How Do I Make a Living Wage in Genealogy? Good Question!

Thomas Macentee, Genealogy Ninja and the mind at the center of Geneabloggers, sparked a fire last year with a series of blog postings about working for a living in genealogy. Just last week he did his 2012 update. Many other bloggers kept up with Thomas, posting their own ideas in a useful and productive dialogue. He covered types of careers, making money through blogging, and how he himself managed.

Me? I followed it avidly but felt I had no helpful ideas to add to the discussion. That is, until this morning, when on Skype one of my colleagues took me to task for hassling her about finding a living wage. She said in response that I, <name withheld> (Executive Director <withheld>), and <name withheld> (a tribal genealogist) all make our livings the same way, with long-term contracts in aspects of genealogy that my friend actually wouldn’t enjoy doing.

Aha! These long-term contracts are missing from the Genea-Opportunities discussion. There is something that I can contribute! So, here it is, a week late.

My genealogy background was that I abhorred the family history interests of my dearest grandmother as I was growing up, concerned that the interest in colonial New England ancestry excluded people of other ethnicities during a period when America’s racism was being challenged. I started doing genealogy in 1984, when that grandmother’s furniture and keepsakes became a part of my new home set up after my marriage. Along the way, I wrote a family history book on that grandmother’s Revolutionary War patriot. I also worked with NEHGS checking the scanning quality of their Registers when those journals were first made into an image database.

In 1991, when my daughter was born, I started doing genealogy professionally as a way to earn some money through a job that could be done during hours when I was free, rather than requiring a 9-5 setting. I became a full-time mother with a mutable part-time job. I started by abstracting probate records for the writer of the Monroe genealogy.

In 1993, I made up a resume and visited the Director of NEHGS for an “informational interview” like the ones I had done while working in high tech. I told him I was a writer and editor. He had nothing for me at that time, but my timing couldn’t have been better. The following week I lucked into a job with the Massachusetts Society of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America through that contact. I thought that the job of being a Verifying Genealogist for Dames was a perfect fit for me. By taking a cut in my hourly charge, I eliminated the need to market myself, to constantly look for the next client.

In 2001, I added a job as Genealogist at the Welles Family Association [disclosure: I was a past president]. That relationship was to finish writing the family genealogy, a task that my predecessor had started. The discount on my charge there is steeper than at Dames, but, again, I have work and don’t have to constantly look for my next client. This steadiness is a good fit for my personality.

It is only in my forensic work that my hourly charges are exactly what is advertised on my webpage. Those jobs, however, tend not to be long-lasting.

I will not be as specific about income as Thomas was last week, but I can give you a list of what makes it realistic for me to hang out my shingle as a professional genealogist.

• Even though I am a cancer survivor, I have affordable health insurance. I pay $210 a month because – after my divorce – my ex-husband had to continue paying for family coverage for our daughter and – TA DA – having Romneycare/Obamacare in Massachusetts mandated that I couldn’t be thrown off family insurance. I just pay my share of the family insurance. Once our daughter reaches age 26 (when her coverage in the family ends, as per Romneycare), I will be able to transition to Medicare.
• My alimony income helps, too, and continues until my ex retires. At that time, I’ll be able to start Social Security.
• I love my long-term contracts. When I had to take three years off to focus on my daughter’s care, Dames was happy to oblige. They took me back last year as a quarter-time worker until the Welles book is done. Then I’ll go full-time again.
• When the Welles book ends, my income per hour will go up $15 due to the difference in rates charged to the two non-profits.
• I don’t begin to bill for a full 40 hours a week – generally only half of that – because I love my volunteer work for genealogical and historical societies, as a trustee for the Board for Certification of Genealogists (from which I retire this October due to term limits), and as a trustee for the BCG Education Fund (a Massachusetts charitable trust). Let’s not even begin to talk about how much time I put in as President of MGC. I loved every minute of that, felt it made a difference, but appreciated the term limits.

Long-term relationships are great for people with my disposition. For me, the knowledge that I will have an income next month and next year is reassuring. It is well worth the lower hourly rate I charge. In addition, I can see the affect my presence has on the institution, with slight changes in the way things are done. Finally, I enjoy having long-term relationships with the same clients and colleagues.

I also enjoy the work. My colleague in today’s Skype conversation may not like the idea of filling out lineage forms every month, but I thrive on it. I bill myself as a colonial-period specialist, but lineage work spans all centuries to the present and all locations from here to the Left Coast and even beyond. Just yesterday I was using vital records from the Philippines. It has broadened my skills considerably.

Opportunities for steady work like this are out there. Family associations with dreams of a genealogy are willing to hire us to do that work. Some genealogical journals hire indexers or editors. Some larger genealogy societies need executive directors, office workers, educators, and so on.

Conclusions

If you are the type of person who enjoys having a reliable income, long-term contracts might be just the thing for you. They cut down on your need to market yourself, but they generally mean a lower hourly rate.

I have fun doing genealogy. I get paid for having fun. Right now I switch between research-and-writing for a Colonial Connecticut genealogy book, and accepting lineage work that can bring just about any area and time period into my skill set. I consider myself lucky and grateful for these opportunities.

By cobbling together alimony and two long-term contracts (with the benefit of Obamacare/Romneycare to lower medical costs), I enjoy a middle class lifestyle in metro Boston. I couldn't ask for anything more, work-wise.

© 2012, copyright Barbara Jean Mathews.

Photograph © 2008, Barbara Jean Mathews, Salt Lake City.

Alterations: edited to delete names of people from whom I had not gotten permission.

Follow Friday: Resources for Studying Genealogical Standards

Copyright © musume miyuki, 2012, used under Creative Commons license, flickr.com
Permanent link http://www.flickr.com/photos/ichihara-hanpu/7242575144/in/photostream

In yesterday's blog posting, I noted in passing, "One thing that has become clear in the last few years is that the modern genealogist believes in education." So do I. That is why I am embarking on an additional topic for The Demanding Genealogist. I plan to use the Follow Friday theme to talk about studying genealogical standards. In conjunction with the blog, I will over time develop a website by populating it with resources for study. Please bear with me as I take time to introduce this topic.

There is no summit which, once reached, is the end of the climb

It’s time to think in positive terms about how we all learn to do a better job at genealogy. There isn’t a summit which, once reached, is the end of the climb. Instead, each time we get a bit better in our skills, we see the next rise ahead of us, the next thing to learn.

In that spirit, I’ve established a website called Genealogical Standards Study Resources at http://genstandards.weebly.com/ in order to track and categorize resources for studying genealogical standards. The categorization will be roughly in tune with the current published standards.[1] You can visit the site now, but I do warn you that the various categories will be populated over time, so be sure to keep watching for my Follow Friday postings. "Under construction" is the current most popular listing on that site. If you have ideas to add, please leave me a comment on the Home page of the site.

Response to "What Is Forensic Genealogy?"

Photograph courtesy of Colleen Fitzpatrick

Prior Use of the Term Forensic Genealogy

On Wednesday, my inbox included a blog posting from Michael Hait about forensic genealogy in which Michael Hait interviewed Leslie Lawson, President of the Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy  http://michaelhait.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/forensic-genealogy/.[1] What struck me was that the council’s approach negated the prior use of the term “forensic genealogy.” We have discussed this term in the Forensic Genealogy group on LinkedIn (disclosure: I manage the group). When the narrow definition of the term was used there, many genealogists stepped forward to defend the prior and broader use of the term.[2] In other words, the council's definition doesn't hold water with many in the field.

As background, please understand that genealogists have been aiding in probate work and missing heir work for decades. During that period of time it was called probate or missing heir work. The first use of the term “forensic genealogy” was in a book title for a work by Colleen Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.[3] Colleen was an explorer in previously uncharted territory. She used extreme analytic skills in discovering information in photographs, DNA, and databases. Colleen was not narrowly discussing probate work when she coined the term Forensic Genealogy. When my friend Sharon Sergeant broke a few fraud cases involving the publishing industry, she was being a forensic genealogist. She analyzed photographs and documents in different languages to discover the truth.[4]

Stop SOPA

Three adjectives to be used with the word genealogist.

I do think that the field of genealogy has shown a desire to draw distinctions within genealogy as to how each individual is practicing it. My offering to this discussion is to define three adjectives used with the term genealogist. They are not mutually exclusive adjectives.

A scholarly genealogist is one to endeavors to be careful in his or her research and writing, following genealogical standards and participating in continuing educational opportunities.

An avocational genealogist is one who follows it as a hobby. An avocational genealogist is unpaid. An avocational genealogist could well be a scholarly genealogist in his or her genealogy work. Newcomers to genealogy have many avenues open to them for learning and expanding their skills sets, from meetings of local societies to online training and educational resources (both free and paid) to college-level formal education.

In genealogy, all roads are good.

I’ve been noodling around the internet, searching on blog postings that discuss professionalism and genealogy. I’ve found some interesting postings that are worth considering in our discussion of professionalism and genealogy. I hope you get a chance to read and consider them as we go forward in our discussion.

What does the word “professional” mean in genealogy?

Jacobus, in writing his “Preface” to the first issue under the title The American Genealogist, noted that the the editorial staff of the journal consisted of both amateur and professional genealogists.[1] In so doing, he drew a line between those who do genealogy for gain and those who do not. He also set them into one group of equal colleagues.

If any term can be seen to create furor on a genealogy email list, it would be the word “professional.”[5] Mail-list readers bring to the discussion their own understandings. Underwriting much of the discussion is the concern: is it elitist? Does it exclude genealogists who simply don’t work for others?