Audacious, the only way your family will be online is if someone, perhaps a distant cousin, has researched it and put it online. Also, if you find any of your family in any of the genealogy websites whether free or one you have to pay to subscribe, the information should be verified with documents/records. The trees are submitted by the subscribers, folks like you and me. There are errors. You frequently will see different information on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will see the absolute same info on the same people from different subscribers, BUT that doesn't mean for one moment the information is accurate. A lot of people copy without verifying. If you disagree with information someone has posted on any of your family members, the owners of the websites will tell you that is between you and the other subscribers. You can make up an entirely fictitious family tree and it will be accepted. There is no way those who run those websites can verify all the information.
Your public library might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can use for free. It is probably the best for the total amount of original source records. You still have to distinguish between their records and their subscriber submitted family trees. They have all the U. S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They have lots of military enlistment and draft records. They have a large amount of immigration and land records. They have
indexes to vital records of many U.S. states. Not all records are online but the ones you find will save you time and money traveling all over to get them.
They have transcribed the records but you can view the original images. There are errors in their transcriptions, particularly censuses, but when you view the original, you will pity the transcribers.
When you set up a tree in their public member tree or private member tree, they will give you clues to records that might match some of your family members and if it is the same person it is easy to attach those records to you tree. You need to look at the info carefully to determine if it is the same person. Now, if they give you a clue from another family tree just understand that is another subscriber's submission.
Here is a link with links to many other websites, some free and some not.
http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.htm