Heritage Album

family tree websites???

does anyone know of any good free websites for tracing a family tree?

Public Comments

1. Your public libraries 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. Another free online resource is U.S. GenWeb at: http://www.usgenweb.org/ they have a page for every state and everything is free. Then there is Rootsweb at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/, a free site hosted by Ancestry.com where you can search for surnames and leave queries on the message boards. Additionally, 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: http://www.familysearch.org/. 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 at http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinear… Also, do not forget to check Cyndi’s List at http://www.cyndislist.com, which has many links for both free and paid sites. I’m sure I could come up with many more websites but these should keep you busy for a while and there should be lots of family history to be found for free with all these websites.
2. If any of your ancestors were from Ireland, the Irish Census for 1911 in on line at www.census.nationalarchives.ie unlike the UK Census for that year, it is free to view and you can also view the orginal documents
3. rootsweb.com ancestry.com - really good has most of the unaccesable records and you can even meet people who have the same relatives as you who can help you continue youre tree familysearch.org- the best free site as it has over 11000 records of everyone nearly lol emerald ancestors if you have any ulster scots surnames which most americans have www.censusireland.ie as someone recommendde but it can only tell you who the person is living with and you will need to knw were your particular relatives live, helped me a bit. thx owen.
4. Personally I prefer Heritage Quest, it is the site that most libraries use. The Familysearch.org is also excellent, if you understand how to do research and how to document your findings to have accurate information. Ancestry.com included a lot of family trees, however, it has been my experience that many of them are simply copies of other trees already on the site and they have little or not source documentation, so you cannot verify the information is correct and actually connect with you lineage. I would suggest that if you are serious about your family tree that you get information on how to do the research yourself. Contact your local Family History Center, Genealogy Society, History Society or public library they can all help you learn how this is really done.
5. The best one is the Church of the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City. They have millions and millions of records stored in the Salt Mines. Its a really good free site.
6. There are many good free genealogy websites, but it is best if you can get back about 100 years first from family knowledge as you should not find details of living people online. So talk to all your relatives, ask to see old photographs, records of birth, baptism, death and marriage, family Bibles, funeral service sheets, etc, and make copies. Find out where all your deceased relatives are buried, visit the graves, transcribe the information on the gravestones and take photographs. If you don't know where people are buried or are unable to visit the graves, you may find them on www.findagrave.com Too many of us family historians regret not questioning the oldies closely before they popped their clogs, so get all the names, dates and places you can and then check these against the official records. Then work back one generation at a time, using birth/baptism, death/burial and marriage records, and the census. The national indexes of birth, marriage and death up to about 1930 can be searched at freebmd. Civil registration was introduced in England and Wales on 1st July 1837, although registration of births was not compulsory until 1875. http://freebmd.org.uk Some local registration offices are putting their indexes online at http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ The census returns for England and Wales from 1841 to 1911 are held at the National Archives at Kew and you can access the census images and transcriptions via the links on their website:- http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census/default.htm?WT.hp=Census Only the 1881 census is available free online - all the others are on paid sites although you can consult the indexes for free. Volunteers are busy transcribing the other censuses to make them freely available and this site has completed some counties for some years:- http://www.freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl On the free LDS site you can search the 1881 census, and the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which is a large collection of extracts from parish registers. You can search many more records on microfilm or fiche at your local LDS Family History Centre - find out where the nearest one is from their website. You can also download the family history program Personal Ancestral File (PAF) for free. http://www.familysearch.org These two free sites are in process of putting parish registers online:- http://onlineparishclerks.org.uk/ http://www.freereg.org.uk You might like to search the free World Connect project to see if anyone has already done research on your ancestors (view these trees with caution as much of the 'research' is suspect - verify anything you find online by consulting the original records before incorporating the data into your family tree):- http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ If you want more, these are directories of genealogical resources with links to websites, some of which will be free:- http://www.genuki.org.uk/ http://www.cyndislist.com/ www.worldgenweb.com Genuki has a page for each county where you can locate the County Record Office where the parish records will be held, and other resources for that county. I assumed you wanted UK sites as you asked this on Y!A UK & Ireland, but if you want sites for a different country, just tell us.