TEN GREAT WAYS TO MAKE A LOT OF MONEY continued...

RESEARCHING FAMILY TREES

Recent years have seen the emergence of a great interest in our heritage. More and more people are interested in discovering their roots although not necessarily, as some mockingly suggest, to discover possible family fortunes, or hidden links with royal house, thereby allowing them to claim the titles they always felt rightly to be theirs. As memories fade or the older of our relatives die, essential information is often lost for ever.

Or is it?

In Government records, Parish registers, graveyards, and in many other places there are segments of information which when located, and pieced together, offer an extremely accurate and interesting profile of one's family history.

Here a problem presents itself which precludes many a man or woman from researching his or her family history - time in many of our lives is a valuable commodity, and other demands allow insufficient time to undertake the painstaking research which might of necessity take us to the far ends of the country, even the world.

For a specialist researcher, several histories may be researched during one trip to the appropriate archives or whatever, and since he or she will be paid for hours worked, there will be little worry over long hours researching, with not bean to show for it. Because costs can rise alarmingly due to these fruitless hours searching for marriages or births that have been inaccurately recorded by those before us, it is advisable to keep the customer informed of the progress made on his behalf, and inform him or her that further research is likely to be time-consuming and subsequently expensive. He or she may then by content to accept what you already have discovered. In the vast majority of cases it is relatively quick and easy to accurately present the details of the previous couple of centuries since official records were made mandatory. For many people, the information you already have will prove adequate.

The end product should be presented attractively and in an easy to understand way, perhaps with a family tree format, to guide the customer trough the maze of dozens of forebears who often bore common ancestral names through several generations.