By member Teresa Collis

My Grandfather died when I was 11.

A few years later, I was helping my grandmother sort through some old papers. She was perched on a ladder reaching up to the top of the wardrobe, and I was perched on the end of her bed, ready to catch her if she lost her balance (she didn’t).

Pulling out a tatty old piece of paper from a box, she leaned down and handed it to me, saying, “You might be interested in this.” That tatty old piece of paper was the marriage certificate of her grandparents—my great-great grandparents—who were married in St Francis Church in Melbourne in 1871.

My Nanna knew me well – I couldn’t resist a mystery or a puzzle. I still can’t, and I’ve been researching my family history ever since.

I took the marriage certificate home with me, wrote a big #1 in the top left-hand corner of the age (in pencil, of course!) and filed it away. It was the first document in a folder that would become my Genealogy Resources folder.

Back then, there were no computers or internet, so it was off to the library to read some books and figure out how to trace my family tree. I enrolled in a few Family History courses and joined the Genealogical Society of Victoria, and I was hooked.

My passion for researching mysteries and puzzles led me to a career in Medical Science and then into the corporate world, where I had the opportunity to live and work in Germany for four years.

All the while, researching my family history continued to be a mainstay of my life. As avenues for researching my family history began to dry up, I started helping others explore their family stories, and I have been privileged to have been invited into people’s lives, working with them to unravel family mysteries and find missing ancestors.

Establishing my business, Little Things Genealogy, has offered me many more opportunities to help people explore their family histories and learn about the fascinating lives of their forebears.

 My research philosophy: never let a good story get in the way of the truth.

When undertaking any research, my primary goal is to get it right. Family history is a deeply personal exploration, and it is imperative that ancestors and their stories are correctly identified and represented.

Stories are at the centre of all family history research—without them, we are left with only names, dates, and places.

And stories are often where we start our research. I never would have thought to delve into the history of circus communities at the turn of the 20th century if my grandfather hadn’t told me the story of his cousin Ethel, supposedly a contortionist in the circus.

It was a great story. I hoped it was true, and the scientist in me wanted evidence. It took about 30 years, but I eventually found the evidence, and that story my grandfather told me has so much more meaning and significance for me now that I know it was true. Family history is at its best when stories and evidence combine to create an inspiring, personal, detailed, and authentic narrative.

Experience and qualifications

I am an accredited Genealogist and Record Agent with the Australasian Association of Genealogists and Record Agents (AAGRA) and have a Diploma in Family History from the University of Tasmania and a Bachelor of Applied Science from RMIT University.

My scientific background has ingrained in me what I like to call a healthy scepticism, and I am tenacious in searching for evidence to validate stories or assumptions as I progress my research. All my research is meticulously referenced.

I am a member of several Genealogy and Family History societies, including the Genealogical Society of Victoria, the Society of Australian Genealogists, the South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society, the Society of Genealogists (UK), Jersey Heritage, and the Dumfries & Galloway Family History Society.