A finished family report
This is a real report we made in October, for a family who asked us about Lillian Paolini, born in Los Banos, California, in 1919. The family said we could show it. It runs to eleven pages; here are the main ones.
They gave us her name, two dates and her father's name. What came back included her father's village in Tuscany, in his own words, on the 1917 draft card he signed.
The story
Her life and her parents' lives, written out in plain English. Every sentence carries a number that leads to the record it came from. Where we know something, we say how we know it (“We know because he said so himself”). Where we only have a lead, we say that too: the possible Ellis Island arrival is given “as a lead, not a fact”.
The family at a glance
One page made to be shared: where they came from, who was in the family, and the years that mattered. Made to print, or to send to the rest of the family.
The records themselves
Where a record survives as an image, you get the image. This is her father's 1917 World War I draft card: line 5 gives his birthplace as Montuolo, Lucca, Italy, and he signed it at the bottom.
What's still unknown, and where to look
A report that stops at the last record found leaves you stuck. Every open question here comes with the next search: which collection, which court, which county office, and what that record would settle.
The evidence
At the back, every finding on its own with its sources. Where we reason beyond what a record says, it is marked inference and we show why.
Tap any page to open it full size.
Yours, for one ancestor · $49
- We search the census, draft cards, enlistments, Social Security, marriage, death and immigration records and old newspapers, one name at a time, misspellings and all
- The image of each record wherever one exists online, and a plain-English reading of every record we find
- Their story written out, every fact cited to its record
- The open questions, and exactly where to look next
- A PDF by email within 7 days. Yours will be as long as the records allow. If we can't find them in the records at all, you get a full refund.
We research people who have died, from public records. Questions first? desk@familyhistoryresearch.org