What a personal historian does, and how that differs from a genealogist

Families who want their history kept meet two kinds of professional. Personal historians start from people, and genealogists start from records. Many families hire one when they need the other, because the names are used loosely and the work overlaps. A personal historian keeps what only the living can tell, and a genealogist finds what no one living remembers. This guide sets out what each one delivers, how they differ, where they meet in a family history book, and how to find a good one.

What a personal historian does

A personal historian helps a person or a family keep their memories and life stories. The work usually begins with interviews: several sessions with a parent or grandparent, recorded and transcribed, then organized and written as a narrative. The result can be a printed book, an edited audio recording, a film, or some of each. Some personal historians also copy and caption the family's photographs, or help a parent write a letter to the grandchildren.

The Association of Personal Historians, founded in the United States in 1995, grew to more than 650 members around the world before it was dissolved in 2017. Writers who do this work also call themselves life story writers, memoir writers or private historians.

What a personal history book holds

A personal history book is usually the subject's story in the subject's own words, edited for reading, with photographs and captions. Some are written in the third person, as a biography. Most hold what the subject remembers, as the subject remembers it. Many personal historians interview and write without searching records, and their books seldom say which facts a record supports. The value of the book is the voice. How to record a parent's stories covers what a family can do itself.

What a genealogist does

A genealogist traces a family's descent: who each ancestor was, and how each generation connects to the next. The evidence is in records: births, marriages and deaths, censuses, passenger lists, naturalization files, wills and court files, synagogue and church registers, and gravestones. A genealogist finds those records, reads the originals, weighs one against another where they disagree, and states each conclusion with its source.

What a family receives is a family tree and a research report, which lists what was searched, gives each finding with its citation and suggests what to search next. Family history book examples shows how a report differs from a book.

Genealogist credentials

Genealogists show their skill in different ways, as the Association of Professional Genealogists puts it. Two American bodies test them: the Board for Certification of Genealogists, which certifies, and ICAPGen, which accredits genealogists for research in a chosen region. In England and Wales the members of AGRA agree to its code of practice. The APG's advice is to ask whether a genealogist is certified or accredited, or holds a degree in family history, and to see an example of their work.

Is a family historian the same as a genealogist?

Often, yes. Many people researching their own family call themselves family historians, and many professionals use both words. Where a difference is meant, a genealogist builds the tree and proves the links, and a family historian also tells how the family lived in its towns and its times. A family historian for hire is usually a genealogist who also writes.

Personal historian or genealogist: the differences

The names overlap, and many professionals do some of both. What each charges is set out in what a genealogist costs and what a family history book costs.

Biographers, ghostwriters and oral historians

Three more names come up when families look for help, and each overlaps with the personal historian:

• A biographer writes about a person in the third person, from interviews, papers and records, and can write the life of a parent who has died. Hiring a biographer covers that case.
• A ghostwriter or memoir writer writes in the subject's own voice, as if the subject wrote it. Hiring a biographer covers what to ask.
• An oral historian records interviews as historical evidence. The Oral History Association describes oral history as a way of gathering and preserving people's voices and memories, and says interviews go into an archive only with the written permission of both the interviewer and the person interviewed.

Where a researched family history book needs both

A book about a family, as opposed to one person's memories, needs both kinds of work. The research finds the family in the records: the town it came from, the parents and grandparents no one living remembers, the ship, the naturalization and the graves. The writing gathers what relatives remember and sets the family in its towns and times, so that the records read as a story. Done together, memory and records are read side by side, and each corrects the other. How the example was researched shows what the research side involves.

That is how a Zichronos book is made. We read the family's papers, interview relatives, search the public collections and write to the archives that hold the rest. Every original is read and translated in full, and the history is written with family memory kept apart from what the records show, so a reader always knows which is which. The book holds the family tree, maps and the documents beside their translations, and it states plainly what is still unknown.

When the family's records are all in America

Many families have no records abroad to find. For a family whose story is in the United States, a personal historian's interviews can be checked against records close at hand. The census is open every ten years up to 1950, county courthouses hold marriage and probate files, local newspapers printed births, weddings and deaths, and congregations and cemeteries kept their own registers. Much of the federal record, from the US National Archives, can be searched free on FamilySearch.

A writer who uses these records turns a life story into a documented one. Ask a personal historian whether they will do this checking, or whether a genealogist should.

A personal historian and a sefer zikaron

Many frum families make a sefer zikaron, a memorial book, for a parent. It often holds a short life story, divrei Torah in the parent's memory, letters from children and grandchildren, and photographs. A personal historian can help with the parts a family in mourning finds hardest: interviewing the parent's brothers, sisters and friends, and writing the life story so that it reads as one piece.

When the family also wants the generations before the parent, with their towns and records, that is a genealogist's work. What a memorial book is explains how the two kinds of book differ.

How to find a reputable personal historian or genealogist

Work through these steps before you agree to anything:

1. Decide what you want at the end: a parent's stories in the parent's own words, or the family's history with the records behind it.
2. Ask to see finished work, a book or a report made for another family, and read it for care with names and dates.
3. Ask where the material will come from, who reads the original records, and in which languages.
4. Check credentials where they exist, such as a genealogist's certification or accreditation.
5. Ask for a written agreement that sets out the scope, the schedule, the price and what you will receive, and who keeps the recordings, the copies of the records and the copyright.
6. Ask what happens when a record arrives after the work is finished.

The Association of Professional Genealogists lists genealogists for hire, and in England and Wales AGRA lists its members. For Jewish families, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies links more than 90 national and local societies, a good place to ask about researchers who know a region. How much a genealogist costs and companies that write family histories go further.

Where the work leads

The names, towns and dates a parent mentions in a personal historian's interviews are what the archives need, and the records a genealogist finds are what turn memories into a history. A researched family history book brings the two together, with the parent's account beside what the records show. Family history book examples shows what such a book holds, and Inside a book shows the pages of the example. What a family history book costs compares every kind of service, How we work sets out the steps, and more is in hiring help, and what it costs.

Sources: the Association of Professional Genealogists, how to hire a professional genealogist; ICAPGen, on accredited genealogists; the Oral History Association, on doing oral history; AGRA; the history of the Association of Personal Historians, 1995 to 2017; the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies; the US National Archives. Checked October 2026.