Research guides for your AI assistant

Where and how to obtain an ancestor's birth, marriage, death and citizenship records for a citizenship-by-descent country — the holding office, the request channel, who may ask, cost, timeline, language, the apostille authority, translation rules and country-specific traps. Use it whenever the user asks "where do I get this document" or names a country. Each country has its own dossier.

For one country, where its civil and church records are held, whether they can be found online, the vetted archives and providers EasyPassport uses, and which sites the user must open themselves. Ask with the two-letter code of the country where the record was created.

Turn the user's family line into a prioritized plan of which ancestor's which record proves each link from the applicant up to the qualifying ancestor, ordered so the user knows what to gather first. Use it when the user asks "what documents do I actually need" or "where do I start".

Investigate the chain-break question — did the emigrant ancestor naturalize in their new country, and when relative to the next descendant's birth. Explains where each major destination country keeps naturalization records (US, UK, Canada, Australia and others) so the user can verify the date most descent rules turn on. Use it when a line runs through an ancestor who emigrated.

Compose a ready-to-send request for a birth, marriage, death or naturalization record, addressed to the right office, in the office's language, with the identifying details and enclosures that get it fulfilled. Use it when the user is ready to ask an archive or registrar for a document. The user sends it themselves.

Get a retrieved record recognized for a citizenship application abroad — decide between an apostille (Hague Convention) and consular legalization, name the competent authority for the issuing country, and order the apostille and certified-translation steps correctly. Use it once the user has, or is about to obtain, an original record.

How to read a scan or photo of a birth, marriage, death, naturalization, census, passenger or military record — including old handwriting and foreign-language registers — and extract its facts as drafts the user checks against the image. Use it when the user shares an image of a record and asks what it says.

How to look for an ancestor on WikiTree, the free collaborative family tree, with the user directing the search — building the query, weighing candidate profiles, and following a profile's sources to the original record. Use it when the user wants leads on an ancestor who died long ago.