Cost of Geneolgy

My sister just sent that she hired a genealogist to find the origins of a middle name that (maybe?) started as a last name? We already have maybe 3 generations back, with nothing. She said the cost is $2000.00, or less if the genealogist finds the genetic thread. Then my sister lays on us that we can contribute if we choose (5 kids total) but she'll pass on charts, etc. even if no one contributes. What?? She's well off enough to do this on her own, I'm not. Should I contribute to this because it's family genealogy but don't care about the outcome?

 

I certainly wouldn’t contribute a dime. And I wouldn’t be all that interested in the results.

(And I have to say… I’m an only child. My wife is an only child. I find sibling stuff like this kind of fascinating. My sense of family is different from most people. My mom had drama with a sister years ago and I just thought “why do you even talk to this asshole?” But there’s a bond there I will never fully understand.)

 

My thought exactly. The "grandfather" of us, the one my sister is trying to to follow, told my dad a (Jr! in name) don't ever contact me, ever again. This is when my Dad tried to contact him at about age 50. I would pay more money to re-visit who my grandmother remarried, an Albert, who demonstrably and provably had changed his birth name from ADOLPH!

 

To the first part, it never makes me happy when someone spends money on behalf for something I didn't ask for or probably want.

As to the second, when I was younger, genealogy and family history meant a great deal to me because I assumed I would leave some sort legacy for the ages or something. Now at my age as an only child with no kids, it seems much less important.
My dad and mother-in-law both passed away last year, and we are downsizing my mom to a condo. We've spent that time going through family "heirlooms" - which I discovered is an ancient Atlantien word for junk - and begging cousins to take stuff because I didn't want to just toss it. I'm talking pictures, letter, furniture, etc. dating back to my great-great-great grandparents pre Civil War. My mom could identify most of the people in the pictures, but after she's gone, nobody else would have been able to.
While that isn't directly genealogy, I guess my point is unless you are a famous person, a generation or two after you are gone, does it really matter?
To some people it does, and that's fine. I've just learned over the last year it really isn't important to me.
One thing I was able to do that made me happy is a had a couple of rifles that belonged to my grandfather. He and I shot them together. They had value to me for that. I was able to give them to his great-great grandson. While the boy (or his mother) obviously never met him, I can rest knowing that stayed in family hands.

 

Does anybody live near where your parents grew up? It's easy to get a birth certificate, which will show parents names. My father found all his great grandparents details from going to the city halls.

 

I would be interested in finding some ancestors, but going back more than a generation is hard. Might do the DNA test to see the genealogy.

 

I've been doing genealogy off and on for 20 years now. I keep my basic level ancestry.com membership active about 6 months of every year, let it lapse the rest of the time.

I did the AncestryDNA thing about 10 years ago; I'd say the results have been mildly interesting if not tremendously useful. They still send me updates a few times a year as the results are re-analyzed and redefined.

A couple months of the year, I upgrade to their international level, considerably more expensive. During those couple months I make what progress I can searching sources in Ireland, where 90 percent of my ancestors originated.

When I started, I knew the names of my great-grandparents, and that was it.

I'm about at the point now where if I'm ever going to get much deeper, somebody is going to have to go to Ireland.

That's never going to be me, so hopefully maybe one of my nieces/nephews will pick it up someday.

 

I personally have not attempted geneaology, but I watched my mother run down our family history for decades. You can go dig through old records in county courthouses, tromp through old family graveyards, etc, doing it old school. When I was a kid, my family took a two week trip to Washington DC largely so that my mother could go dig in the National Archives and the Library of Congress (while my father, brother, and I did the tourist thing all over DC). OTOH, there are also some extensive databases out there now that you might be able to tap. For instance, the Mormon Church famously not only holds records on Mormons but on Gentiles, and is actively compiling as many family records as possible.

There are pay sites such as Ancestry.com, but there are also a number of free sources or pay sites that offer an initial free week or two. You may be able to make a good bit of progress digging this stuff out fairly painlessly at this point. My experience was that often a large percentage of a family tree can be found reasonably easily, up to a gap where all you have is a name but you cannot track down that person's origin. Say you have an ancestor who shows up on the 1810 census as a citizen of a given state and county, but you cannot pin down where they came from. These gaps can be very time consuming to find and document.

 

Before it’s too late, maybe ask your Mom to ID the people in the photos again as you write down the names on paper next to the photo and keep them together so that future generations will know who your ancestors are?

 

That is great advice, and I'd carry it a step further. Talk to all the older family members you can and gather their family memories. Someone may remember an aunt or cousin that fell off the radar somehow, or someone who divorced, something like that. Sometimes there's stuff in an elder's memories that you don't have on paper, and getting it that way can save a world of research.

 

In my case, it really doesn’t matter. When another only child/childless cousin and I are gone, the family line is over.
There could be a couple of island fellows with blue eyes that I don’t know about show up some day, but I doubt they want the pictures either.

 

I wish I did that. I have a bunch of photos of my parents and their families and I don't know who the people are. And I don't know anyone to ask m