About us
At Know Your History, we believe history – all of it – is important. Whether it’s the history of the world, of the country, of our own family, of an individual, or of our own unique, personal experiences, history makes us all who we are. When seen in a wider, national or global context, history can give us a greater sense of ourselves - a better understanding of our position in the world around us. This may also give us a greater sense of belonging in the world in a way we may never have experienced or appreciated otherwise.
Our journey
We’ve been at this a long time now. Since we began this journey two decades ago, researching family history has changed beyond all recognition.
In the beginning, for instance, very few family history resources were digitised and available online. Much of what we take for granted these days in terms of online research, still had to be done the old fashioned way: like a good old fashioned gumshoe, doing actual legwork and/or writing off for actual certificates and documents, that arrived some weeks later – on actual paper! That was all fine so long as your family had always lived where you lived and the local libraries and archives where easily accessible to you. In those days, the greatest joy we could hope for is that said library or archive had updated their squeaky old manual microfiche readers to more modern electronic ones! Ugh!
Even that was no good if your family came from elsewhere – or they’d left for foreign climes, but nobody still living in the family had a clue where they went, or when? In those situations, it became quite tricky. Where did you even start?
Back then, it could prove quite costly and time-consuming by today’s standards. If it were possible, you’d visit vast numbers of libraries and archives elsewhere yourself, in the hope of hunting down an elusive document that would break down that brick wall, or prove or disprove a particular theory. Sometimes, you were lucky and the pesky document would be located in the first new place you looked; other times you’d find you’d had a completely wasted journey - and would have to begin the search again! If a tricky document was eventually located in an archive or library elsewhere in the world? Well there was always email and post - if the archive or library even had those relatively modern facilities by that point. The added cost of paying an overseas researcher at the other archive to find the document you required, plus the extra for P&P for them to post it to you, often made gathering even the most important documents tedious and expensive to pursue - especially if, after all that, it turned out to be the wrong person after all!
But all that effort really was the only way to do it.
One of the many upsides of us doing it that way, however, is we’ve clocked up many hours digging through local and national libraries and archives; travelled many miles, gone through a lot of stamps and burned through a lot of shoes and petrol just to try to make a bit of headway.
While many records have been digitised these days, not everything you might need to find out about a person is available online. Again, this can be a huge issue if you don’t live near the places your ancestors originally came from or ended up – so it’s good to have those early, well-honed gumshoe skills to fall back on, if need be.
That’s a good thing - for you! Not only do we have the maps, we know the routes to take and we have travelled them countless times. Sometimes, that’s still the only way to do it – even now! Along with the mileage, over the years, we’ve clocked up a wealth of experience, knowledge and understanding that has made a lot of what we do instinctual.
As a result, we know when it’s ok to take a shortcut - when a particular record is likely to give you the answer that you think it will, and when it isn’t. That can be highly beneficial, getting you your answers, swiftly.
Why hire a researcher?
Our experience is your good fortune. You give us the details, and we use our well trodden paths to hand you the answers you seek.
Family historians are always researching; it’s impossible for us not to. It’s an impulse. An addiction. Some might argue, an obsession. It might not always be directly linked to family history either - just family history adjacent. We see an old ‘ghost sign’ on a building: we have to look to see what it used to be. We see an odd town sign: we have to find out what it means. We see an old medal, we have to figure out the story.
The impulse is even worse when combined with genealogy! If we hear a surname we’ve never heard of before, or are asked to look into a person from a place we’ve never looked at before - oh my! Utter joy.
That’s what you get when you hire a family history researcher: someone whose obsession is at your service – and for whom the questions ‘Where are you from…?’ and ‘Who are your people?’ are considered perfectly normal!
These days, television shows and some genealogy companies make the process of researching your family history appear easy. The fact is, researching family history can be a long, complicated process. It can also be emotional and confusing. Finding the right answers can take a great deal of time, patience and understanding. Years of experience have given us the necessary skills to know where to find the answer you’re looking for.
Hiring a researcher can, therefore, help bring you closer to what you’re searching for.
Qualifications and experience
As beginners, we could never have imagined we’d be contacting a priest in South America to ask him about burial records in his parish; or messaging the archives of New Zealand to ask about long-dead soldiers; or speaking to strangers in the middle of Italy to ask for some help in interpreting a century and a half old letter written in Olde Italian! Neither did we ever foresee that we’d now be in contact with other researchers and clients from all over the world who are on the same quest: to figure out how we’re all connected and discover what trials and tribulations brought us all to where we are today. Along the way, we’ve picked up some pretty unique skills, a vast amount of knowledge; and a wealth of information. So it’s important for us to put it to good use.
University equipped us with some excellent researching skills. Similarly, years of researching and explaining our own and other people’s family histories has enabled us to hone, build on and expand those skills.
We began looking into our own family and then an avalanche of requests from others to help them do the same made us fearless researchers; unafraid of researching anywhere in the world, regardless of language barriers, or how complicated access to records might seem. We’re unrelenting in finding the answer.