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Position:Home>Genealogy> Is there a totally free website for tracing family history (family tree)?Question:there are thousands of free sites online that can help you find your ancestry. www.cyndislist.com is a website of nothing BUT genealogical sources, including a great section for how to start, and myths/scams to avoid. The for =fee sites can (and do) have some value, depending on what you need. It is very convenient to have certain things (like census records) accessible while you are at home in the middle of the night. You can often access their service through your library at no "cost", but it means going on their schedule and paying for things like gas (or childcare). Thousands of sites have historical information which might include, for example, a biography of your ancestor. It might not even be labeled as a genealogy site, per se. Newspapers are another source of info... but they would show up as a newspaper. The trick is in your expectation.. if you want a pre packaged family history (done by someone else, and no guarantee of accuracy), then you stick to the widely advertised places. One idea to think about... people traced family history long before the internet. Your goal is to think about the types of records that were used (court records, wills, Bibles, census, etc) that were all accessible, but not online. Most people had never heard of a modem, much less a gedcom (genealogy file). Now, there are many online sites, competing for your attention, upload your research, "we are the biggest/best". In order to compare, and know which is valuable, you need to know what you are getting and why. That's just being a wise consumer. Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: there are thousands of free sites online that can help you find your ancestry. www.cyndislist.com is a website of nothing BUT genealogical sources, including a great section for how to start, and myths/scams to avoid. The for =fee sites can (and do) have some value, depending on what you need. It is very convenient to have certain things (like census records) accessible while you are at home in the middle of the night. You can often access their service through your library at no "cost", but it means going on their schedule and paying for things like gas (or childcare). Thousands of sites have historical information which might include, for example, a biography of your ancestor. It might not even be labeled as a genealogy site, per se. Newspapers are another source of info... but they would show up as a newspaper. The trick is in your expectation.. if you want a pre packaged family history (done by someone else, and no guarantee of accuracy), then you stick to the widely advertised places. One idea to think about... people traced family history long before the internet. Your goal is to think about the types of records that were used (court records, wills, Bibles, census, etc) that were all accessible, but not online. Most people had never heard of a modem, much less a gedcom (genealogy file). Now, there are many online sites, competing for your attention, upload your research, "we are the biggest/best". In order to compare, and know which is valuable, you need to know what you are getting and why. That's just being a wise consumer. wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi The above website lets you go straight to a section for submitting a person's name whether you know anything but the surname and given name is helpful also and spouse's name. If your person is within rootsweb.com then you will find various persons with those names and you can click on them. It's easiest to click on a name first, then click on "register" and that opens up all info on the person for which you search. Just be very very careful about taking as fact everything you see in family trees on any website, free or paid. The information is user submitted and most is not documented. There are errors in trees on the internet. Even when you see the same information repeatedly by many different submitters on the same person, you can't say,"Aha, it must be true since all these people have the same information." There, unfortunately are a lot of people copying without verifying. Use the information as clues as to where to get the documentation. |