It’s harder and harder these days to think of exciting gift ideas, but genealogy can be one of them, and there are several ways to “make the past your present”!

We can agree a credit limit of a certain number of hours’ work or an actual financial figure, and you can give the recipient a gift voucher to that value. When they approach us to redeem it, we can then work with them (and you) to explore whatever element of their ancestry they wish. Once the voucher has been spent, we can continue working with them (and/or you) at our standard rate.

Alternatively, we regularly have clients who commission us to delve into the ancestry of a parent or grandparent, as a gift for a special birthday.

This work is usually done without the person’s knowledge, so any information you can provide yourself always helps! The end product is a file of information containing elements of an individual’s family history, which you present to them yourself. This is typically divided into sections, with one section for each grandparent.

Each section contains family trees, numbered documents and images relevant to the individual’s ancestors, and the whole file is drawn together through a carefully-referenced narrative family history, which introduces the contents of each section and suggests avenues for further research.

Handing your father or your grandmother a file of paperwork may not seem like the most exciting present, but it really can be! For someone who has all the physical things they want or need, giving the gift of knowledge, of information and of the context in which their life sits is far more meaningful than another pair of socks!