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Half payment is made at the beginning of an order
and your credit card will be charged for the other half upon
completion of the project. Your binder will be sent to you once full
payment has been made. Projects are usually completed within 7-12
weeks.
There is an additional $5/hr. charge for international projects.
This is added to the remaining payment due when the project is
finished.
There will be some additional costs due at the end of the project,
in addition to the remaining half payment due and any international
rate charges. These include copy costs ($.05 to $.25 per page),
presentation binder ($10 to $14), and various certificate and
correspondence research fees. These costs generally do not exceed
$35 and will not exceed $60 without your permission.
Payments by check require the full research amount ($1000) to be
paid up front. Research by Pryor-Blackwell will not begin until your
check has cleared our bank.
Payment on additional expenses will also need to be made when
the project is completed and before your binder can be mailed.
In all cases, complete payment must be made before the
completed project is mailed to you.
Completed projects are mailed via U.S. Postal Service.
If a mailing is requested by the client to be expedited
(Federal Express or Express Mail), these additional costs will be
billed to the client.
More than one project may be ordered at a time if you have multiple
lines for which detailed research is desired.
In order to reduce the amount of time spent by the
genealogist on your project (and to reduce the expense for you),
there is some preliminary work you should do and information you
should know:
·
Decide which line of your family you want to research.
Do you want to research your mother’s line or your father’s?
Though your parents were/are married, genealogy is about
bloodlines.
Genealogically speaking, your mother’s family is not related by
blood to your father’s family.
Write down as much information that you know as you can, in
an orderly fashion. Start with yourself, then write down your
parent’s name, place of birth, marriage date, etc., then their
parents’ (your grandparents’) information, then their parents’
information (your great-grandparents’, and so forth, back as far as
you can.
·
If
you want to research both your mother’s and your father’s lines,
this would be two projects and would require a separate project
charge. As an example,
if you want to research your mother’s line, we would show the date
and place of her marriage to your father, but we would not research
nor include any genealogical information about your father, other
than his date and place of birth.
We would research as far back as possible your mother’s
ancestry, including both sides of her forebears (ancestors).
·
The reasons for this are simple.
Again, using the example of researching your mother’s
genealogy, starting with yourself and going back to your maternal 3rd
grandparents would include many people
You, your parents, your mother’s mother and father and any
siblings, their spouses and children, your mother’s grandfather and
grandmother and their children, her great-grandfather and
great-grandmother and their children, her great-great-grandfather
and great-great-grandmother and their children, her
great-great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-grandmother and
their children.
Additionally, any of the children in these generations may well have
spouses and children. If
your maternal grandmother was one of 16 children, there could well
be 15 spouses and children in additional to those of your maternal
grandmother.
·
How far back Pryor-Blackwell researches
is entirely up to the
client.
·
Not all information can be uncovered nor
discovered.
There are
many reasons for this.
Some records simply never existed.
In earlier centuries, many babies were delivered at home and
there was no legal requirement for registration of births.
Many records deteriorated over time and no longer exist.
Fires at government facilities destroyed some records.
One example of this is the 1890 U.S. Federal Census.
A fire at the National Archives Building in 1921 destroyed
the majority of this census.
Only a small percentage of this census remains (largely those
of states who at that time performed a state census).
Additional Information
For some people, hiring a professional researcher
to help with their research is a decision laced with questions and
uncertainty. One of the first things people ask themselves is, "How
can I be assured that the researcher will uncover the information I
am looking for?" The fact is, you can't. There is never 100%
certainty that the information you seek is available. Records are
fraught with inaccuracies, occasionally events are not recorded; and
many records are destroyed over time. However, if the information
does exist, there are some things you can (and should) do to help
ensure it gets uncovered in the quickest and most economical way.
Before you approach any professional, you need to
do some homework yourself. Everyone's needs are different, but one
of the most important things to be done is to identify 'exactly'
what information you are trying to find. It can be as simple as
finding your grandfather's birthplace, or as complex as compiling a
full four-generation family tree complete with pictures, stories and
multimedia content. The decision as to what the professional does is
yours, and to ensure they do exactly what you're asking you have to
be specific.
The second thing to do is compile all the
information you have that may help in finding that vital piece of
information you are seeking. In the case of your grandfather's
birthplace, you should note details such as:
-
His name was James Garfield Smithfield;
-
Date and place of death, if known;
-
Place of burial (if known);
-
Religion (if known);
-
Name of Spouse(s), date(s) and place(s) of marriage; and
-
Names of any children and birthdates (if known).
Any of this information will aid the genealogist
researching your ancestry and additionally will reduce the amount of
time (and expense!) spent on your case.
Just as important as recording each specific detail is
detailing the source, or sources, of each. For example, you could
further state that the information on your grandfather's death is
from his headstone inscription; and that the marriage details were
extracted from a family bible. This additional depth of detail helps
the professional researcher determine whether or not the information
you have supplied is from a 'primary' or 'secondary' source.
A primary source (or record) is one that was
created at the time a particular event occurred. A secondary source
is one created 'after the fact' and is generally considered more
prone to inaccuracies. A baptism or marriage record from a church is
an example of a primary record. Compiled genealogies or online
databases, as well as oral history are secondary records.
Making the distinction
between the two helps determine the probability of accuracy of a
particular piece of information. In as much as possible, primary
records are the ones that should be sought.
Other details that you should tell a professional
are the places or repositories where you didn't find anything. If,
for example, you already checked the burial records at St. James
Church but the years in question were missing from the books, this
is important information to pass to the professional. Another
example might be that you did not check to see if your grandfather
had a will or not. Key information such as this will save the
professional the time, and you the money, of doing work that was
already completed. In the event that you did search a particular
repository but are uncertain whether you did so accurately, you
should mention this as well.
The key is to provide as much information as
possible. You may feel as though you are doing all the work, but any
related information that you provide the professional will help
improve the odds of finding the information you are seeking at the
most economical price.
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