Who in Jersey will do research on your behalf?

This page was first added to the site in 2010, when there was very little information from primary Jersey sources available online. Jerripedia changed all that, and gradually Jersey Archive has been digitising more records and adding them to their own website. The need to pay someone to research for you records which you can find free in Jerripedia, or which are available on other subscription websites, has greatly diminished. The introduction of Jerripedia's own Facebook group - see link in left column - has also made it much easier to find people who are researching the same families that interest you and will be willing to help.

Options

Find a willing helper

Locate a fellow amateur family historian in Jersey who will volunteer to do small-scale research for you alongside their own investigations. If you can establish a match with some of their own family members the process will be all the more worthwhile. You can contact potential helpers through the Jerripedia Facebook group.

Pay an experienced researcher

Pay an experienced family historian to undertake research for you on an hourly basis. There are two groups of researchers charging moderate fees for such work. They are members of La Société Jersiaise's family history section or of the Channel Island Family History Society.

La Société researchers

La Société Jersiaise has its own extensive library - the Lord Coutanche Library, named after Jersey's wartime Bailiff - and a team of researches based in the library are available to help visitors keen to research their own family trees. The volunteer research genealogists are usually available on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday mornings. If you are inexperienced in family history research, it is best to plan your first visit when the volunteers are in the Library. If you cannot visit Jersey and the library then the researchers are available to undertake work on your behalf.

Find out more from La Société's website

CIFHS research groups

The Society has several small specialist groups with specific expertise, who meet regularly to discuss and take on enquiries. They are unpaid volunteers and the fees received for their work go to the Society to further its work. Researchers have detailed knowledge of local families and the connection between them.

The Society has an impressive collection of material: church records - some from the early 1600s to 1842, census material, rate books, local history books and other records. Some members have donated copies of their family trees following extensive research. Most of the collection is held at the Jersey Archive where it is open to the public, but the Research Group also uses other sources such as early local newspapers and archived Court records.

Further information on the society's website

What you should do in advance

There is no point in paying somebody else to to what you can do for yourself, or have already done, so make sure that you undertake as much research on line as you can before contacting a CIFHS or Société Jersiaise researcher. Work out exactly what you want them to do for you, and prepare a clear brief, including as much information as you can on what you already know.

And if you are happy with the accuracy of what you have already researched, make it clear in your brief that you do not want to pay to have this section of your ancestry researched again. Make it very clear where you would like a paid researcher to start. It is probably best to ask the researcher to concentrate on one, or at most two, branches of your tree at the same time.