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10 pts best answer/ What are some good FREE websites for researching your family tree?

I've traced my roots back to the Civil War (both father & mother) , but I am trying to see if any of my ancestors came over at the start of the American Revolution. I am hoping I can become a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I Any info or guidance would be most appreciated. 10 pts best answer

Public Comments

1. It is according to whether you want a good verifiable family tree or just find some of your family in someone else's family tree and copy it and it might a lot of wrong information. There are many websites but you have to use them with research. If anyone has told you that they have found their family tree online, please tell them unless they have verified it with documents/records, they don't know if what they have found is accurate or not. Talking to your family generally will not cost you anything. Tape your senior members if they will let you. I won't say that they won't be wrong or confused on some things but little story tellings will often times have clues that will be helpful if you go back and listen to the tape again after doing research. Find out if any family has any old family bibles. Ask to see and if they will let you make copies of birth, marriage and death certificates. Depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage certificates from their church can also yield helpful information. A good free source is 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 at a nominal fee of about $3. I have never had them to try and convert me or have I heard of them doing that to anyone else that has used their resources. A lot of their volunteers are not Mormon. Just visit their free website, FamilySeach.org, to get their hours for the general public. Now for websites. Ancestry.Com isn't free but your public library might have a subscription to it you can use for free. Now, with Ancestry.Com or any website, you must distinguish between their subscriber submitted family trees and the records they have obtained. Information in family trees on any website must be viewed with caution. They are submitted by folks like you and me not necessarily by some expert genealogist. You frequently will see different info 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 it is accurate. A lot of people copy without verifying. The internet has been a boon for genealogy but errors have multiplied because of online family trees Good genealogy means good documentation and most are not documented and if they are they are poorly documented. Someone else's URL is not good documentation. You should look for documentation whether in an online family tree or a published book. Not all records are online. It will not all be free but the records you find on line will save you time and money. 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 draft and enlistment records and many immigration and other records. They have transcribed the records but you can view the original images. There are errors in their transcription, particularly censuses, but when you view the original you will realize you probably would have made errors if you were transcribing them. You are going to have a hard time finding information on living people on genealogy sites. That is considered an invasion of privacy and can lead to identity theft. Here is a link with links to many websites, some free and some not free. http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.htm
2. Shirley T is correct: many of the user-submitted are full of inaccuracies, which is why you are the only one who has a good chance of telling which ones are accurate. On ancestry com, one person claimed some of my ancestors were born in New York, back in the 1580s! But, hey, my maternal grandmother's birth certificate has errors on it, as does her tombstone. One must check, check, check! For me, going back to the Civil War is easy: my grandparents were born in the 1860s! Their grandparents were born in the 1760s - 1770s. Anyhew, try some, or all, of these sites: 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: http://www.searchforancestors.com/... http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739... www dot usgenweb dot com/ www dot census dot gov/ http://www.rootsweb.com/ 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.