And yes, you will be surprised.