HeartlandAncestry Research
HeartlandAncestry Research traces family lines through obituaries, death certificates, county histories, ship manifests, and the Library of Congress newspaper archive, then turns the records into something your family will actually read: written biographies, an interactive family site, and heirloom books. Not just a chart of names and dates.
Reference project: 11 generations · 286 people · 259 written biographies
Every claim sourced. Every ancestor gets a story.
What we do
We start from you (or a grandparent) and work backward as far as the public records go. That means census, vital records, immigration, newspapers, land, probate, and more.
Each documented ancestor gets a readable, sourced story (where they lived, what they did, what happened to them) not a bare list of dates.
A private, self-contained web page with a clickable tree. Every box opens to that person's story. Works on any phone, shareable with the whole family, yours to keep.
A full narrative family history (chapters by generation, photos, timelines, and source appendices) bound in hardcover as a keepsake to pass down through the whole family.
Pricing
Professional genealogy firms charge $100–$200 an hour: a full, multi-generation family history routinely runs $3,000 to $10,000+ and takes months, then hands you a written report. No book, no website, nothing to pass down. Every package here is a flat rate agreed before work starts.
You did the research: we make it beautiful
$495
Turnaround · 2–3 weeks
Start · $495One side of your family, fully documented: digital
$1,295
or Both Sides · Mom’s & Dad’s: $1,795
Turnaround · 4–6 weeks
Start · $650 depositBoth sides? Start with a $900 deposit
Everything digital, plus the book in your hands
$1,995
or Both Sides · Mom’s & Dad’s: $2,495
Turnaround · 6–8 weeks
Start · $1,000 depositBoth sides? Start with a $1,250 deposit
How starting works: Pay half to start, and the deposit comes off the price (Bring Your Own Tree is paid in full up front). Right after checkout you fill in what you know about the family. Partway through, we email you a progress update. When your book is ready we show you a preview, and the balance is due then, before the final files are released. Prefer to pay in full up front? You save $100. No call needed. Changed your mind? Cancel before we begin and your deposit comes back in full; the rest of the cancellation terms are in the FAQ below and our terms.
Not sure how far your family goes? Ask about a Discovery scan: a short first look at how far the records actually reach on your line, so we can scope the right package before you commit. Credited toward your project if you continue.
Gift a Tree: every package can be purchased as a gift, with a keepsake gift card (emailed or printed) for the family member whose story it is.
| Service | What it covers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Extra hardcover copies | Additional casebound books for siblings, parents, grandparents: printed and shipped. | $195 each |
| Extra USB drives | Additional USB drives, each loaded with the complete archive: one for every branch of the family. | From $33 (by size) |
| Animated migration video | A short film tracing your family's journey across the map: Old World origins, the ocean crossing, and the road to where they finally settled. Custom to your tree. | $195 |
| Brick-wall research | Focused research on one stuck ancestor, with a written findings memo either way. | $250 (rates can vary) |
What we uncover
Every family tree holds people like these: a name on a census line who turns out to have a whole life behind it. The following are illustrative of the kind of history documentary research recovers.
A fifth-great-grandfather remembered only as “a farmer back east”: recovered from a Continental Army muster roll, a worn pension application, and a fading headstone. Suddenly he has a regiment, a winter encampment, and a widow who spent years fighting the government to collect what she was owed.
The immigrant ancestor nobody could name: a young woman who crossed the Atlantic alone in steerage, found in a ship’s manifest, a naturalization paper, and a parish register in the village she left behind. The family finally learns the town, the ship, and the year she started over.
A Civil War private the family had lost track of: pulled from regimental rolls, a widow’s pension file, and a county history, and restored to the tree with the battles he fought and the farm he came home to.
Your family has stories like these. We find them, source every claim to an original record, and write them into a history you can hold: a recent full project ran eleven generations and more than 280 people across five countries, every one documented.
How it works
Tell us what you know: names, dates, family stories, the box of photos nobody has opened. We email back a written plan, the right package, and a flat price. No call needed, no obligation.
We trace your family generation by generation through census, vital records, immigration, land, probate, and newspaper archives. You get a mid-point progress note so there are no surprises.
Every connection gets checked against original records before it goes in your tree. Wrong-family attachments and duplicate people are the most common errors in hobby trees: we clear them before writing a word.
Biographies get written, the interactive site gets built, and (for Heirloom projects) chapters, photos, and timelines come together into the print manuscript.
You get every file (the site, the documents, the sources) plus a walkthrough of what we found. It's yours permanently; nothing lives behind a login.
Our standards
Anyone can generate a family tree now, and most are full of wrong-family attachments and confident guesses. Our work is held to the Genealogical Proof Standard, the benchmark professional genealogists use to tell a proven conclusion from a merely plausible one.
A reasonably exhaustive search of the records, not the first hint that fits, but the full range of sources that could answer the question.
A complete, accurate citation for every fact, so you, or the next researcher, can find the exact record behind each claim.
Evidence is analyzed and correlated, not just copied. We weigh what each record actually proves before it goes in your tree.
When records disagree, and they often do, we resolve the conflict in writing rather than quietly picking one.
A written, reasoned conclusion for every link: the difference between “this is your family” and “this might be.”
Our commitments to you: a fact goes in your tree only when the records support it; nothing is invented or guessed to fill a gap; set rules keep living people out of our public database; your information stays private; and when a line hits a documented wall, we tell you plainly instead of papering over it.
FAQ
It happens: courthouse fires, common names, pre-1850 gaps. We'll tell you where the trail honestly ends and why, with a written note on what was searched. We don't pad trees with guesses to make them look deeper. Your price is flat and agreed up front, so a hard line never changes it, and you still get everything proven up to that point.
Before you choose, we take a quick look at both sides and tell you which one the records favor. And if you start with one side, you can add the other at the mid-point progress update for the difference in price.
Half up front, half at the end. The deposit (half the package price; Bring Your Own Tree is $495 paid up front) begins the work right away and counts toward your total. Partway through, we email you a progress update and ask any follow-up questions. When your deliverables are ready, we show you a preview of the book, and the remaining balance is due then, before the final files are released and any hardcover is printed. Prefer to pay in full up front? You save $100.
Yes, in writing (a reply to our email is fine). Before we begin, you get your whole deposit back. After work has begun and before the balance is paid, the deposit covers the work done so far and you owe nothing more; the detailed findings, documents and files come only with a fully paid project. If you paid in full up front and cancel before your preview is ready, we refund everything above the deposit for your package. If we ever have to cancel, we refund the part of the balance for work not yet done. These are the same terms as the research agreement we send you, and our terms.
Every fact in your book is cited: what the record is, its date, and where it’s held, so you or anyone in the family can go back to it. Your digital archive includes copies of the records we’re able to share: public and government records such as census pages, old county histories and older newspapers, certificates we order for your project, and anything you send us. Some records we view on subscription sites like Ancestry or FamilySearch can’t be passed along as images under those sites’ terms. For those, you get the full citation and directions to view the record yourself. The printed book includes a selection of key images where we’re able to use them.
Very, as a starting map, not as evidence. Hobby trees usually contain wrong-family attachments and duplicated people (most do, before verification). Our research packages verify what you have against original records and build on whatever survives. Confident in your tree already? The Bring Your Own Tree package ($495) turns it straight into a designed family-history book.
No. Everything is delivered as files you own: a self-contained web page that works offline, PDFs, and documents. There's no platform, no login, and no recurring fee.
DNA tells you ethnicity percentages and matches you to relatives. It doesn't tell you your great-great-grandmother's name, what happened to the family farm, or why the family left Italy. That's documentary research: the two are complementary, and we can use DNA matches you already have as clues.
Names and approximate dates for your parents and grandparents get us moving. Anything more (family Bibles, old photos, an existing tree, funeral cards) accelerates it. A missing detail is never a blocker; finding it is the job.
Yes. Research sometimes surfaces surprises: unexpected parents, first marriages nobody mentioned. We flag them to you privately first, and you decide what appears in family-facing documents.
Get started
Tell us one grandparent's name and where the family thinks it came from, or ask anything about how the process works. We'll email you back with answers and a written plan with a flat price, before you spend a dollar. Prefer to talk it through? Just say so and we'll set up a call.
Ready now? Choose a package above and pay the deposit to start. You’ll tell us about the family right after checkout.
or write us directly at [email protected]