Free Genealogy is Not Always Worth It

It seems to me that some people get offended at the thought of paying for genealogy. Why is it that a researcher should not be able to make a living while helping you out at the same time? As far as I can see, genealogists should not be treated different than any other professional in respect to their charges. This is America, a free economy, and prices are determined by supply and demand. With genealogy being one of the top hobbies in the country, the demand is higher than ever. If you collected stamps, you would not expect the post office to give them to you for free. Why should you expect genealogists to give away their services?

If people could not make a living with genealogy, records would be so scarce that few people would have access to them. The government's WPA (Works Progress Administration) hired people back in the 1930s to copy and preserve historic documents, they became paid genealogists in effect. Think about on-line resources, ancestry.com, genealogy.com, they would be out of the game if they did not charge for their services. The odds of you having access to complete indexes for all of the US census records would be nil without their efforts. The Social Security Death Index would not be as accessible to most people if profit-based companies did not propagate it as they did a few years ago. I think some of you are being too hard, looking a gift horse in the mouth.

A lot of people think that all genealogy resources should be shared, like the USGenWeb Project. Well guess what, Rootsweb was bought by Ancestry a few years back. Its funding comes from a profit company! Nothing is free. Everything costs someone money. If no one paid for genealogy, no one would take the time to walk cemeteries and transcribe tombstones or sift through thousands of old marriage bonds to write a book. I think we need to support people who dedicate their lives, 9 to 5 each day, to make genealogy resources more accessible for us all.

Pretend that you live in California and your ancestors came across the country from Virginia. How much time and money would you spend going to each courthouse in each place that they lived, all the way back to Virginia? You would spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in that pursuit. On the other hand, imagine paying $19.95 for a book of marriage records from a specific county or paying $250 to have a research track down a generation or two. There is no comparison in cost, you save time and money with the professional.

We should praise professional, for-profit researchers and give them a break. Their work is more thorough and more accurate than any free resource you will ever find. Any Tom, Dick or Harry and can make up anything, put it on-line and call it fact. As far as I am concerned, the old adage is true, you get what you pay for.

Kevin Lett is owner of Find Great Help LLC at http://www.findgreathelp.com He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia with a degree in the field of History and a minor degree in Art and Art History. Kevin is the primary genealogist for Virginia Family Tree at http://www.virginiafamilytree.com and webmaster for the USA Family Tree Network at http://www.usafamilytree.com He has conducted genealogy research for the past fifteen years, eight years professionally.Sheeree Blog71204
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