Question Home

Position:Home>Genealogy> Which is best and easiest site to use for seaching family history. ?


Question: Which is best and easiest site to use for seaching family history!. !?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
My answer is lengthy and I apologize for that!. One thing I want to warn you about the advantages and pitfalls of internet genealogy sites!. also if you want it to be easy, you will not wind up with a very accurate family tree!.


You start with yourself and work back one generation at a time!. Now as you go back you will be in a myriad of family lines!. So work on one line and if you come to a brickwall, set it aside and work on another!.

Find out if any has any old family bibles!. Ask to see and make copies of birth, marriage and death certificates and depending on the faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage certificates from their church can yield important information!.

Get as much info from living family as possible particularly any senior members and tape them if they will let you!. People who do that state that after doing research they go back and listen to the tape again hear things they didn't hear the first time around!.

Check out the genealogy area of your public library!.

There are lots of websites!. I believe Ancestry!.Com is the best for the amount of original source records online!. They have all the U!.S!. censuses through 1930!. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet!. They have U!. K!. censuses through 1901!. They have military, land, immigration and other records!. They have indexes to vital records of many states!.

They have transcribed the records but you can view the original images!. There are errors in their transcriptions but when you view the originals you can have pity on the transcriber!.

Your public library might have a subscription to it and it would be wise to use it there until you get use to it!.

Now, a big word of caution!. Don't take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on their website or ANY website, free or fee!. They are susbscriber submitted, seldom documented or very poorly documented!. You very likely will see different info on the same people from different subscribers!. Then you will see the absolute same info on the same people from different subscribers but you would be very foolish to think that that means it is correct!. A lot of people copy without verifying!. The information can be useful as clues only as to where to get the documentation!.

I have been giving this warning for 2-1/2 years or so on this board!. Right before Christmas, boy did I ever find confirmation!. I decided to put in a name of an uncle of my grandfather to see if there were other subscribers I could contact!. The reason why, there are at least 4 different people with the absolute same name in our family!.

This uncle was married 3 times since he was widowed twice!. I found a tree and it didn't have his first wife at all but his second wife who was the sister of his first, it showed he married her in Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey!. She must have been something!. A farmer from Gonzales County, Texas went all the way to New Jersey in 1891 to marry her!.

Then I checked and I found out that me, my sister and my brother-in-law were all dead!. No dates of death given but we died in Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey!. Since the only time my sister and I were ever in New Jersey is when our family drove through it coming from New York in 1956, that means we have been dead for 52 years!.

I checked further and I found family on both my mother's and my father's side married and died in Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey!. Since my ancestry is mostly southern American colonial with some few exceptions and those exceptions entered the country through southern ports, I was very surprised!.

Now, if this tree had been submitted to any of the other genealogy websites, it would have been accepted!. You can make up an entirely fictitious family tree and it will be accepted!. Any time you disagree with something someone has posted on any of your family, the owners of the websites will tell you that that is between you and the other subscribers!.

They have 2 good programs that you can put your family tree in, the Public Member Tree and the Personal Member Tree!. If you decide to do that, they will give you hints on records that appear to match persons in your tree!. Just make sure it is the same person!. also they will give you hints from other subscribers' trees of persons in your family tree!. WATCH IT!!. Don't go adding spouses and children etc to your tree just because someone else has them!. You want a good verifiable family tree!. Too many people with onlline trees think it is very important to see how many names they can get!. The person with all the wrong info on my family had almost 150,000 names!. To get good documentation on 150,000 would cost a fortune and probably would take a lifetime!. Documentation is the meat of genealogy!.

So websites that only have family trees are not all that useful!.

A good source is a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon)Church!. 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 FHCs can order microfilm for a nominal fee!.

I have never had them to try and convert me or send their missionaries by to ring my doorbell!. I haven't heard of them doing that to anyone else that has used their resources!.
Just call the nearest Mormon Church or visit their free website, FamilySearch!.org to get their hours for the general public!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

This question continues to circulate!. There is no EASY way to "search" for family history!. With 35 years of experience I can attest to that!. There are ways to collect the history of names and some times there are genealogies that have been written, but ones that include resources (proof of facts) are few and far between!. If you are not willing to do the work and record the proof of the history you can go on line type in the Surname you want and accept what ever pops up!. Many have, which has all but make Genealogical research on-line useless!. There are a few good and dependable sites but to many sites simple repeat information from others sites that is not verified and not necessarily correct!. To many people want the famous relative, a king, a "Chief" or spare me this one an "Indian Princess" in the family!. The first to settle here were not the best and brightest of their country, they were cast-outs attempting to practice a religion that was not acceptable in England, also included in the group were people who purchased passage from the backers and a few men who were hired by the backers who had some military training!. It was a ragtag collection of people who probably shouldn't have survived any better than the settlement in Virginia had, but they did!. The only way to have your real history is to do the work and take the trip of a life time finding out where they came from, where they went and how they are part of the history of the United States!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The best is Ancestry!.com!. It is a subscription site, though!.

The easiest is Roots Web World Connect!. if you believe everything you see there, and get lucky, you can accumulate a couple of thousand individuals in your family tree in an afternoon!.
http://wc!.rootsweb!.ancestry!.com/cgi-bin/!.!.!.

Note that not everything there is true!. Just for example, the first European settlement in Ohio was Marietta, founded in 1788!. RWWC has 40,000 people born 1747 - 1787 in Ohio!. Some are Indians, some are born in Ohio County PA, but the bulk are mistakes!.

"Best" and "Easy" are usually two separate things!. It is easiest to buy your tomatoes at the supermarket!. The best ones are home-grown, eaten right there in the garden, still warm and a bit of fuzz on the skin, with just a dash of salt, a fitting reward for all of the digging, watering, and weeding you've done!.

This assumes you are a white, non-Hispanic American!. They tend to do genealogy more than others!. African Americans dead end with people alive in 1870, Hispanics dead end when they start searching in Mexico / Guatemala, Peru !. !. !.!.

Unless you put it in your question, we can't tell what country you are in!. It is the most frustrating thing Yahoo does!. It doesn't matter if you go into domestic (USA) Yahoo, Yahoo UK, Yahoo Australia, Yahoo India, etc!., all of the questions in English go into one big "pot"!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The simplest way to say it is the one with the information you're looking for!. There's no one single site that qualifies for everyone since most are based on time and place!. In fact for my own research it depends on the specific ancestor or line I'm researching!.

For example if I'm looking for a German ancestor genuki, one of my favorites, isn't going to help me!. But a site with German parish records might!. If I'm looking for an ancestor that's never moved or traveled, a passenger list isn't going to help me, but census records would be great!.

Best is a funny word!. Some sites will help more with basic BMD information, like ancestry!.com!. But some of the best (in my opinion) information I've come across has come from local town histories where I can actually get to know more about how my ancestors lived and who they were as individuals!.

Two of the resources that have been most helpful to me aren't genealogy sites at all!. 1!. My local public library and 2!. epodunk!.com!. A lot of my ancestors came from places that have changed names or been annexed into other places!. This has been invaluable to me to sort out where to go for the records!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

If you want to use a subscription site then I would say http://www!.ancestry!.com is by far the best site, but if you want to start by using the free sites then I would use these sites

http://labs!.familysearch!.org

http://www!.familysearch!.org

and

http://www!.rootsweb!.com

You need to do some back ground work on your tree before you use the sites and you cannot type in your name and get a full tree at the click of a button, it takes time but it is a lot of fun

Good luck and good huntingWww@QuestionHome@Com

Try Familysearch!.org or Free BMD, of course you want to get as much information as you can from family members firstWww@QuestionHome@Com

ancestry!.co!.uk


amazing!Www@QuestionHome@Com