Tell us what you know about your parents and grandparents. We trace the rest in original records and send you an ancestor chart where every date, place and occupation cites its source.
From $150, paid once · Ready in about 2–3 weeks
You get your ancestors laid out generation by generation, back to your great-great-grandparents or further. Each person on the chart carries what the records say about them.
Sources
One record from our sample chart. The people and portraits shown on this site are fictional.
You do one short conversation. We do the weeks in the archive. Most charts are delivered two to three weeks after intake.
Five generations or eight. One payment, nothing renews.
A written conversation of about ten minutes: names, towns, rough years, family stories. “I don’t know” is a fine answer, and a common one.
Census returns, birth, marriage and death records, wills, land deeds and pension files. We start from what you told us and work back one generation at a time.
An interactive chart, a printable PDF and a full source report, usually two to three weeks after your intake.
We work from original records and images of them, not from other people’s family trees. These are the collections we search for every family.
The census tells us who lived together, their ages, birthplaces and trades every ten years. Vital and court records pin down the dates and the relationships.
When an ancestor served, the record goes on the chart: branch, unit, rank and dates, and where they served when the file says. Pension files often name a wife, children and a home town, so they are among the best sources there are.
Family trees online are full of confident mistakes, copied from one tree to the next. Ours is built the other way round: nothing goes on your chart without a record, and we show our working.
If an online tree says something we can’t confirm, it doesn’t quietly slip onto your chart. It goes in the report as rejected, with the reason.
From the sample source report
John Wesley Whitfield was born in County Antrim, Ireland, in 1844.
Found in Several online trees, all copied from one unsourced original
Records say Every census from 1850 to 1910 gives his birthplace as Georgia
Rejected
A county courthouse burned. A mother is listed only as “unknown.” When the trail stops, the report names the last record, explains the gap, and lists the record that would most likely take that line further.
An 8-generation chart has room for 255 people. No honest researcher fills every one. We would rather hand you a chart with gaps you can trust than a full one you can’t.
No subscription and nothing to renew. Full refund any time before research begins.
You to your great-great-grandparents
$150 one-time
The people your grandparents remembered. Typically reaches the mid-1800s.
Back to your fifth-great-grandparents
$695 one-time
As far as the paper trail runs. Often reaches the 1700s on well-documented lines.
Something else? Write to hello@quillandroot.com and a researcher will answer.
Some families left a thick paper trail and some left almost none. We do the full search either way, and we report what exists: every record we found, every line we could not extend, and why. A short chart with honest notes is more useful than a long one with guesses in it.
No. Living relatives are not researched and are never published on a chart. If you tell us your parents’ names at intake, we use them only as a starting point for tracing the generations before them.
U.S. records are our strength, and that is where most of the work happens. When a line crosses the ocean we follow it in overseas records that are available online, such as some British, Irish, German and Scandinavian registers. We can’t promise how far those lines will go, and the report will say where each one stops.
Records alone often can’t answer this. Adoption files are frequently sealed, and an unnamed parent rarely appears in documents. DNA testing is the right tool for that question. We will trace every line the records can support, and tell you plainly which ones they can’t.
About two to three weeks from the day you finish your intake conversation. We email you when it’s ready.
An interactive chart you can open on any device, a printable PDF of the chart with a page for each ancestor, and a source list citing every record we relied on, including claims we checked and rejected.
Yes, a full refund any time before research begins. Once a researcher has started on your family, the work is underway and we can’t refund it.
No. We use our own access to record collections. You don’t need a subscription, a DNA test or an account anywhere else.
That is usually enough. Ten minutes of what you remember, and we will take it from there.
