Family Trees?

Question:

Family Trees?

Where is the best place for me to find information regarding my family tree. Are there any free sites out there?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Wendy is right in that there is some canned research offered in some of the pay sites; however, there are also records available transcribed from primary sources not available anywhere else on the internet. I've been a member of Ancestry.com for a while now and they offer digital images of all of the censuses and they are indexed which makes it much easier to search. Any old school genealogist will tell you that in order to search the census on the microfilms, you must look up the person first on one roll organized by soundex code, then from the information you glean on the first roll, you can go to the second toll and pull the actual census. Besides having to go to two census rolls you have the issue of the name being spelled so wrong that it isn't even the same soundex code anymore. There are people I was never able to find in the census using the microfilms that I was able to find after subscribing to ancestry because I was able to "tweek" the names and the locations. It has totally revolutionized the census.

Another thing about Ancestry.com is that they are adding new records all the time. They have added copies of the World War I draft cards in the last year and they have digital copies of Newspapers as well.

I pay under $100 a year to access these records and when you average the cost across 12 months, the membership runs less than a membership to Netflix or any other monthly membership.

One thing to remember, genealogy is not something you will get free. There are free websites, but to do it right there will be some cost involved whether it be for vital records, copies at the library, gas to go to the libraries or cemeteries. The internet is a tool and everything you find should be evaluated individually as to its validity. The canned trees are sometimes good guidelines and can give you a direction to search in; however, with that said, you should never import one into your own tree without researching each and every entry.

There are lots of Free sites out there. I can cite a few, but it would help me to know where you a researching or what nationalities you are researching. Keep in mind this is a World wide forum for every English speaking country out there. The free sites I normally give in my standard answers are ones that can help world wide . I don't guarantee that you will find your family; however even if you just use the message boards, you have the possibility of connecting to people who are searching the same names and localities as you are researching.

Here are some that can help just about everyone.

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f... This is the webpage to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

http://searches.rootsweb.com/
This is a list of popular searchable databases on Rootsweb. There is a link to the Social Security Death index, as well as death records for California, Kentucky, Maine, and Texas. There are some international databases included too.

http://www.ellisisland.org/
If you are from the United States and know that you have ancestors that immigrated from other countries, there is a chance that Ellis Islands website could help you. You can actually look at the ships manifests on this site. It is so cool! You could even get information like how much money was in your great grandfathers pocket when he came over.

Then there are the message boards at both Genforum and Rootsweb. They have boards for surnames, counties, States, and countries. This would be a great place to post information you already know about family members and attempt to build on it. It is always wise not to post information on living family members.

http://boards.ancestry.com/default.aspx...
http://genforum.genealogy.com/

You can also look at many of the existing trees out there to see if anybody has created one including members or your families. Sometimes you get lucky, but if you find one out there, I would recommend researching the information yourself before including it in your tree.

http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/...
http://www.gencircles.com/

Wendys recommendation of Cyndislist is also a good one.