About Us

Kieffer Family History Services is owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Craig Kieffer, Certified Genealogist, and Elsa Bray Kieffer who combine their life-long interest in family history with unique skills and experiences that enable them to conduct thorough research, organize large amounts of data, and compile high quality family histories.

Craig Kieffer holds the credentials of Certified Genealogist which is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by Board-certified associates after periodic competency evaluations.

He is a member of the National Genealogical Society, the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, the Association of Professional Genealogists, and the Association of Professional Genealogists, National Capital Area Chapter. Also, he is a volunteer family history consultant at the Washington, D. C. Family History Center and a co-author of The Civil War Diary and Letters of Jesse Kieffer of Lockport, New York.

He is a retired police officer whose background in conducting complex investigations, organizing large amounts of material, analyzing evidence, and writing detailed reports, provides him with unique skills that compliment his specialized family history skills.

He is highly skilled and experienced at not only locating family history records, but also at organizing and analyzing the data in these records. He is able to take information obtained from family history records and present it in reports that are detailed, yet easy to understand.

In addition to his research, organizational, and report writing skills, he has studied photography and imaging for many years and has worked as a professional photographer. This background provides him with specialized skills that enable him to create beautiful images of family history records, photographs, and memorabilia that are an important part of all family history projects.

Elsa Bray Kieffer is a former National Institutes of Health employee of over twenty-three years and served as a Senior Advisor for the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Program, a focal point for evidence-based medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

She has extensive experience with the NIH Consensus Development Program including the processes of development of evidence-based scientific programs, clinical practice guidelines and evidence-based reports to incorporate into the Consensus Development Program process. These reports involve rigorous systematic reviews of the vast amounts of biomedical literature to define the state of the science by categorizing the strength of the available evidence. She currently applies her critical, essential skills of thoughtfully organizing, analyzing and compiling information from her former position to her current position as a family history researcher.

She is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, and the Association of Professional Genealogists, National Capital Area Chapter.

She also worked as a professional photographer and is highly skilled at creating beautiful images of both individuals and family history material.