Whats the best way of tracing your family tree for free?

Question:

Whats the best way of tracing your family tree for free?

Any ideas? i dont want to spend much money, hopefully none,but id like to find at least a little about my family

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: First ask the oldest person in your family all they know - Names, dates and places of marriages, births and deaths of their parents, siblings, grandparents etc. Probe their memories for any stories they have of them. Ask to see old photos. Find out what the occupations and places of birth of their ancestors were as this will help with further research.
Find out if cousins and second cousins have done any research or you will be going over ground they have already covered.
Then load these details on to Genes reunited for which you will have to pay only ￡10 a year and fingers crossed someones tree will match up with yours.
It is unlikely that you can go a long way back without paying something, at some stage you will have to pay for a birth or marriage certificate to get further back, I think these are ￡8 each.
You can look at local censuses from 1901 back to 1841 (intervals of 10 years) at the library on microfilm, for free. I'm not sure if there are free internet sites with these census details on.
Good luck!

Edit - I have just looked at this site
http://www.freecen.org.uk/
They will eventually have all censuses in the UK covered to view for free, but at the moment it is very patchy. It is worth a try though when you have the info from your elderly relatives. I'd like to know that myself . Best thing to do is to start with your living family members. Get as much information from them as possible, particularly your senior member. It might turn out that they are confused on some things, but what might seem to be insignificant ramblings and story telling might be very important. So, tape them if they will let you.

Go to your public library and find out what they have. They might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com which has lots of records.
They have all the U. S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 is not available to the public yet.

Now, information seen in family trees on any website, free or paid, must not be taken as fact. They are submitted by folks like you and me. Most of the information is not documented. You might see different information on the same person. But then you will see repeatedly the same information on the same person by different people without documentation. That usually means foolish people are copying without verifying.

It is important to document.

Call your nearest Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church and find out if they have a Family History Center. 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 Family History Centers can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal cost.

They do not bring up their religion. I have never had them to send their missionaries by to ring my doorbell. They are just very nice and helpful people.

Do not get too involved in trying to find the origin or nationality of a surname. The same surname can come from more than one nationality and not everyone with the same surname is necessarily related.

There will eventually be costs. You need to get Death Certificates, applications for social security numbers, check courthouse records etc. Before the 20th century most vital records will be found in churches.

This is the All English Speaking Board. It is for people in the U.S, U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. My answer is assuming you are in the U. S. You no doubt will get answers from people in the U.K. They have other resources. You cannot type your name in a search engine, press a button and get a full tree, it takes time and commitment,

So to start talk to relatives older the better, see what they can tell you, then gather together family documents, certificate of Marriage, Death, Birth & Baptisim. Diarys are good family bibles are better.

using this data start to move backward through time generation by generation, Draw a rough tree just so you can see who's who. Be organised you will soon get lots of infomation and can get swamped (I did).

Names change spellings vary I have a good half dozen varients of my surname,

Keep a open mind, we cannot impose our moraliy on people who have been long dead, they like us are products of there time, and have fun, A warning though Family History is very very adictive once you start you will not want to stop.

Good luck and good hunting Jessie:
genealogy is not a cheap hobby by any means. If you're going to do it right you must document with birth, death, marriage certificates, obits and cemetery info. Those do cost.

First sit down with your family, gather what ever documents they have. Then see how much they came remember. From there check out the local LDS center and see what you find there. Also check your local library's homepage and see if they subscribe to ancestry and heritagequest. If they do, you can use heritagequest at home with your library card. You can go to the library to use ancestry for free.

One thing to remember, anything you find online is to be used only as a tool. If you find something, contact the submitter and request their documentation. There is so much bad research out there you really need to document to prove your work.

I would also suggest that you get the book unpuzzling your past by Emily Croom. It is under $20 and will take you step by step on your quest. I still use mine even after 15+ years of research.

There are a few free websites out there and you will get loads of them in your answers. Two I like are familysearch.org and rootsweb.com. Rootsweb has tons of links and you'll be surprised what you find there. Heritagequest has the census and these are really helpful.

Good luck on your quest. There are three places you can do free research, including free research on the paid sites:

1. Your local public library will almost always have a genealogy research service available on the computers in the library. Yes, you usually have to go there to do the research, but you get the full access to either HeritageQuest or Ancestry.com for free. You also get all of the newspapers that are on film (great for looking up marriages, obituaries, biographies, etc), books like "Germans to America" and "Dutch to America", local census records, maps from long ago, etc.

2. Your state's official library and the State Archives: They carry records from all over the state, including birth records, wills, immigration documents, etc. It's full of records that won't ever be on the internet.

3. The National Archives and Records Administration regional centers: They hold military service records, originals of all immigration documents, every known passenger record for the entire history of the country, every federal census, every draft notice, and every federal court proceding for your region. A week at NARA is far more powerful than a month on Ancestry.com Go to your Local LDS Family History Library and use their computers to access Ancestry.com paid site. Since they are associated you can access Ancestry's paid site for FREE.
If you want to do research on your own computer go to Ancestry.com and use their free access(limited but still of alot of use).
Also: Family Search.org
World Connect.com
RootsWeb.com(be sure and use their message boards)
These are the best of the Free sites but there are many more. Just do a Search for Free genealogy sites. No hobby is completely free, but I'd rather put my money in something personal and real.
And the best answer is (E)- ALL of the above. The more places you utilize, the better your results.
www.rootsweb.com has a guide to beginning research on it's front page, and you can't miss www.cyndislist.com (list of genelaogy resources).
And make yourself comfortable here, too.