About us

"Like most Americans, I have ancestors who hail from many countries and regions; but I began my genealogy journey on my Polish lines. I quickly learned that I needed document proficiency in German, Russian, Polish, and Latin just to research one family, let alone the Hungarian, Danish, Swedish, Old English, and so on for my other lines! 

"Learning the essentials of these languages was difficult. There were no tools that brought all the aspects of a language that I needed to master together in one place. We built DecipherInk to give other people the simple, bite-sized, and easy-to-practice learning tool I wish I'd had."

"I’ve been fascinated by handwriting and languages all my life. Originally from Denmark, I learned English as a child when my family moved to the U.S. Exploring multiple languages, speaking Danish and English daily for 20+ years, and having family members who know Spanish, Japanese, German, Russian, and French, I’ve always been surrounded by languages.

"I merged my love of languages with genealogy in my education and work and regularly help people with records in other languages, especially ones written in the old German script.

"With so many resources to help learn to decipher records, I found one thing missing: A self-paced genealogical language learning app. So, we created something engaging, interactive, and easily accessible—targeting what a genealogist needs to know of a language and script to Decipher Ink."

"History was always one of my favorite subjects in school (followed closely by band and Spanish). As a high schooler I thumbed through a college catalog and saw that paleography classes were offered by the History department. Upon further investigation I learned that one could study German genealogy. In college, I finally had an opportunity to learn German (something I had wanted to do since 7th grade)!  Later, I was fortunate to study Armenian and Russian. 

"My language experience covers a range of alphabets and scripts, and I understand intimately how hard it is to set out to learn something so different from your native language. I hope to lower the language learning barrier for genealogists for all levels, for as many languages as possible."