Genealogists

Because most genealogists are self-employed, they generally can set their own working hours and manage their own time. The profession is usually a solitary one, as genealogists spend much of their time looking through old records and searching library files, or working in their homes, organizing data and updating their records. Their search for information can take them into stuffy, badly lit archive vaults and basements, where they spend hours sifting through hundreds of documents looking for a single, vital piece of information. These documents can be crumbling and yellow, written in ink that is fading and hard to read. Hours or days of effort can produce nothing, or the genealogist can discover rich treasures of previously undocumented and unused information.

Genealogy can require a good bit of legwork as well. Occasionally, a genealogist might be called on to travel to a distant city or abroad to complete research, take pictures of old family homes, or locate and interview distant relatives. More often, they are required to make trips to schools, cemeteries, churches, and homes for personal interviews.

One of the biggest disappointments in genealogy is the number of lost or destroyed records. A vast amount of information was lost during the Civil War and to fires that plagued many areas in the 1920s; replacing records and collecting data were not priorities to most county officials. Sometimes counties even decide to intentionally destroy outdated records if they are no longer needed.