NJ Assemblyman Ryan Peters upon receiving a statehouse proclamation.
Eric Schubert might be an 18-year-old who’s in his first year at Elizabethtown College, but he has almost a decade of professional experience — and a solved cold case — to his name.
The genealogy enthusiast and Marlton resident has worked on more than 1,000 family trees, adoption stories and, yes, even forensic genealogy cases, all because of a hobby he picked up during a particularly nasty childhood bout of pneumonia.
“I was 9 or 10 and I used to get sick all the time in the winters, so I would be home for two or three weeks at a time, annoying my mother,” he says with a laugh. “She had seen a commercial for Ancestry.com or something like that and said, ‘Why don’t you try that?’ So I did, and figured it’d be kind of cool for a while. And then I just picked it up and it never stopped like I thought it would.”
A few years later, genealogy had bloomed into less of a hobby and more of a passion, but Schubert was running out of new branches to explore on his own family tree. It was then, inspired by reaching “that age where I could get a job but I didn’t want to work at the only places that hire teenagers,” he decided to earn money by offering his investigation skills to others, not knowing what kind of response he’d get.
“I thought it would maybe occupy me for a little bit, so I started to see if there was any local interest in genealogy,” Schubert recalls. “I horribly underestimated the amount of interest there was! That was four or five years ago and I’m still going strong.”
Schubert says unlike other fields — like accounting, for example, “where you could never be an accountant without a degree” — getting work in the genealogy field doesn’t rely on certification or formal education so much as it does just sheer luck, online presence and reputation.
“It’s an interesting field in that regard,” he explains. “I’m not certified as a genealogist, I’m not studying genealogy. I don’t know if this is an opinion held by many other people, but I don’t think a genealogy education is as important as references and experience and a proven track record of actually solving cases.”
And Schubert frequently attributes his luck to being able to do what he loves while making a name for himself in the genealogy world.
Whether he’s confirming the validity of a family myth, helping adoptees reunite with their biological families or being hired by a police department to investigate possible genetic breaks in a criminal case, Schubert says the process is fairly similar regardless.
“It’s pretty much exactly the same as using genealogy to help find someone’s parent when you’re finding a murderer,” he notes. “A company uploads DNA to a DNA database, so then you’ll get matches that are extremely distantly related, like someone will share a great-great-great-great-great grandparent with the suspect.
“It’s basically just process of elimination: I’m just seeing where things line up, where the puzzle pieces fit.”
Schubert has a few forensic projects in the works and so far has one solved case, though its nature keeps him from offering details. He does admit that figuring out a cold case through genealogy was an exciting opportunity.
“It’s incredibly awesome, that aha! moment of the first cold case I did, when I knew that I had it but it wasn’t 100 percent confirmed yet,” he says.
Since genealogy lacks the rigid barrier to entry that many other fields do, Schubert has had to learn a lot on his own from following the right resources and making friends who belong to a number of genealogical societies. It’s helped him distill his learning lessons into practical advice for budding enthusiasts new to the game.
“Look closely: The tiniest detail in genealogy in any sort of case can be the detail that solves it for you,” he emphasizes. “And if you’re doing research for others, work on your research skills and develop your people skills.”
Schubert says not everyone is happy with the fruits of his labors, particularly when he disproves long-cherished family mythologies that claim a blood tie with famous figures or Native American ancestry. He’s had to make sure he delivers bad news tactfully and gently.
“I’ve had people get angry at me when I have to tell them that they’re not really related to Abraham Lincoln,” he says, adding that displeased reactions he’s received can range from clients “getting very angry and worked up, responding like it’s a personal attack” to simply refusing to respond to his emails.
“It’s tough for me to tell people that, ‘Hey, I’m not sure your family story is 100 percent accurate,’ because some people are so set on it and they’re in total denial,” he acknowledges. “I’m just trying to present the evidence and let you know what the records say.”
But those are the exceptions rather than the rule, and Schubert says it’s impossible to pick just one favorite case when he’s put many long lost families back in touch, resolved 50-year-old personal mysteries and received frequent updates about how he’s changed people’s lives for the better.
“Connecting people is always a heartfelt situation, and I’m always just happy to help,” says Schubert. “For me, it’s really fun to get those updates and know that I helped a family grow. It’s very rewarding, it’s really enjoyable.”
Schubert can be reached at [email protected].
