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From:
Subject: Re: [APG] Making the Business of Genealogy Work
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 14:43:57 +0000


I just realized that there were several errors in spelling in the last posting on genealogy business aspects. That was due to the fact that I was trying to type while my 11 month old son was sitting on my lap. I would advise that that is not a good way to write a letter. The last sentence should read "money" and not "momet," although the "moment" the money stops coming in your cooked!

Ken Milano

-------------- Original message --------------

> Ernest:
>
> I was not able to successfully make a living in the genealogy business, until
> the time came where I could state that I was a "specialist" in something. The
> knowledge base that one needs is great and it takes some years to build. My
> business today is made up of three different components; people with family that
> came from the Kensington and Fishtown neighbrhoods of Philadelphia, people who
> are researching Philadelphia families in general, and the cataloguing of
> manuscript collections for booksellers.
>
> The way my business evolved goes back to when I was in college. I studied
> history at Temple University and wrote mostly local history papers for my course
> work. I became quite educated on local history and eventually got the tag as the
> local historian for the Kensington and Fishtown communities of Philadelphia. I
> educated myself on the businesses, churches, and other social institutions of
> these neighborhoods, as well as the historical families, the architecture, the
> streets, geography in ancient times, etc. Theses areas were part of
> Philadelphia's great manufacturing center during the period of 1860 to 1930, and
> thus many many immigrants passed through here. These areas also date back to the
> 18th century, when there was a thriving fishing and shipbuilding community here,
> before the areas joined the city in 1854, and thus many many other immigrants
> have passed through here. In short, specializing in these areas gave me a wide
> foundation base of customers, as many immmgrants !
> passed through these neighborhoods in their quest of the American dream. A
> number of the Philadelphia record repositories, Philadelphia colleges and
> community groups, now send folks to me who are researching either these
> neighborhoods, or families that have come from these neighborhoods, but this
> took almost 20 years to get to this position.
>
> Other customes that are researching Philadelphia began showing up as I joined
> professional organizations and started to advertise. The same skills involved in
> one neighborhood of Philadelphia are easily transferrible to other areas of the
> city, thus I can technically say I am quite capable of researching the whole of
> the city and its suburbs, as I am familiar with most of the communities and I am
> intimate enough with the research institutions.
>
> The last part of my business actually was the first thing I did after quiting my
> day job as a G.E.D. and E.S.L. teacher. I had previously been a rare & scholarly
> bookseller for a number of years and after I learnt enough of the craft of
> researching through my college work, personal local history work, reading, etc.,
> and the bookselling field, I was then capable of catalouging manuscript
> collections. At this point in my business, my contracts with booksellers are
> about half of my business. I do the research which is required to figure out
> just who is doing the writing of these manuscripts, what they are about, and why
> are they significant? The more importance you can find on the manuscripts, the
> more they are worth $$$. I research the biography or the family of the writer,
> the people being written to, and the events recounted in the writings. The
> topics sometimes include Cival War or Klondike diaries, Revolutionary War era
> documents, 19th century travel accounts of New Englan!
> ders going West, etc, or sometimes it is a large collection of documents from
> the Wisconsin Delaplaine family, or sometimes it is simply the diary of a 15
> year old from Iowa in the year 1899. Besides actually collecting a pay check for
> doing this stuff, the things I get to see are fantastic. I suppose there are
> several articles I could write on this subject, because bookseller catalogues
> are the place where one can find some very interesting and unknown genealogical
> sources.
>
> I summary, I think it is important to have many facets to your business. In the
> event that one area slows down, you will hopefully have work coming in from
> other areas. If the momet is not coming in, it's back to the day job fot most of
> us...
>
> Good luck...
>
> Ken Milano

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