Legacy Tree GenealogistsReviews of legacytree.com

The team and my researcher (Carolyn and Sarah), communicated in a timely manner and explained their search strategies and the data as we went along. I could always ask questions and they guided me in doing some of the research myself as most of the archive searches had to be carried out in German. This saved me money and I learned a lot during the process. I got all the data I needed to make the link with information from my cousin and against the odds managed to identify my biological father. I am so relieved I know where I come from.

I would advise caution about this firm. They promise much and deliver little for the money. I write in support of my relative who posted about her search for family history in Italy for her mother. It is a basic fact that birth, marriage and death certificates of a certain period in Italy are not available online. They can only be obtained by in person search at the local authority/community. Surely any genealogical research site would know this? Not rocket science. Instead it took a brief visit by one of us to the local registry Dept in Tuscany who gave us contact details. A day later we began to get results. We now have details of our family tree dating back to mid 1850s. RESULT! At no cost even for the certificates. Instead this company wasted a huge amount of money barking up the wrong tree and then advising us that the research was difficult. They are defending the indefensible. If they had a conscience they would be returning most of the thousands of US dollars they charged for inadequate research. Instead they have offered a refund of 4 hours out of an alleged 25 hours spent on unproductive research. Also, you pay for admin chats, not just proper research. I would not go anywhere near this company for family history until they learn some of the basics of family history research in Europe. A costly mistake for my family.

I contacted Legacy Tree (LT) in May 2022 with the objective of preparing a present for my mother's birthday. Customer service appeared convincing and open to shape the research to my requests (quite specific, as my mother's wish was to be part of the research process. I made this request explicit to LT), so I purchased during the same month a Basic25 (25 hours of research work) project for USD 2950. My project was eventually finalized in February 2023 (9 months later) and my mother was handed over a report from which emerged a significant number of methodological flaws in the research process (see description below). Quite predictably, for the reasons detailed further in this post, the project was unable to identify the slightest information about my family's ancestors, for which LT argued that this was due to the uniqueness of every project, some of which are particularly complex (like mine). LT empathized with mine and my mother’s frustration at the lack of conclusive results and suggested we look at the process positively: should we consider pursuing the journey, at least we would now know where NOT to look and which unexplored thread to follow. According to the project report, with all my money and using up all 25 h, the researcher had essentially gone through a whole lot of online search engines, all of which without exception were unable to locate even my closest’ of ancestor’s trace. This would be a plausible approach, if I hadn’t spent (together with another relative) a good month at the beginning of the project feeding LT with every bit of picture or family document I could dig out and gather (at times for a fee through formal institutional processes), at least two of which represented pretty strong leads a good researcher would have jumped on right away. There were no traces in the project report of any of these threads having been used at all in the process. To my question about it I was provided two different, but complementary answers: i) the project I had purchased did not include sufficient hours to perform the kind of research that would have been required, if my threads were to be followed. Going down that line would allegedly used up all my credit in one or two single steps with even less chances of finding any useful information; ii) the project was so complex that it involved checking scanned records, page by page (very difficult indeed, and even more so in another language than English… at this point I have to add that LT claimed that they had lots of native speakers in their team). What is more, this search needed to happen in two different locations, because, according to the information I had provided, there was a doubt about the true place of birth of the ancestors we were trying to locate. This step was allegedly necessary to make sure to leave no stone unturned and it should not be underestimated. Not convinced by these arguments and prompted by a glaring factual mistake in the report that suggested methodological flaws that could have been easily avoided through a simple google search, I took up to google myself, identified the email address of the local authorities of the supposed place of birth of my closest ancestor and asked my mother to submit a request to these authorities to locate all existing records (birth and marriage certificates in our case) of 3 specific persons we wanted to locate in the first place. Which she did (in about 30 min). A complete reply with all the requested certificates was received within a matter of days (weekend included), which revealed that: i) Birth, marriage and death information does not existing in principle online in the particular country we were working on. It could only be collected from a formal local authority. One would have expected expert genealogists, such as LT to know this basic fact before spending 25h on online search engines; ii) The two locations LT was looking at for my ancestors were under one and the same administrative jurisdiction in the concerned years. There was therefore no need to go through archives in two different locations. Another detail one would expect experienced researchers in that particular country to know before using up time and money inefficiently; iii) The certificates we obtained contain a whole wealth of very useful information the researcher could have used to properly complete my project. Missing out on this very first crucial and yet simple step, LT and its inefficient research methodology compromised the entirety of my project. The factual feedback, similar to the above, provided to LT, was met explanations about how human error occurs. Recognizing to have used “some" research time inefficiently, LT did offer to reimburse me the equivalent of 4 hours. Needless to say that I find this offer offensive.

Legacy Tree provided to me a professional, valuable and courteous service which was superb. I am so grateful to them for tracing my adopted father’s birth parents from over 80 years ago. I can’t describe how much this means to me when for so long I didn’t know I had any blood relatives on my Dad’s side. I can’t praise Legacy Tree highly enough. The project manager was always on hand to provide updates and answer queries and I am so grateful for the personal contact I had with her throughout.

Legacy Tree Review I have completed the first of two phases for my project. I am floored with the phenomenal quality of the report. The level of investigative effort is amazing. I absolutely recommend legacy tree and the have my highest praise I have never seen anything so meticulously researched, and so well put together

BEWARE Legacy Tree offers no- zip- zero guarantee on what they might find, or not, in their research. I paid $3,000 for the starter engagement and gave them the names of my great grandparents and where they were born, Scotland and Ireland. They took the $3,000, made we wait 6 months and found no additional ancestors or information. They are completely unapologetic about the results. They state that the fee is for ‘hours not results’. Deborah Reitz

The Genelogist were great No was to much trouble for them I wanted them to help me with a family tree i had just hit a brick wall no matter how much i research for my family i just couldnt find them . When i got in touch with legacytree geneologist explain what i want i sent the documents i had they kept me informed all the time and after time i got my binder with everything i need. Fantastic service thankyou Susan Moore

I commissioned Legacy Tree Genealogists to research my wife's family as a surprise birthday present for her. The team were excellent at keeping me informed and updated and produced professional, comprehensive and insightful ancestry studies for both sides of her family. An excellent company to do business with.