I want to know my genealogy (any good sites)?

Question:

I want to know my genealogy (any good sites)?

Is there any sites where you give your name and it shows your parents, grandparent, etc.?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: While the majority of answers you received point you to good genealogy resources, they don't answer your direct question.

No, you can't just type in your own name and have your parents, grandparents, etc all show up. The reason is that genealogy sites are careful to avoid revealing personal information about the living. Imagine how many times you've been asked to use your father's middle name or your mother's maiden name as a security question. Then if someone posted your family tree online, both pieces of information would be sitting on the internet for any identity thief to grab and misuse.

To trace your family, you need to talk to your living relatives to find the names, dates/places of birth/marriage/death for their parents/grandparents/great-gra... Then you start with public records, like birth certificates and death certificates, to verify the info is correct (nothing worse than working with Aunt Lois' bad memory for dates and finding out you're off by 5 years and she confused grandpa's birthday with her father-in-law's birthday).

Once you have the basic information organized, you start plugging in the names/dates/places in sites like Heritage Quest or Ancestry.com at your local library where you get the most massive amount of information for free. The library pays the membership, you just get a library card.

There are other places that people will suggest you use, but there's a caveat...don't trust the accuracy of the information. The Mormon's do a wonderful job of gathering information, but they don't do any fact-checking. They just post what other people give them. Errors are HUGE. People make major leaps in logic by grabbing anyone with the right name and assuming that's the person they're looking for...but not a shred of proof about it. The same is true of any family tree that you find already done. It's good for a place to work from, but you have to literally verify every last person on there for accuracy.