How a book is made
From your tree to a book you can trust.
Most family trees are part records and part guesses copied from other trees. The work of a Hearthline book is telling the two apart, and then writing the part that holds up so that it reads like a story.
- You tell us about your family.A short set of questions: your grandparents and where they lived, who the book is for, a dedication if you want one, and how you want us to handle surprises in the records (more on that here).
- You send your tree.Most genealogy programs and websites can save a tree as a GEDCOM file. That file is where we start. If part of your tree is only names, tell us; it changes what we can promise.
- We check the tree before we extend it.We grade every fact in your tree by the kind of source behind it, and we find the handful of parent-and-child links the whole family story hangs on. Those links get most of our time. A book is only as sound as its weakest load-bearing link.
- We go to the records.Census pages, church registers, wills and probate files, deeds, military records, newspapers and cemetery records, read from the images wherever we can reach them. We plan each search before we run it and keep a log of what was searched and what was found.
- Your family adds its own voices.Memories, sayings and photographs from your relatives have a place in the book, in their own words. The records cannot supply what your aunt remembers about her grandmother.
- Where a line stops, we write down why.Every line ends somewhere. When it ends, we record what was searched, what was not found, and what record would take the line further, so that nobody has to repeat the search.
- We write the book.Warm, plain prose, in sentences rather than bullet points. How certain each fact is gets said in the sentence itself, not in a code or a footnote.
- A second check before layout.A separate pass re-derives the most important facts and relationships from the records, and checks the date arithmetic and every kinship term, down to each "great-great". Mistakes are cheapest to catch here.
- You read a proof.You see the whole book before it is printed and send us your corrections.
- Your family receives the book.A digital edition, the printed copies your book includes, and the Living Edition: a private website for your family, behind a sign-in, where relatives can read the book and see the sources behind it.
How we use AI
We use AI tools to search record collections, read old handwriting, keep the research log and draft the text. Every fact in the book is graded by the record behind it, and a person reviews the book and checks its load-bearing facts before it goes to you. The tools make the research faster. They do not decide what is true.
What we do not do
We do not research living people. Living relatives appear by name and relationship only, unless they contribute their own words. We do not run automated tools against subscription sites such as Ancestry. We do not interpret raw DNA data; if you already have DNA results you want included, we can write about what they show. Photographs in the book are yours, public domain, or properly licensed.