Allison: Need a free & good genealogy site?

answers1: Many public libraries have a subscription to Ancestry.Com a
person can use for free. 
 
Ancestry.com is the best for the amount of original source records
online. You have to distinguish between their records and their
subscriber submitted family trees. Any website that only has family
trees is not worth a plug nickel. Trees on all websites, whether free
or one to which you have to pay to subscribe, are not submitted by
some experts working for the websites but by folks like you and me and
their are errors!!!! They are seldom documented and if they are
documented, they are poorly documented. Documentation is the meat of
genealogy and you must look for it whether the tree is online or in a
published book. 
 
In online family trees you frequently will see different information
on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will see the
absolute same information on the same people from different
subscribers, BUT that doesn't mean it is accurate. A lot of people
copy without verifying. If you disagree with information someone has
on family members, those who run the websites will tell you that is
between you and the other subscriber. Believe me I found confirmation
right before last Christmas when I found out me, my younger sister and
my brother-in-law were all dead. Actually this person had wrong
information on my family from both sides. This was someone with almost
150,000 names in his/her tree. That is part of the problem with online
trees. Too many people think it is more important to see how many
names they can collect rather than a good verifiable family tree.
 
 
There are not any records extant on all people that have lived so look
and just smile whenever you see a tree that goes back to the time of
Jesus Christ or Adam and Eve. Such trees are based on speculation and
jumping to a conclusion. 
 
Ancestry.Com has 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 and a large number of immigration
records, some land records and other records. Not all records are
online but the ones you find will save you time and money traveling
all over to get them. Just don't expect information on the living as
that can be an invasion of privacy and can lead to identity theft.
 
 
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 have sympathy and
understand for the transcribers. 
 
Here is a link with links to various websites, some free, some not. 
 
<a href="http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.htm"
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.progenealogists.com/top50gene...</a>
answers2: Not just one but quite a few and a plan for someone looking
to start a family tree. 
 
First, start by asking all your living relatives about family history
and get any documents or pictures they are willing to share with you
for your files. You can photocopy or scan these and return them to
their owner. Your public library will most likely have both
Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest.com free for anyone to use while at
the library and with a library card you can use Heritage Quest at
home. Ancestry and Heritage Quest both have census data and other
source documents. Heritage Quest has some pension files that are very
useful for family research. 
 
 
Another free online resource is U.S. GenWeb at: <a
href="http://www.usgenweb.org/"
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.usgenweb.org/</a> they have a
page for every state and everything is free. Also, I would be remiss
if I didn't mention FamilySearch.org they have many free online
records and are digitizing more every day, all free. Their website is:
<a href="http://www.familysearch.org/."
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.familysearch.org/.</a> Also, be
sure to check each state that you need information from as many have
independent projects, for example the state of Missouri has a great
website that has many free source documents online at: <a
href="http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/"
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/</a> and South
Carolina has many free wills at:
http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinear… 
 
Additionally, Cyndi's List, one of the most well know websites in
genealogy at http://www.cyndislist.com has a lot of links for both
free and paid sites. 
 
I'm sure I could come up with a lot more but that should keep you busy
for a while and I think your question was how to find family history
for free…there should be lots of family history to be found for free
with all these websites. Plus, I imagine you will start to find new
websites on your own as you become a more experienced researcher and
you might even find a cousin or two to share research ideas with.
answers3: check the mormon site
answers4: You should start by asking all your living relatives about
family history. Then, armed with that information, you can go to your
public library and check to see if it has a genealogy department. Most
do nowadays; also, don't forget to check at community colleges,
universities, etc. Our public library has both www.ancestry.com and
www.heritagequest.com free for anyone to use (no library card
required). 
Another place to check out is any of the Mormon's Family History
Centers. They allow people to search for their family history (and,
NO, they don't try to convert you). 
A third option is one of the following websites: 
<a href="http://www.searchforancestors.com/..."
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.searchforancestors.com/...</a>
 
 
<a href="http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739..."
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...</a>
 
 
www dot usgenweb dot com/ 
 
www dot census dot gov/ 
 
<a href="http://www.rootsweb.com/"
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.rootsweb.com/</a> 
 
www dot ukgenweb dot com/ 
 
www dot archives dot gov/ 
 
http://www.familysearch.org/ 
 
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/... 
 
http://www.cyndislist.com/ 
 
www dot geni dot com/ 
 
Cyndi's has the most links to genealogy websites, whether ship's
passenger lists, ancestors from Africa, ancestors from the
Philippines, where ever and whatever. 
 
Of course, you may be successful by googling: "john doe, born 1620,
plimouth, massachusetts" as an example. 
 
Good luck and have fun! 
 
Check out this article on five great free genealogy websites: 
 
www dot associatedcontent dot com/article... 
 
Then there is the DNA test; if you decide you want to REALLY know
where your ancestors came from opt for the DNA test. Besides all the
mistakes that officials commonly make, from 10% to 20% of birth
certificates list the father wrong; that is, mama was doing the
hanky-panky and someone else was the REAL father. That won't show up
on the internet or in books; it WILL show up in DNA. 
I used www.familytreedna.com which works with the National Geographics
Genotype Program.
answers5: There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have a page
that has links to some huge ones, below, but you'll have to wade
through some advice and warnings first. 
 
If you didn't mention a country, 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 young 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. 
 
<a href="http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html"
rel="nofollow"class=Clr-b>http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html</a>
 
 
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, expect too much accuracy, or
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 really
intuitive.

Allison

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Tuesday, 17 September 2019

Need a free & good genealogy site?

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