Heritage Album

To hire someone to search my great grandmother? Will they find more than me?

Many people I email from family tree dna end up replying stating they are working for said family. I am curious if these professionals have better resources, considering everything available online. Anyway what I am most after is a little info on my great grandmother's birth town in Poland and her immediate family. Most I found is records when she came to the US. What do you recomend?

Public Comments

1. Here is my background. I have dones some genealogy research and have considered doing it for a living or a side job. It may not pay so great, but I find it interesting and helpful. There is a lot of information online. Somebody doing this for pay would pay for access to ancestry.com online databases and use it for their personal use and for their business. Also, there might be other resources that are not online that would require making written requests to governmental agencies or visiting a genealogical library. Some of these may be public like a state library or part of a university's collection. The one closest to my house is called the Clayton Library, which you can check out at www.claytonlibraryfriends.org. Your suspicions are correct. Anybody you hire can probably find out the same thing as you, only quicker because they already know of the best resources and are motivated by getting paid for their results. Therefore, you would only be paying them to save you time, the trouble of running into dead ends, and the money for buying access to those dead ends.
2. They are not necessarily better sourced. Sometimes they have more time to look and travel to various places. Sometimes they have accounts at numerous paid sites to help them. They've trained themselves to know where and when to look for certain information. I do genealogical work for others on top of my own research. But, I volunteer my services. If you can afford it, Ancestry has a paid world wide subscription. You can do yearly or monthly subscriptions. There are other free sites like the LDS site, Family Search. Check immigration records and naturalization records to see if they reveal more information.
3. I find TONS of info online. In honesty, for THOSE lines that have been the biggest challenges (and where I have made my own biggest breaks), the goldmines are OFFLINE. These are the ones where I was able to personally travel to the locale, and go to the courthouse. Most of those records are such bulk and volume, that they won't be online. They can be found on microfilm through the LDS, since they filmed those type of books, ie land records. Obviously, that approach isn't valid for me, for my own Polish line. It sits neglected. It tends to intimidate me more, for lack of experience in those. When I did make some progress, it was through networking on the Polish rootsweb email list. On that, I bumped into some REALLY good people, who are focused and knowledgeable. A certain amount is inherent in the idea of it being Poland. In that, I mean that you cannot erase the fact of the long time political instability and the high level of damage/ destruction from WW2, and being occupied. This last month, I found Norwegian records that have been digitized and online. I was amazed to see the actual church registers. If you know me at all (my frequent approach here), is that I send many people to www.cyndislist.com. The number one reason is to alert people to the wide type of things available online, instead of the idea that "one" source is best. I also read almost all the questions coming in here.. the other night, we had a new person come in, who was born in Poland. I hoped to make him feel welcome, since he could possibly be of help. MOST of you may only pick and read the ones that sound of interest. IE.. nothing in your subject line says POLISH QUESTION!! Overall, what I hope to advise is that I don't know that professionals have more access/ resources than you do. My knowledge of broader and more in depth sources is from years of work, much offline work, knowing that lots of the online goodies will not appear tagged as genealogical. I do not use ancestry.. and generally (not always), I find many things for posters that they have NOT found, even when they do use ancestry. For instance... grandma came. I would ask if any of her brothers came, since there might be clues/ info on their records. That is just a matter of knowing it is productive to not just focus on the direct ancestor, and not on more resources. It's using ones that are out there. Women were 'naturalized' often THROUGH husbands. THAT is why I ask about brothers in specific. It would also be good if Genievieve's mom saw your question, since she has solid solid background in Michigan and Polish. If she does not respond on this posting.. do another one, and make sure Michigan and Polish is in the subject line.
4. Have you tried writing to the Catholic Church in the town, enclosing an International Reply Coupon or two and a self-addressed envelope? You buy IRC's at the post office in the USA. People at the other end can trade them for a first-class airmail stamp in their country. Apolgize for your inability to speak Polish, ask if their records survived the Nazis, and, if so, what they would consider to be a reasonable donation to poke through them.
5. I believe this is your grand mother Anna Orlowski. New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 about Anna Orlowski Name: Anna Orlowski Arrival Date: 24 Jun 1907 Estimated birth year: abt 1888 Age: 19 Gender: Female Port of Departure: Rotterdam Ethnicity/Race­/Nationality: Polish Ship Name: Nieuw Amsterdam Search Ship Database: View the Nieuw Amsterdam in the 'Passenger Ships and Images' database Port of Arrival: New York, New York Line: 3 Microfilm Serial: T715 Microfilm Roll: T715_929 Birth Location Other: lwachowski Page Number: 98 I have been waiting for you to email me so I can email you the information I have gathered for you in relation to Anna.
6. Why waste so much money? Go to http://www.search-background.com Using its Public Record Databases.