For help with your family research, please contact me initially via my email:  anne.laurelcottage13553@gmail.com. Pricing varies per job due to the nature of genealogy research. My current charge, in general, is $35.00 per hour. 

Hi. I’m Anne. I started this website out of a desire to share a growing vintage photo and postcard collection and a desire to start a business doing something that I love.

My foray into genealogy began as a result of a 9th grade school assignment, which found me sharing with the class, an account of how the Nolin River in Kentucky, had been named after a relative of an early ancestor. As the story goes, one day Linn Banks, one of a group of land surveyors who were camped by an unnamed river, left the party and did not return for a good while. Two or three men set out to search for him. They came back unsuccessful and reported to the rest of the party, “No Linn.” I recall my teacher making a joke about Banks and banks of the river. The story of the naming of the Nolin River appears in a book that my family has, written by my 2x great-aunt, Jane Pritchett Banks.

This school project got my mom and I interested in doing more research on this branch of the family which we comically recorded in “tree-format” on the back of a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. Further research found us visiting the local library and discovering within one of the many old volumes of early Virginia settlers, a list of 10 or 12 Banks children belonging to a certain family; the same list that we’d seen in our Banks book. Finding this same family bridged the gap and allowed us to go back even further in researching this line. This exciting discovery became the first of countless “Ah-ha!” moments to come. I’d like to say I had continued the research from that point on, but alas life evolved,and it wasn’t until years later that I returned to it in earnest.

From that point on it’s been nonstop, (having originally gone back to it with only the idea to prove our French heritage, hoping at that time to just find names, places, dates going back to France but instead finding photos, stories, a previously unknown Native American connection, and thousands of other incredible finds, not to mention finding cousins, making friends, renewing family contacts) and with now over 6,000 documented persons (and still growing) on my own family’s tree. Along the way, I’ve discovered that it is just as thrilling to help others find answers to their mysteries as it is to find my own. After all, what’s the difference between researching the “brother-in-law of your 3rd cousin twice removed” (chuckle) and someone “unrelated” to you? Nothing; we’re all connected.

So, if you need help breaking through one of your “brick walls” or you want someone to do your whole tree for you, or anywhere in between, I’d love for you to contact me. I love a challenge, and have found over the years that finding answers takes perseverance, attention to detail, skepticism, access to lots of resources, digging for more resources when it seems like you’ve exhausted them all, and intuition.