Heritage Album

What is the best free on line family tree web site?

Need to do a family tree for a homework project. Great if it loaded the names of family. Thanks

Public Comments

1. Try allfamilytree.com. The Latter Day Saints have some of the most extensive records in the world and offer them free. I'm pretty sure thats their web site.
2. Either you misunderstood the assignment or your teacher is a fool. You may print this off for him/her, if you like. Tracing your family tree is like fishing. It takes skill and practice. Asking students who have never done it before to do it is like asking someone who had never fished before to head out into the mountains with a fly rod and come back with enough trout to feed 100 people. If you are in the USA and most of your ancestors were here, an experienced genealogist could probably trace most of your ancestors back to 1850 or their arrival, whichever came first, in 100 - 300 hours. (Only back to 1870 if you are black.) That is two and a half weeks of full-time work at a minimum, for an experienced person. Asking students to do it (unless that is your only assignment for the rest of the school year, and the school will pay for your census image subscription) is ridiculous. What you CAN do is ask your grandparents who their grandparents were. If all four are alive and remember, you will have 5 generations, which should be enough for any teacher. The genealogy on the Internet is mostly about people born before 1900. You were probably born 1991 - 1997, depending on what grade you are in. That means your parents were born 1951 - 1977 and your grandparents 1911 - 1957, roughly. So, you'd have to get to your great grandparents before you'd have any hope of finding any genealogical data.
3. There is no "automatic" program that will load the names of family. The reason is obvious: there are approximately 7 billion persons alive right now, today. In all of history, they estimate the total number of persons at approximately 100 billion. Try counting to 1 billion and you will get the idea... As to "the best" site, it all depends...upon where you live, how long ago your ancestors lived (my grandparents were born before the Civil War; theirs before the Revolutionary War), if in the American Colonies, whether in New England or the South. New Englanders kept much better records than the Southerners; then the Civil War destroyed many more courthouses (and hence records) than were destroyed in the North. So, as with all of life, "It all depends". But, start with these (and please note the use of the library): 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.