Irish Tree, LLC has announced the launch of its family history research portal, providing specialized services for those tracing Irish ancestry. The service offers free consultations and cost-effective research packages starting at $299, addressing the significant challenges posed by millions of missing and damaged Irish birth, death, and marriage records.
Led by experienced genealogist Maureen Fitzpatrick, whose research experience dates to the early 1990s, Irish Tree began offering services in January through its website at http://irishtree.org. The company emphasizes formal validation of client assumptions alongside original, documented research, distinguishing its approach from less rigorous online genealogy platforms.
The service offers three structured options. The Basic package, priced at $299 for up to five hours of research, assists clients who already have existing family trees by locating available Irish records for validation and additional context. The Starter package, also $299 for five hours, helps those without formal documentation build a framework starting with parents and grandparents. For more complex challenges, Irish Tree provides Custom packages, with a free consultation to determine the scope of work required to break through specific research barriers.
Client testimonials highlight the service's impact. One Milwaukee public relations executive hired Irish Tree to complete a family tree before her mother's dementia progressed. The research delivered photos and historical news articles, leading to a meaningful road trip and providing the client's mother with a profound sense of heritage and pride. Another client, stumped on her family's Irish birth town, credited Irish Tree with finding an alternate obituary that provided the final clues, enabling a visit to her ancestor's birthplace which she described as a "magical" experience.
Fitzpatrick's methodology is rooted in decades of pre-internet research, involving visits to libraries like the Latter Day Saints facility in Salt Lake City and extensive work with microfilm records. Her early use of dial-up services like CompuServe in the 1990s connected her with a genealogist in Northern Ireland, leading to dozens of research trips to Ireland. She describes a personal commitment to thorough documentation, stating her goal is to "provide verifiable documentation of each client’s family history, delivering happiness and satisfaction along the way."
For business and technology leaders, the launch of Irish Tree represents a niche but growing segment of the digital heritage industry that combines traditional research rigor with modern service delivery. The company's structured, affordable pricing model and focus on a specific geographic challenge—Irish genealogy—demonstrates how specialized knowledge can be productized to serve a global diaspora. In an era where artificial intelligence and large databases dominate genealogy, Irish Tree's human-expert approach highlights the continued value of deep, contextual research and ethical data handling, particularly for regions with fragmented historical records.
