What is my next step?

Question:I have been able to go back 100 yrs into my family tree. Other than the town in Poland where my relatives came from I know nothing of their past. Not even thier parents names. What is my next step? What site can I go to? Also is their a site that has 1930 & 1920 cenus 4 free.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I have been able to go back 100 yrs into my family tree. Other than the town in Poland where my relatives came from I know nothing of their past. Not even thier parents names. What is my next step? What site can I go to? Also is their a site that has 1930 & 1920 cenus 4 free.

The town in Poland is the crucial part!

First gather all American info you can. Death, Obit, Marriage, Citizenship, and contact the church they attended for their versions of the info. Also if you have found the ship they came on, what was it's origin? People who went through Hamburg had to register there.

It is likely that your public library will have a database subscription to Ancestry or Heritage Quest or both, there you can find all sorts of info, and search for arrival records. Their citizenship papers should say how they got to the country.

Then go to familysearch.org and find your local Family Center, after you jot that address down, check the library portion of the site and search for the town in Poland. If you hit the jackpot the name will be properly spelled and there will be microfilm of the church records from that area.

And make sure you read Polish Roots by Rosemary Chorzempa - it will give you advice and solutions for if the church of your ancestors didn't allow the Mormons to mircofilm.

Try roots .com
GL

Check with your local public library, they may subscribe to HeritageQuest or Ancestry Library Edition. Both databases have excellent genealogy resources. I am not aware of free access to census records.

Also check:
"Introduction to Genealogical Research at Clayton Library"
http://www.hpl.lib.tx.us/clayton/researc... - It's specific to Houston and Texas, but it may provide some research pointers.

Other excellent general free resources are:
www.rootsweb.com
www.cyndislist.com/
www.familysearch.org/Eng/default.asp
www.usgenweb.org/

You could try ancestry.com they have access Hundreds of records, Try the Ellis island records ( www.ellisisland.org) you might find a family line that passed through the immigration center, if you do then register with the site (it's free) you can then look at a copy of the ships manifest, that could give you a lot more details.

go to your library's homepage and see if they subscribe to heritagequest. If so you can access it at home for free. These would be the census reports your are looking for. The 1930 census you have to browse thru it. after you put in the name and hit search it will show no record. Look at the top of the page and find the word browse and click it. then you have to search thru all the names. It will take forever but maybe you will get lucky and find what you are looking for.

As far as Poland resources I'm not sure. I don't know if cyndislist would have anything or not. You might even try putting polish genealogy in google and see what it brings up. Never know until you try it.