Where can I find a professional genealogist?

Question:my husbands father died when he was 10 years old. His father was born in NY but his parents were born in hungary. I want to know his ancesory like what village they lived in. But mostly I want to find a coat of arms for his last name...
Lednitsky... it was changed to Ledner at ellis island.
But I want to hire a professional to find this family for me does anyone have any ideas?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: my husbands father died when he was 10 years old. His father was born in NY but his parents were born in hungary. I want to know his ancesory like what village they lived in. But mostly I want to find a coat of arms for his last name...
Lednitsky... it was changed to Ledner at ellis island.
But I want to hire a professional to find this family for me does anyone have any ideas?

I'm a professional genealogist, but I can't solicit on this site. What I can suggest is that this isn't a difficult search and you can do it yourself.

As for your other questions...There's not going to be a "family" coat of arms from Hungary, especially if your family came through Ellis Island. Only the royal families in Hungary were granted heraldry honors. Royalty only went through Castle Clinton. Also, the name wouldn't have been changed at Ellis Island. That's an old wive's tale. They didn't guess at names, they used the written information from ships' manifests and passport information. Your ancestors had to have a passport and exit visa in order to get out of Austria-Hungary. The people at Ellis Island weren't so disorganized that they left it to chance. They just copied what was already written. You can't proceed in genealogy with any preconceived ideas about how things happened. The wives tales will take you into very murky areas. And if you're hiring a professional to help with your research, you're paying anywhere from $50-200/hour. If we need a translator and researchers in Hungary to do look ups, it's easily a $10,000 project. Given that most of what you need is going to be at your local LDS library on film, you're spending your money foolishly...especially if you're sending us on goose chases.

But if you want someone, pick up any of the genealogy magazines and look in the classifieds in the back. Otherwise, contact the BCG and click on "find a genealogist".
http://www.bcgcertification.org/

I would contact your state's archives, many have a list of local professional genealogists. You can also contact the American Genealogical Society for help.

good luck

Familysearch.org
UTAH
Your local Genealogy Library (public Library) or Archives
Online: The Association of Professional Genealogists

Any search engine will give you numerous websites to contact. Here's one for starters:

http://www.apgen.org/

Coats of arms do not belong to surnames.

See the attached links, one from the British college of arms and the other from the United States' National Genealogical Society.

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.ht...

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerp...

The best way to know his heritage is to trace it starting with your father-in-law and work back. You do this by getting as much information from living family as possible, particularly senior member. Tape them if they will let you. They might be confused on some things but what might seem to be insignificant story telling might turn out to be very important.

We have some very good genealogist on this board that no doubt can help you. From the answers they give to questions they are very ethical. Genevieve's Mom, Wendy and Ted Pack seem to have experience with Eastern Europe. There is also another person on this board who uses the name Mind Bender. I don't know if he has ever been involved in Eastern European studies. You have to be careful about telling any genealogist you are interested in a coat of arms. There are some that are not ethical and they will contrive to connect a person to someone that has a coat arms and they might not even be related.

There are no laws in the U. S. regarding heraldry and there are companies that will sell you a coat of arms based solely on a surname. Most people who have those dinky little plaques on their den wall are displaying one that was granted to someone with their surname and in many cases they are not even related to that person. In some countries a person risk prosecution displaying a coat of arms without documented proof that they are entitled to it.

You can get excellent recommendations from your local librarian or historical society - not all are as good (or honest) as others, so GET REFERENCES and leads from reliable sources!

ok dude for one i don't live off my parents and theres absolutely nothing wrong with high school musical, i guess you wouldn't kno anything about watchinfamily movies, u probably just drink and smoke your head off huh? and as a matter of fact i do know alot about getting evicted because it happened to me twice. Furthermore, that has nothing to do with the question I asked, I was talking about the fires of California and u go off and start talking about eviction and high school musical, that was like so stupid.