If I found the city of Euro-Germanic origin for your immigrant ancestor, what would that German Genealogy Research be worth to you?
That is the present dilemma for Paul Fox from the KC, Kansas area ! According to his recent query to us via the Contact The German Genealogist link at the top of this URL’s homepage, Paul Fox claims his ancestor may have originated in “Baden.”
Nope. US records indicate otherwise…
This prospect further claims he has not been able to find anything about the German origin of two of his immigrant ancestors, ____ & his son, _____ RIECK from ________, _______, Germany.
Paul Fox further provided data on the spouse & children of the eldest immigrant ancestor. With that data, Karl was able to find 6 documents (not 5 as he mistakenly told the prospect), two of which told the German province or state of origin of the eldest immigrant ancestor. One particular document revealed the specific CITY of origin for the patriarch.
After Karl receives the requested (never demanded) retainer from the prospect–which then turns a prospect into a client–Karl will post the details of how, easily within just two hours, solved the problem for this long-time researcher. It was not found in an obvious place!
SUCCESS STORY: I will reveal that I found his ancestor in the 1930, 1920, 1910 & 1900 Censuses of Oneida County, NY; also in an East Coast Passenger List. On NONE of the census listings for the ancestor was it given the specific city whence the patriarch originated! It was elsewhere… Hmmm…
COMPENSATION? The prospect “owes” me nothing; however, In this case, in the event the prospect would like the results of our NO FIND, NO FEE! USA & German Genealogy Research, I offered the prospect the data, documents & images on this research for only $1,000. which we negotiated down to $500. Expensive? No, sir. Expensive is when you spend 30 years just TRYING to find what we often DO find within 1-100 hours.
Should he have a difficult time with that retainer amount, I offered Paul Fox the option of breaking that figure into two payments.
The prospect is welcome to find these images on his own, but our $ offer will remain the same, regardless. Why? We found the name of the city of origin, while de-bunking his “Baden” hypothesis. That is worth $1,000 (ok, $500) to me any day! To this day, I do not have the parish of origin of my own Sala immigrant ancestor!
So, is this client getting charged $125/hour? Heavens, no. There is yet much to do with the images. We annotate, crop, edit, analyze & report on the images! We ascertain what must now be done to continue the case. This will easily take another 3 hours administrative time. This image editing will not be done until & unless the prospect wants to become a client by ordering what we have found in his behalf!
So, how much is this client getting charged? Mal sehen! We’ll see after all is said & done. Another client of mine, Lois J., paid $1,000 ONLY for the name of her ancestral parish of origin in a location that is now in Poland! However, she later got many ancestral family members with another similar-sized retainer!
If I save you thousands of $ worth of time, who cares what it cost or the rate?
