About me....
My name is Richard Cairns. I am a semi retired genealogist with more than 30 years experience and can undertake research projects to find out about your ancestors. An hours work may be fruitful or fruitless depending on the availability of information so rather than charge an hourly rate I prefer to charge a project rate at an affordable cost and will carry out an initial FREE ASSESSMENT to determine whether the information you provide will allow me to access further ancestral documents. I specialize in ancestral research for the United Kingdom including the Channel Islands and Northern Ireland.
A project can be one generation or one family - though be mindful that in past times families were often significantly larger than they are today. You can choose the limitations or the extent of the research that I do for you. I will endeavour to provide details of christening records where available as well as birth, marriage and death records for each individual, using multiple sources to ensure accuracy. Where BMD records were made after 1837 and if no other birth or christening records are available for an individual then the event will be listed by the quarter of the year in which it took place, though more recent death records often show the actual date of birth.
A project can be one generation or one family - though be mindful that in past times families were often significantly larger than they are today. You can choose the limitations or the extent of the research that I do for you. I will endeavour to provide details of christening records where available as well as birth, marriage and death records for each individual, using multiple sources to ensure accuracy. Where BMD records were made after 1837 and if no other birth or christening records are available for an individual then the event will be listed by the quarter of the year in which it took place, though more recent death records often show the actual date of birth.
Where to get started
Write to me (using the contact form) giving me as many details as possible for your starting point. Please specify what work you would like me to undertake. I will reply promptly and suggest the criteria for a first stage DISCOVERY project, the cost of which will not exceed USD$25. This project will establish the location of records pertaining to the individual(s) and family you wish to pursue, their background and occupations as far as information is available. All source information will be provided to allow you to verify the correctness of the information provided.
If you have an already existing pedigree chart with family information transcribed I am willing to undertake an ACCURACY check on the information as another project work. I strongly recommend that this be done if you have already taken and entered information from other available personal ancestry records. While many researchers are careful and studious about information sources not all of them are and some just copy their information without verifying its accuracy. With ancestral research accuracy is of paramount importance - one mistake can lead you to connect with a family quite different from the one you are pursuing. In the course of many years I have discovered many errors on other databases where well meaning amateur researchers have copied incorrect information and these have been picked up by successive researchers who believing the information to be accurate have added details to their own trees erroneously.
If you have an already existing pedigree chart with family information transcribed I am willing to undertake an ACCURACY check on the information as another project work. I strongly recommend that this be done if you have already taken and entered information from other available personal ancestry records. While many researchers are careful and studious about information sources not all of them are and some just copy their information without verifying its accuracy. With ancestral research accuracy is of paramount importance - one mistake can lead you to connect with a family quite different from the one you are pursuing. In the course of many years I have discovered many errors on other databases where well meaning amateur researchers have copied incorrect information and these have been picked up by successive researchers who believing the information to be accurate have added details to their own trees erroneously.