Tag: genealogy of place

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Hiring a Professional

Why Hire a Professional Genealogist?

by TRaymond

Ancestry, FamilySearch, Heritage Tree, and WikiGenes all exist to help make genealogical research easier for the do-it-yourselfer. There are also countless social media groups filled with “angels” who will do the work pro-bono. Some surnames are even lucky enough to come with genealogical website already created online – it’s like you’ve struck gold!

Why hire a professional genealogist? What can a professional genealogist do for you that you can’t do for yourself?

Let’s take a look:

  • TIME. Genealogy is a very time intensive hobby. While filling out your family tree can seem easy, it’s more than just clicking on hints and copy and paste. In order to have an authentic family tree, with well documented research, primary sources are a must! Primary sources are the documents that prove the information in your tree (such as birth place and time, death and burial locations, marriage certificates, military history, etc.). While some of these documents are indexed online, many aren’t, and it can take hours combing through to find what is your ancestor’s breadcrumb trail. Professional genealogists know the most efficient methods to gather those documents in a timely manner.
  • BRICK WALLS. When researching your family, there can be a series of brick walls that come up – areas where you just can’t get through to the other side to continue on. While many documents are online – some indexed and some not – there still exist many that are only kept in paper form. This is when paying a genealogist in the area where your brick wall is located may come in handy. Professional genealogists can do the “boots on the ground” work, digging through libraries, historical societies, and town offices.

  • LOCAL KNOWLEDGE. If your family tree takes you to an area you’ve never heard of – and in many cases it will – it might make you wonder what life was like in that area. Finding genealogists from specific locations can be akin to finding a living historian. Many have spent copious hours researching their home towns and state. Professional genealogists can help give others a more well rounded understanding of what life was like in the area and help provide more depth to family history and culture.

  • LINEAGE SOCIETY APPLICATIONS. There is no cookie-cutter application when it comes to lineage societies. Each has their own application and specific requirements. Professional genealogists can help track down the documentation needed for these applications in a timely manner.

  • AN EXTRA SET OF EYES. Remember doing assignments in grade school? You’d pass them in, fully sure of yourself that you got everything right, that nothing was missing, only to get it returned with a lower grade than your expected. “If only I had another set of eyes to look at this.” Genealogy is the same way. We look over the same documents, census records, town reports, over and over — and sometimes we miss things. Hiring a professional genealogist to look over your own notes and records, to see if there’s something you missed, is akin to being an author and hiring an editor. You might not think it’s necessary, but you’d surprised at what you could be missing.


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Maine Places

Mercy Hospital

by TRaymond
Mercy Hospital in Portland, Maine. Photo found at MaineMemoryNetwork.com

Known today as one of Maine’s most renowned hospitals, Mercy Hospital started as a result of the 1918 Spanish Influenza. During a time of fear and illness, a lack of adequate hospital facilities lead Bishop Walsh to found The Queen’s Hospital with the help of the Sisters of Mercy, whom the hospital was later named after.

Established in 1831, the Sisters of Mercy became known for their vows of tending to the sick, poor, and ignorant. Lovingly called “walking nuns” in Ireland, the sisterhood’s country of origin, the Sister of Mercy had their first mission of health with the 1832 cholera epidemic. A little understood disease at the time, cholera ran rampant through Dublin, killing up to 600 people per day. The Sisters worked to help stem the impact of the illness any way they could, from holding the hand of a dying patient to continuing lessons for children pushed out of school.

Over the next decade, the Sisters of Mercy open chapters in other countries than Ireland, including roughly 100 different foundations in the U.S. In 1873 Bishop David Bacon invited the Sisters to Portland to help care for the orphans of the city; had he not, the Sister of Mercy may not have been able to help open the greatly needed hospital during the 1918 pandemic.