Genealogy & Historical Records Research

I research family histories, trace bloodlines, and find people. Sometimes that means connecting living relatives who don't know each other exist. Sometimes it means confirming what a family suspected but never proved. I approach every case the same way: find the facts, document them, hand them over. No editorializing, no steering, no opinion on what the family should do with what I find.

I've been doing this work for over 15 years, starting with my own family and expanding into research for others.

My best friend of 25 years asked me to look into her Papou's (grandfather's) biological father. What I found took about 2 hours.

Papou's mother died, and his father gave him up to his sister-in-law's family. The father remarried, had more children, and named his new son the same name as the son he'd given away. I located the biological father's family, found what appeared to be his obituary (circa 1957), and identified living descendants.

When I sent a photo of the biological great-grandfather to my friend's family, her daughter said it looked nothing like her son. It did. It was him.

I compiled everything, unbiased, and handed the findings to my friend. She gave them to her father. What happened after that isn't my business. I found what I was asked to find.

My Aunt NayNay had a child placed for adoption when she was 13. I've been searching for that person with essentially nothing to go on. No name, no gender, no location, no adoption records surfaced yet. No results so far, but the search continues.

My Dad turns 75 this month. Somewhere out there, he has a half sibling who is older than him. That's all I know. No name, no gender, no birthday, no location.

To crack this one, I took my own DNA test, pulled the raw data, and uploaded it to every platform that would accept it: GEDMatch, RootsWeb, and multiple LDS-operated genealogy databases (I'm from Utah, so those resources run deep). I also opted in to allow my DNA to be used for law enforcement and criminal investigations.

I've found matches to people I've never heard of and can't yet connect to the half sibling. It's an ongoing project that I revisit periodically. Cold cases like this take time.

I've traced my own lineage back several centuries, supported by a family-compiled ancestry book created decades before I was born. I also research my husband's DNA and family connections through GEDMatch.

I've been a member of Find A Grave for over 15 years. I manage and have created memorials on the platform for family members: my grandmother, my mother, my brother, my aunt, my uncle. The research required for those was minimal. I already knew everything about them.

Every project gets the same treatment: neutral, fact-based research. I don't tell families what to feel about what I find. I don't push reunions or discourage them. I locate records, verify connections, compile findings, and deliver them. What happens next is up to the people involved.

I'm available for genealogy and family research projects on a case-by-case basis.