For general enquiries, it is a difficult task to institute an in-depth search without knowing a place-name for your ancestor when researching England or Wales. Most records are arranged by town, parish, county or Registrar Districts and the vast majority of these are housed in a multitude of regional archives and libraries, though an ever-increasing number are now being consolidated in the National Archives and National Library of England & Wales. In some minor circumstances we have a few limited county and state-wide indexes that, at minimum, will provide us with a distribution of the family name and most of these constitute pre- 1900 information; at best, a pioneer ancestor might be located. This is always first priority, to locate the family, and these index searches are covered by the minimum advance retainer we request. Your chances at success are much better, however, if you know a town name or parish or county by which to isolate the search better.

If you do know a place-name, you’ll receive some research and additional research suggestions based on information you’ve supplied. In this case, the minimum retainer covers evaluation of your information, a preliminary research plan, implementation of some basic research strategies and evaluation of those research results in the Report.