Arteo
Ancestry
About Us
Arteo Ancestry's mission is to reconnect the lost ancestral connections of our clients, so they may understand who and where they came from, and can continue to share those stories with their own descendants for years to come.
Arteo Ancestry is a small business made up of a single ancestral researcher, Parker Marquez. Parker has over 10 years worth of research experience, and has recently found a passion in using their research skills to help families learn more about their forgotten ancestors. We do this by offering custom family trees to proudly display, family history books to share with your kin, and research services to piece together your family story.
Our custom family history books make great gifts to parents, grandparents, and any family member interested in sharing their ancestors' stories with the world. Discounts are given for additional copies of books ordered with the first copy or at any time after the initial purchase. This is a great way to help your other family members get a great deal! More options are detailed on the product page.
Our Products
Proudly display your family history
Our products are made with family history that you provide. This can be shared with Arteo Ancestry via email or directly through Ancestry.com. Links for uploading family history information will be provided via email after checkout. If you do not know your family history, our products can also be added onto any genealogical research package.
Purchasing a family tree is the best way to display your family history at a glance. With multiple styles to choose from, there's a match for anyone's aesthetic! Family trees can be delivered digitally, printed and unframed, or framed. Our family trees come in a variety of complexities and price ranges. Check out all of the options on the Family Tree Ordering page.
Genealogical Research
Want to know more about your family history? You've come to the right place.
Arteo Ancestry thrives to be an affordable option for clients who wish to know more about their history, but cannot afford big-name genealogists and do not have the time and/or experience to find the information on their own. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to know where they come from, and the culture, hardships, and successes of their ancestors that led them here. We strive to make knowing your family history more accessible for the average person.
Free Consultation
Every family's genealogical journey is different, that's why Arteo Ancestry provides free consultations to talk more about what you're seeking, what we might be able to help you with, and an estimate of how much it might cost.
Add-on Services
If you decide to book a genealogical research package with us following your free consultation, we also offer add-on services such as family history books, family tree displays, and document ordering.
Document ordering refers to obtaining certified documents such as immigration papers, birth certificates, baptism records, and death certificates of ancestors. These official documents are vital if you are looking at your family history to serve as an avenue for applying for citizenship by descent in a foreign country.
Our No-Guarantee Guarantee
In the field of genealogy, the only guarantee that a researcher can give is to use our experience and skills to find as much information about your family as we can. Unfortunately, we are only able to find records that were preserved and still exist in some format. This also means that the length of research projects will vary dramatically depending on the availability of records in both digital and paper formats.
This is why Arteo Ancestry offers genealogical research packages both by-the-hour and by-the-goal to better meet your price range.
Our Story
(It's a wild ride.)
I became interested in genealogical research after my grandfather passed away at the beginning of 2021. While my family was gathered at his death-bed, we began talking about his parents and my late grandmother's parents as well.
My grandmother was my favorite person in the entire world. She always made me feel special and wanted. She made friends with every person she ever met, which is why every grocery store trip always took us multiple hours to complete. She never met a stranger, and I've never met anybody else like her. She passed away in 2018, and I've missed her every day since.
While we were gathered together in 2021, it was brought up how my grandmother's mother was actually her stepmother. Nobody knew what happened to her biological mother, nobody even knew her name. My uncle said he remembered when he was a young child that my grandmother tracked down her mom and visited her at a state hospital for the "insane". And it did not go well.
As an avid teller of stories, I was surprised to hear that my grandmother had never told any of us about her birth mother. This felt like a huge gap in my grandmother's life that I had no idea existed. So armed with nothing but my grandmother's father's name and the location of Illinois, I was determined to fill in the gaps.
Before I go on, let me tell you some personal things about me. I've been terrified of asylums my whole life. Not of the patients, of the institution (the 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest' unit of English was a doozy, and I'll never recover from 'American Horror Story: Asylum'). Also, I've been a social worker for over a decade. My first job in the field was working with kids who were survivors of intimate partner homicide, which is a fancy way of saying that one of their parents killed their other parent. It unfortunately happens more that you think it does, but is nonetheless a very specific population. Remember this as I tell you the rest of our story.
After weeks of searching, and sorting through endless marriage certificates, I was able to find what I believed to be the marriage certificate of my grandmother's parents. Her mom's name was Viola. Finally, I was able to put a name to this mysterious ancestor that had otherwise been lost. In the years since, among many long nights and hundreds of hours of research, I've discovered a lot about my great-grandmother.
Here are some of the noteworthy details: When Viola was 11 years old, her father killed her mother and then himself while she was at school. Her 17 year old brother was in the house.
Viola married my great-grandfather at 18 years old and was 21 when she gave birth to my grandmother, her only child. A little over a year and a half later, in 1944, Viola was committed to Elgin State Hospital for "insanity". She would remain at Elgin for 12 years, be transferred to East Moline State Hospital where she lived for an additional 7 and a half years before being discharged to a residential treatment facility where she lived the rest of her life before dying at only 56 years old. She was involuntarily committed for 20 years, from 22 years old to 42 years old.
There are a lot of reasons Viola may have been committed back in 1944, many of which were not understood 80 years ago. She could've had post-partum psychosis, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. She also could've been a tragic victim of "hysteria", a disorder manufactured by doctors and husbands to get their wives committed as an avenue of separation when divorce was not a viable option. Or she could've just been traumatized. Traumatized from coming home from school at the age of 11 to a bloody crime scene and a declaration that she was now an orphan.
Despite never knowing Viola's story until recently, I have spent my own life terrified of experiences that I now know she lived through. I dedicated four years of my life to working with kids just like her.
I never knew Viola, I don't know what happened the day my beloved grandmother reunited with her mother for the first time since she was a toddler. What I do know is that Viola's story was erased, she was lost to time and shame. She had her life stolen from her at the age 22, maybe even at the age of 11. But something in me connects us in a way I don't understand. And I know, whatever happened between them, my grandmother would have compassion and forgiveness for her mother. Because, despite inheriting her mother's trauma, she turned into the kindest, most loving, amazing woman this world has ever seen.
This is why I dedicate my life to family history. Our ancestors are inside us, whether we know them or not. Their stories deserve to be known and shared.
- Parker Marquez
Owner of Arteo Ancestry