FamilySearch is a totally free site and has millions of genealogy records. the url is www.familysearch.org You can make a free tree there so I wouldn't give up trying to do some basic research yourself. Where are you located? There also might be a Genealogy Society in your area that could help you.

Audrey, I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say, "First you pay them a monthly fee then you pay marriage and birth specialists. Then military specialists. Etc etc ..." Yes, you can join Ancestry either on a monthly membership, 6-month membership, or annual membership. There are also different levels - U.S. Discovery gives you access to all U.S. records on Ancestry.com. World Explorer gives you access to all U.S. and international records on Ancestry.com. All Access gives you access to all U.S. and international records on Ancestry.com as well as access to Newspapers.com and Fold3.com (the military records). Birth, death, and marriage records are available on Ancestry.com for most locations. You can pay for memberships to Newspapers.com and/or Fold3.com independent of Ancestry membership.

You can contact Ancestry either online or by calling 1-800-596-3230 and get a free estimate of how much it will cost for the research you request. They have many different professional genealogists with expertise in different geographical areas.

As mentioned above, the Family Search website (affiliated with the LDS) is free to use. You have to create an account (username and password), but absolutely no fees are involved. It is not uncommon to find images there that are not available on Ancestry (and vice versa). For some of the images, however, you must be at a Family Search affiliated library to be able to view the images.

There is undoubtedly a Family History Center (affiliated with the LDS) near you. They are all over. Again, totally free to use, and there are volunteers on site who will be happy to assist you. Because they are part of the LDS church as is the Family Search website, you will be able to view all images on line while you are there.

When you are researching, bear in mind that names were often misspelled, and ages/dates of birth, etc., are not always accurate. Immigrants often changed their surnames when they came to the U.S., by dropping/changing the final vowel (e.g., Rossi to Ross; Silvestri to Silvestro); changing a vowel in the middle (e.g., Zuccarello to Zuccorello ); dropping a double letter to a single letter (e.g., Lannaconne to Lannacone; Zarella to Zarela); changing to a similar name (e.g., Rossi to Rose); or simply changing it altogether (e.g., Leonetti to Sullivan). Also, people filling out forms, such as Census enumerations, marriage licenses, birth/death certificates, etc., were unfamiliar with so many of the new, foreign names that came into the country, and didn't understand the accents, so they put down names somewhat phonetically. And many of the immigrants didn't have much education, couldn't read/write, so they didn't know what was being written down as their name.

Also, if you are looking at international records (many are available on FamilySearch.org) you need to keep in mind the fact that the folks transcribing the records are not necessarily fully fluent in both the foreign language and English. I have seen many ridiculous transcriptions.

Good luck with your research!

Echoing what Lindsey said, most names have more than one spelling. We have one common name in our area that has 50 different spellings. Siblings quite often spell their surnames differently. Given names can be equally frustrating. Some families named every daughter Mary....Mary Elizabeth, Mary Catherine, Mary Anna, etc. The girls generally went by the middle name but it is VERY confusing on official documents.

I did mine myself as a hobby after retirement. I started with Ancestry to form a data base and was lucky to find another branch of my family that sprang from s set of half-brothers and one of those gave me his file that was very extensive for his side of the family. With this base, I began to search and sort out erroneous errors (I had a box of papers from my mother that contained many signatures of family members. There was confusion due the use of a dual spelling of my surname that occurred within the same family. My collection of signatures proved the spellings individuals were using.) This search generated a trip each year to a location to search libraries and court house records. My wife became interested in her family and followed much the same operation plus trips to her locations. She found that she had an ancestor who came from Canada and earlier ones connected with a castle in England.

I found that my roots were planters in the Virginia colony and a set of 5 brothers, all who fought in the Revolutionary War. The father of these boys had come from Wales and acquired land in Virginia in 1730. I found that parts of that land was surveyed by young George Washington. That land passed from their hands when they removed to the southern part of Virginia and in modern times it is now part of the Quantico Marine Base.

We found that if you search your family back far enough, you will be connected to the early history of this country. We discovered that the search was a fine way to study early US history; It comes alive and is a better way to learn about it compared to reading a passage in a dry history text book. You'll also discover that your school history books may be slanted by omitting certain facts.

I'm sorry that you have given up the search. I think that you can do as well as a hired genealogist if you work at it. However, if you can not gain access to locations away from your home, hiring a genealogist is viable option, but it may cost you the same amount if you had done it yourself. We did it as a hobby and to provide a direction for our yearly trips. We have about exhausted places to look within reasonable cost and effort. It has provided us with an education about our roots and we gained a better appreciation for the work done by "Finding Your Roots".

There are several one things to watch out for but I will give two that frustrated me.

With the repeat of names within a family it is sometimes hard to prove which Mary Elizabeth married Henry James because many of the marriage records only list the bride and grooms name.

While it did happen way back when a marriage contract was often called a marriage in some countries. The records that some people use appear that the ages of the participants were way off. I have several which the wife or husband had children even before the youngest was born which tells me that there was a previous marriage or marriages

I agree with jemdandy. Looking into your ancestry is a great way to appreciate history, and there are many human interest stories. People have always done 'the darndest things'!

"The records that some people use appear that the ages of the participants were way off."

Sometimes, folks deliberately lied about their ages. I've seen this a lot on marriage license applications, and military draft registrations. Some would give a false age/date of birth in order to be able to do something, such as getting married without a parent's written permission, or joining the military. Others would say they were younger than they were, as when a woman was marrying a younger man. Also, there was a time when divorce was frowned upon, so women would claim to be widowed when they were separated or when they were divorced.

The opposite of being married before being born is the children that were born after the woman died who were supposedly that woman's children even when a tombstone was posted showing the death date.