Jill Cobb, MLS

My Story

I came to genealogy the way many people do — through loss. When my mother passed away, I found myself holding fragments of a life I had never fully known: old photographs with no names on the back, documents in languages I couldn't read, stories half-told and now impossible to finish. That grief became a question, and that question became a calling.

I began researching family history in 2007, and what started as a personal search gradually deepened into a professional practice. I hold a Master of Library Science (MLS) degree and a Certification in Fundraising Management (CFRM) from the Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy — credentials that have shaped how I approach research: with rigor, with care, and with an understanding that the work matters beyond the records themselves.

Over the years I have traveled to archives and libraries across the United States and abroad — including the British Library in London and the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh — following paper trails that cross oceans and centuries. There is something irreplaceable about sitting in a reading room with original documents, feeling the weight of what has been preserved and what has been lost.

Losing family members has only deepened my conviction that this work is urgent. Every generation that passes takes with it knowledge that cannot be recovered from any database. Genealogy is not just records — it is identity, memory, belonging, and inherited story. It reminds us that we are never truly alone. What we inherit is not only DNA, but memory, meaning, and the unfinished prayers of those who came before us.

Ancestral Blessings Genealogy was founded on the belief that every family deserves to know its story — and that how that story is told matters. I bring the same care to your family's history that I brought to my own.