Lookups through Genlighten: I Tried on Your Shoes Today and I Like Them

Two blog posts in one day. I’m on a roll. And no, I haven’t done a bit of housework but I did shower. That counts for something.

So, a little background to start. I’ve been doing lookups for about five years and people are always asking me, “Do you know how I can find someone who does what you do in … ” You name the state or country. And my answer has always been, “No.” And people have also asked to pick my brain about how they might offer lookups like I do as a way of earning a bit of extra income.

Well, a couple of years ago, in the spirit of my husband’s entrepreneurial 3rd great grandfather who came to Chicago in 1835 to open a hat and cap store, we decided to address those questions and with the help of some experts in website design and coding www.genlighten.com is now up and running in private beta. (Private beta just means that we need to give you a registration code if you want to try it out and we’re happy to do that. ChiGen_1 will work.)

The site is a work in progress and we are still testing and tweaking, but it works! It makes ordering and offering lookups pretty simple and we’re excited about the possibilities that it offers to both “providers” and “clients.” If enough researchers embrace it, it will make it easy to find lookup help in many areas of the country and world and it will make it easy to offer lookups to those who need them.

So why am I writing about this today? Well, it just so happens that one of the providers currently on Genlighten offers lookups in Kane County, Illinois and it just so happens that I am researching a few families who lived there. I just picked out two death record entries from the Illinois Statewide Death Index and a marriage entry from Elgin's Gail Borden Library's Local Newspaper Index and sent them off to a researcher who will now retrieve the matching records and upload the scans to Genlighten for me. Today I’m wearing the same shoes that those of you who send me requests wear and it’s fun! I’m looking forward to getting those records as much as I think someone of you look forward to hearing from me. And, yes, I’m itching to order a few more things that I think will be of interest.

If those of you who try the Genlighten site have the same kind experience that I just had, well, I think we might have something there.