Is there any web sites that a person can trace down there Family History?

Question

I looking to go through and find out about my family's history and where we came from. But I don't want to have to buy anything to get it and I have been to the sites where you can make a family tree but to get more you have to pay. Is there like going through old library records or something on the net or where can I start to look?

Answer 1

If you want to really research it and not rely on information in other people's family tree you can use the web as an aid in your research.



The only way to find your family tree is to research it. Don't expect to find it on the web all prepared and accurate. If someone has told you they found theirs that way tell them unless they have verified it with records/documents, they don't know if what they have found is accurate or not.



There are lots of websites. Some have records. Some have subscriber submitted family trees. Some have both. Any way any of your family will be in an online family tree is if someone has done the work, perhaps a distant cousin you ever met or someone who has married into your family, and they have put it online and then you don't know that it is accurate. Family trees on ANY website, free or fee must be viewed with great caution. Even when you see the absolute same info on the same people from many different subscribers that doesn't mean it is accurate. It takes one person to have inaccurate information and 19 other people copying to have 20 family trees with errors. Actually if you disagree with information you find on your family in any of the trees, those that run the websites will tell you that is between you and the other subscriber. They will not get involved as there is no way they can verify all the information people submit.



Ancestry.Com isn't free but your public library might have a subscription to it you can use for free. It has more original source records online than any other website. Still you must distinguish between the records they have obtained and put online 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 immigration records. I have a friend whose mother came from Calabria and father from Sicily. She has made numerous trips to the National Archives in Washington to get information on her family. She says Ancestry.Com now has all the records on her family that the National Archives has.



They have lots of military enlistment and draft records.



They have vital records(birth, marriage and deaths) from many U.S. states.



They have lot of obituaries starting sometimes in the 1990s.



They have many newspapers online and if you want an old obituary and a newspaper is online where the deceased lived at time of death, you can peruse that newspaper for an obituary on that person. I find finding obituaries help me find other living family since the obits list the survivors. Other family members can be helpful with information.



Now no way are all records online but the ones you find will save you time and money. When I go into Ancestry.Com's website, I prefer to go under "Old Search" which is toward the top on the right as I can better pick out specific records I want to check. Their New Search was made to look prettier but I don't find it facilitates me as much.



Ancestry.Com has transcribed their 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.



Also check out a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church, They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City, they have the world's largest genealogical collection. Their FHCs can order microfilm for you to view for about $3. I have never had them to try and convert me nor have I heard of them doing that to anyone else that has used their resources. Just visit their free website, FamilySearch.org, to get the hours for the general public to the nearest Mormon FHC. Also FamilySearch has a new pilot program where they are having their records transcribed and put online. I like it because I can view and print off copies of original Texas death certificates. I would imagine they have them for some of the other states.



If you haven't done so get as much information from living family as possible. If you can get a copy of any birth, marriage and death certificates they have that will be great. Also depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage certificates from their church can be just as helpful if not more so than civil records. Interview your senior members and tape them if they will let you. They very likely will get into telling stories of days gone by you wouldn't write down, but in those stories if you go back and listen to the tape again after doing research you will hear things you didn't hear the first time around which very likely will help you break through a brick wall in your research.

Answer 2

Start by watching a few How-to videos about collecting information, documenting and saving it. I like Family History: Genealogy Made Easy series. Get a free family tree program like RootsMagic Essentials to store your information.



A few good free sites with a storehouse of information are the LDS sites: Family Search, Family Search Pilot and Family Search Beta. They also offer free training classes. RootsWeb is another good place to look. Genealogy is a long and fascinating road, not 'look up my tree and be done with it' Take time to enjoy the journey

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

Answer 3

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. Among them



www.cyndislist.com - 250,000 links, all categorized.

www.familysearch.org - The Mormons. Gazillions of records.

wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com - Roots Web World Connect - 600,000,000+ entries

usgenweb.org - Sites for every county in every state in the USA

ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com - Social Security Death Index, 83 million names

vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/ - California Death Index, 9,366,786 records

www.findagrave.com - 43 million records

genforum.genealogy.com - Query boards for every county in every state, and thousands of surnames.

boards.ancestry.com - The other Query board site; counties and surnames too.

archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com Roots Web Mailing List Archive - Over 30 million messages



I have a page with real links to all of those, below, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.



If you search the resolved questions in this category only for the word "Free"(use "Advanced" to limit your search to this category only), you'll find there are thousands questions with the word, and at least 2/3rds of them ask "How can I trace my family tree for free?", just like you did. The answers to those questions have lots of links and tips. We top 10 paste our stock answer to that question 3 - 12 times a day, sigh, and wonder why you kids haven't read the resolved questions. You are rare and special in some ways, undoubtedly, but not in your curiosity about your family. As of October 2010 there were 4,795 resolved questions with the word "free" in them in Genealogy.



If you didn't mention a country, and you didn't go into Yahoo! by one of their international sub-sites, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it.



If you are in the USA,

AND most of your ancestors were in the USA,

AND you can get to a library or FHC with census access,

AND you are white

Then you can get most of your ancestors who were alive in 1850 with 100 - 300 hours of research. You can only get to 1870 if you are black, sadly. Many people stop reading here and pick another hobby.



No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.



You won't find living people on genealogy sites. You'll have to get back to people living in 1930 or so by talking to relatives, looking up obituaries and so forth.



Finally, not everything you read on the internet is true. You have to be cautious and look at people's sources. Cross-check and verify.



So much for the warnings. Here is the main link.



http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html



That page has links, plus tips and hints on how to use the sites, for a dozen huge free sites. Having one link here in the answer and a dozen links on my personal site gets around two problems. First, Y!A limits us to 10 links in an answer. Second, if one or more of the links are popular, I get "We're taking a breather" when I try to post the answer. This is a bug introduced sometime in August 2008 with the "new look".



You will need the tips. Just for instance, most beginners either put too much data into the RWWC query page, or they mistake the Ancestry ads at the top for the query form. I used to teach a class on Internet Genealogy at the library. I watched the mistakes beginners made. The query forms on the sites are NOT intuitive.

Answer 4

Most public libraries make online subscriptions to Ancestry.com available to their patrons along with US Census records from 1790 to 1930. Additionally, two free-of-charge genealogical Web sites provide very similar information: RootsWeb.com, maintained by Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch.org, a site maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons). You will also come across additional free sites as you continue to trace your roots, but this information should get you started.

Answer 5

You first start with yourself and your family members and get all the information together you already have in our home that you are unaware of before you launch into websites and waste your time ( an money)...look here and it will explain in steps http://familytimeline.webs.com/researchingyourfh.htm...from this you can go and look in your local family history center and look at records ( for free) and if you then want to go online and look at least then you know who you are looking for

Answer 6

There is an excellent tutorial for those who are new to family research at http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ; everyone starting out in genealogy should understand the basics and this tutorial covers them. After you complete the tutorial, the following is a basic plan and generally only requires the tools that you already have like your computer and Internet service provider.



So, start with your birth certificate, which has your parents, and then ask your parents for copies of their birth certificates, which will have your grandparents on them. Then if you grandparents are living, continue the process. At some point, you will experience a problem depending on when you grandparents or great grandparents were born, in that; birth certificates did not exist before the early 1900s. You need to get back to 1930 with personal records because those types of records are not available to the public for 50 to 100 years depending on the jurisdiction in which they are held and census records which are quite valuable in tracing your ancestors’ movements are not available before 1930 at this time.



By copying or ordering these documents, you have gone to relatively little expense and you have three generations plus you and you have it documented with primary documents. That will give you 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and 8 great grandparents to start researching. Now, you can use death certificates, marriage records, census records, immigration records, church records, court records and many other sources to research your ancestry. Your public libraries will most likely have both Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest free for anyone to use while at the library and with a library card you should be able to use Heritage Quest at home.



Another free online resource is the Latter Day Saints/Mormon site, which has many free online records at www.familysearch.org and original documents on their pilot site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=0 . They have also just added a new Beta site that has a few more databases, which you might find useful at: http://fsbeta.familysearch.org/s/collection/list . In addition to their online records, they have Family History Centers where you can go for personalized help with research and look at microfilm and while they will not do your research for you they will help you, a lot. They only charge if they have to order something specifically for you or you need photocopies and their charges are minimal. Look on the home page of their website to find a location near you and call to check hours of operation. http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Home/Welcome/home.asp .



Additionally, USGen Web is another free online resource at http://www.usgenweb.org/ . This site is packed with how-to tips, queries and records for every state and most counties within those states. Then, there is Rootsweb at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ a free site hosted by Ancestry.com where you can search for surnames, post queries on the message boards and subscribe to surname mailing lists.



Also, be sure to check each state that you need information from as many have their own projects, for example, the state of Missouri has a great website that has many free source documents online at http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/ and South Carolina has many free wills and other court documents at http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinearchives/search.aspx



Also, Family Tree Magazine’s 101 Best Websites, 2010 http://familytreemagazine.com/article/101-Best-Websites-2010 You may have to register for their free newsletter to access this list but you will find that helpful also.



And the only site that is included on this list that has some links that are free and some that are not is Cyndi’s List but it will be well worth your time to look through the list for the free websites because of their quality: http://www.cyndislist.com/



Also, you can come back here for help with specific questions or search our archives for more “search for ancestors”.

Answer 7

take a look here first. http://en.geneanet.org/

also depending on what country your ancestors came from they have websites you can go to. I have been using http://gunter.depaepe.pagesperso-orange.fr/index.htm and http://www.zeeuwengezocht.nl/default_E.htm these are the websites I used to find Ancestors in Belgium and The Netherlands

Answer 8

NO Ancestry you must pay a fee for either by month or yr...You can how ever access it threw your local library for free I think

Answer 9

familysearch.org and geneogly.com

Answer 10

no there isnt any website