how much does it cost to get someone to look up your family tree?

The only people who use private detectives are adoptees and children who have "Unknown" on their birth certificates where the father's name should be.

You don't "look up" a family tree like you look up an article about bears in an encyclopedia, you research it. It won't be in one place.

If you are in the USA, and most of your ancestors were, you can do it yourself for the cost of ancestry.com's "USA Collection - $159 a year, but you'd spend 100 - 300 hours, spread out over as many nights and weekends as your whimsy dictated. It isn't hard; anyone who can get a B on a high school history term paper can do it, but it does take time. You'd have to use obituaries, birth, death and marriage certificates and the like to get back to1930 or so, which is the latest census open to the public.

You can do a decent, not stellar job of it for free, if you are lucky, but Ancestry makes it a LOT easier.

Professionals charge $25 - $100 per hour, usually with an 8, 12 or 20-hour minimum.

A poor but honest widow might do it for $10 - $15 per hour, cash under the table (Not completely honest; fiddle dee dee to the IRS). You'd find one through your local Family History Center or the county genealogy society, but tread warily; Mormons are notoriously honest, so don't suggest stiffing the government out loud.

Anyone who guarantees they will find things or works for a set fee instead of an hourly one is suspicious.

I offer 20 hours of my time at our church service auction every year. My "item" usually goes for $200 - $300. I'm not volunteering to work for you for that fee, just making a suggestion.

If you attend a church that could use a little extra cash, you might offer to donate $200 to the church, over and above your annual pledge, if one of the members would spend 20 hours working on your problem. The member would get a puzzle to solve for fun (our version of the Sunday Times cross-word puzzle is a brand new family to track), the church would be $200 richer and you'd have a cancelled check made out the First Presbyterian / Methodist / Baptist Church with "Choir robes" or "Food for homeless" in the memo line, which you could claim on your income tax, again letting the IRS go whistle.

You could ask, again at the county genealogy society or your local FHC, is anyone was willing to trade 10, 20, 30 hours of her time (75% of genealogists are ladies) for an equal amount of yours, if you are handy at auto tuneups, house painting, gardening, minor electrical repairs, chinse cooking . . .

Family Tree Cost

The short and sweet (honest) answer is that it probably costs more than you expect or want to pay.

SOMETIMES it takes years to find one central fact. Other times, someone else has worked it, and you can find it in 10 minutes or less. No.. unless you are looking for personal/ private records (ie generally recent info on living persons), you should not need a private detective. Professional genealogists normally charge by the hour, and that means, if they find it, or not. Good ones are worth it, and that isn't ripping you off.

There are thousands of free sites to use. It is a mistake to think it is all free. And yes, the two statements go hand in hand.

Most of us here have been researching for years, and would advise that you do it personally. The reason is that the FUN of it is when YOU find the record, and break the challenge. I would not pay someone to go to dinner for me at Red Lobster.. they get all the fun.

If you take a few minutes to stop over at www.rootsweb.com, there is a tutorial about the process. It isn't as hard as some think. You also can stop by www.cyndislist.com, which has thousands of sources..inlcuding an area about professionals, when to hire them, and what to expect.

It would have to be how much research the person would have to do, traveling, going to courthouses etc. There are professionals. Perhaps you have a local genealogy society that can be helpful.

You can do your own and my answer below I have cut and am pasting.

My answer is lengthy and I apologize for that but I want to warn you of the advantages and the pitfalls of genealogy on the internet. We get your question many time a day. So I have cut and am pasting an answer.

Websites that only have family trees are not worth a tinker's curse unless you are willing to verify the information with documents/records. They are subscriber submitted, very seldom documented and if they are they are poorly documented. You frequently will see the different info on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will see the absolute same info on the same people from different subscribers but you would be very foolish if you thought for one moment that that means it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying. The information can be useful as clues only as to where to get the documentation.

Right before Christmas of 2008, I found out I was dead. So was my sister and my brother-in-law. We died in New Jersey. Since the only time my sister and I were ever in New Jersey is when our family drove through it coming from New York in 1957. It was the same year Hurricane Audrey hit in our part of the world. Hey! we had been dead for 51 years. It says so on the internet. It has to be right if it is on the internet!

I found out that family on both sides married and died in New Jersey. Since my ancestry is mostly southern American colonial with some exceptions and those exceptions came in through southern ports, I was surprised.

This tree would have been accepted by any genealogy website. You can make up an entirely fictitious family tree and it will be accepted. You disagree with something someone has on one of your family members, the websites will tell you that it is between you and the other subscriber.

Now the best for the total amount of records online isn't free but your public library might have a subscription to it. That is Ancestry.Com. Still be careful about the information in their family trees.

Cyndi'sList.com is a website with links to many other websites, some free and some not. Many people involved in genealogy find it helpful.

Not all records are online but the ones you will find will save you time and money traveling to courthouses, libraries etc.

However your first free source is your own family. Get information from them. Tape your senior members if they will let you. People who do this state they go back and listen to the tape again after doing research and hear things they didn't hear the first time around. I am not saying they won't be confused or wrong on some things.

Find out if anybody in your family has any old family bibles. Ask to see and make copies of birth, marriage and death certificates. Depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage certificates from their church can be helpful.

A good free source is a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church. They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City, they have the world's largest genealogical collection. Their FHCs can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee.

They won't try to convert you, at least they haven't done so to me or anyone else that I know. Just call the nearest Mormon Church or visit their free website, FamilySearch.org, to get their hours for the general public.

Rootsweb and FamilySearch.org are 2 free sites but remember verify information in family trees with documents/records. If you don't you don't know whether it is accurate or not.

See -- https://backgroundreports.im/ancestry

try this ... it's pretty popular

http://www.ancestry.com/