I'm Jessica Feinstein, professional genealogist and a member of the Register of Qualified Genealogists.
About me
I live in Oxfordshire and have been researching my own family for many years, as well as teaching others how to do it and helping them share their family stories. I love to solve mysteries and I don’t give up – sometimes you just have to be patient and then all the pieces of the puzzle come together.
My father’s mother, Rose, used to tell me stories about her family when I was a child visiting her in Johannesburg, and I drew family trees showing all my cousins on rolls of computer print-out paper.
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Rose gave me her parents’ wedding invitation from 1899 and this wonderful photo of them taken in the same year. On my mother’s side, I was lucky enough to inherit a treasure trove of letters written by her parents and other family members, and suitcases full of old photos.
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I looked after all the artefacts I was given as well as I could as a child, by sticky-taping documents into notebooks (do not do this yourself!) and using photograph albums that left horrible sticky marks on everything. What I didn’t do, of course, was record my grandparents and other relatives telling me about their lives, or ask them those questions that would have been so useful if I had only known what to ask. Luckily, some of them left their own stories behind, like this page from my great-grandmother Fannie’s autobiographical notes.
When the Internet came along, a cousin introduced me to a wonderful website where you can build your family tree and share it with your relatives. From that moment on, I became seriously addicted. I set up my own site in 2008, signed up for subscriptions to well-known genealogy websites, and spent every waking moment checking the details I thought I knew, excitedly emailing family members with each new discovery, and building up my tree.
Then I was offered the chance to teach a genealogy course for beginners, and I realized that I had a lot of experience that I could share, including how not to do it! I decided to undertake a professional qualification, and completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Genealogical, Palaeographic and Heraldic Studies (Strathclyde University) in 2015, and their Postgraduate Diploma in 2016.
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I love showing people how to research their own family trees, but also enjoy the fact that so many people ask me to do the research for them, and it’s a privilege to share the excitement of genealogical discoveries with them.
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My voluntary roles include acting as an advisor for the Oxfordshire Family History Society, and editing Shemot, the journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain.
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I am now busy introducing my own grandchildren to their ancestors.
Please get in touch to discuss your requirements
I look forward to meeting you and helping you to learn more about your family history!
Phone
+44 (0) 1235 531500
Social Media