Hiring a genealogist (mostly Scotland / Ireland, little bit of England)

nnb

Has anyone here ever paid a genealogist to complete their family tree?

I have already done a DNA test, and completed a LOT of info on my own re my paternal side partially with the aid of matches having public trees. But Scottish records are a nightmare (and expensive considering how vague the free listings are - it's £1.50 just to view a full record, even though you don't know if it is the right person from the free listing).... There is also Ireland mixed in - I have not worked out how to connect the Scottish people to me having mainly Irish DNA. (IT IS NOT MY MOTHER'S SIDE.)

The closest I've got to is great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents. Unfortunately the final stretch needs inside help but any matches (non very close) all clam up when I mention adoption despite being super keen to talk to me prior to that. Even super distant relatives get all funny and will ask for info but never give anything back in return.

I don't anticipate it would take much time for a pro to untangle the final bit.

I am not planning on turning up on my father's doorstep, I literally just want to know who he is - WHO I AM. I'm not here to ruin his current life or any memory of him. But I have a right to know who the heck I am.

If anyone has any experience of hiring a pro, I'd love to hear your tips and warnings  

Grumpelstiltskin

Are you a member of Rootschat?RootsChat.com Free Family History Forum

It's free and you will find very clever people on there who will advise you.

I would suggest trying there before you pay out for anyone.

TonyMMM

Scotland - https://www.asgra.co.uk/ 

Ireland - https://accreditedgenealogists.ie/

England/Wales  - https://www.agra.org.uk

You will need to check that the professional has the necessary expertise in DNA interpretation AND that they deal with "living people" research (many don't).

If you think £1.50 is too much to spend on a record, you will find the cost of employing a professional quite scary.

Mojisola

nnb said:

I have already done a DNA test, and completed a LOT of info on my own re my paternal side partially with the aid of matches having public trees. But Scottish records are a nightmare (and expensive considering how vague the free listings are - it's £1.50 just to view a full record, even though you don't know if it is the right person from the free listing).... There is also Ireland mixed in - I have not worked out how to connect the Scottish people to me having mainly Irish DNA.

It was normal for the men and older boys in my Mayo family to spend summers in Scotland and northern England, moving from farm to farm doing casual work.  Some of them found a permanent job/place they liked/woman they wanted to marry and settled there.  Perhaps that's where your Irish links come from.

If a professional takes on your research, you will have to pay for every look-up they do as well as paying for their time while they do it.

I second the advice to try RootsChat before spending money on a professional.

Grumpelstiltskin

I wonder how much per hour they charge, my guess not cheap plus costs of documents obtained.

If you really want to hire one start here.

ASGRA - The Association of Scottish Genealogists and Researchers in Archives

But be prepared for the cost to escalate to hundreds if not thousands depending on the difficulty, so if you think £ 1.50 is too much then forget the idea.

RAS

Are you able to get to Edinburgh?????

It costs the princely sum of £15 to spend an entire day in Register House viewing BMDs and census records on-line. AND the indexes there are more informative than those publicly available in scotlandspeople.

For example if you search for John Smith born anywhere over a 10 year period, you'll get hundreds on scotlandspeople. But at Edinburgh, you can see which also have a mother with maiden name "Taylor" and restrict to those, so maybe 30-60 to check. Takes half an hour or an hour. That alone saves you £xxx which can cover the cost of a hotel room and transport.

You can view literally hundreds of records in a day, but at present you have to transcribe rather than print them. Although you were never allowed to print closed records. And they were restricting visits to one a week. So if you have a lot of work to do, it might be worth waiting until you can get two days, even if you also take one day out between to sort the first day's results and stretch your legs in Princes Street Gardens?

RAS

Going to make this a separate response, having re-read your previous thread on Ancestry.

Myheritage offer a free upload one week every spring. You download your gedcom file from Ancestry, keep it as a Zip file and upload into a free myheritage account. A few days later it shows any links on there. If you've got co-operative relatives on your mother's side ask them to do likewise, as it will help separate your mother's and father's relatives.

Then get a DNAPainter account, also free.

Click on your best match in myheritage and it shows your shared matches; if you click on the little chromosome icon on the right, you get a one to many chromosome browser, to which you can add up to six people, and then download the chromosome matches into a csv file.

Copy and paste the shared chromosome data into DNAPainter for each person, and choose whether it's mother's or father's side or unknown. And it'll paint the information onto a chromosome chart. It's another tool not a magic bullet. But handy. For example, I have a more distant cousin on my strict paternal line (about which I wasn't absolutely confident because the ancestors didn't marry), and he shares DNA with a more recent cousin. So I know those shared bits cannot come from the mother whose ancestry is a mystery.

And I now know a brother and sister with whom I match are related to a specific side of my Scottish family because we, and others I can identify, all share the same segment on a chromosome which ends at the exact same location.