Someone in your family tree is waiting to be found. Let's find them together!
Roots to Records is documented genealogical research. You tell us who you're looking for and where you're stuck; we go into the actual records — census, vitals, land, probate, newspapers — and send you what we find, cited.
There are two ways in. Pick whichever suits you.
Submit a request by email
Fill out the request slip. It comes straight to our inbox, your case joins the queue, and we email you the findings when it's worked. Private start to finish — nothing about your family is published.
Open the request slip Option 02Join the livestream as a supporter
Free to join. The streams run public on Historical Present's TikTok — watch cases get worked live, searches and dead ends and all. Supporters get an account so their own family can go up on the stream; email us and we'll set yours up by hand.
See what a stream looks likeEither way, whatever gets found is yours to keep.
Genealogy done in the open.
Historical Present is where this research lives. The premise is that the past isn't a finished thing you look up — it's something you reconstruct, in public, one record at a time, and that the reconstruction is worth watching. Roots to Records is the part of it that works on your family instead of ours.
Nothing here is a DNA kit or an algorithm's guess at your tree. It's record work, done by hand, cited and handed over.