At Home Histories provides research services to understand your literal place in this world. When was your house built? Who built it? What was there before? Who lived in your home before? These are all questions that often feel difficult to answer, living in North America where the built environment sometimes seems to fully encompass us. We help people find grounding in a longer timeline.
Where possible we will work to uncover the following information about your home and neighbourhood:
- Year of construction (and what was going on at the time).
- Insight into design choices at the time.
- What was on your lot before your house was? Was it part of a farm? Who owned the farm?
- If Indigenous people lived in that region, who were they?
- What was context out of which your neighbourhood emerged?
- Key stories about the city that relate to your home and neighbourhood.
- Who else might have lived in your home?
Through a combination of archival research, review of maps, interviewing, and combing through old newspapers, At Home Histories reconstructs the story of your place.
Currently, our focus is on locations in the greater Edmonton region.
What Do We Provide?
In addition to providing you with the rough research collected as part of each project, we will develop a beautifully designed report on your home and neighbourhood in printed and/or digital formats and a framed poster for your wall. For more details on these products, check out these examples.
We can also create videos summarizing the research that may be of interest to those wishing to share our findings with friends and family.
Other Services
We also provide genealogical and family history services that can further illustrate your context and provide you and your family with greater insight into where you have come from.
Pricing
We have developed the following guide for the main products we offer. (Pricing is under development). If you don’t see what you’re looking for here, though, let’s talk about it! We’d be happy to develop a quote for a more customized product.
| Product |
| Basic Package Includes research, rough research material (saved to a thumb drive), and an electronic copy of the H&N (Home & Neighbourhood) Report in *.pdf format. |
| Hands-On Package Includes everything in the basic package (including a digital copy of the H&N Report) plus a softcover printed copy of the H&N Report. Additional copies of the report can be provided at cost. |
| All-In Package Includes everything in the hands-on package (including a digital copy and one softcover printed copy of the H&N Report) plus a short (<8 min) video summarizing the research. |
| Add-On: Family History / Genealogical Services Whether you are curious about your family tree or are just looking for someone to fill in the gaps in what you already know, we can help. We have a wide range of products that we can provide to help you show your family tree to others, including posters, booklets, and videos. Our hourly rate for research is shown here. Depending on what you are looking for, we will work with you to develop a reasonable quote. |