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Position:Home>Genealogy> Is there a free site that I can find out who my ancestors were and where they liQuestion:It just hit me who mught be my ancestors is there a free and simple site that can help you find your ancestors Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: It just hit me who mught be my ancestors is there a free and simple site that can help you find your ancestors http://genealogy.about.com/cs/free_genea... http://www.squidoo.com/free-genealogy-we... http://www.accessgenealogy.com/ http://www.rootsweb.com/ - don't put your name where it says Search ancestry.com because that is a pay site, everything else is free on that site - there are many groups/mailing lists/boards you can join - family name groups/mailing lists/boards or location groups where your ancestors came from - rootsweb is a pretty good site google your family name also - see what comes up good luck - it becomes addictive also, in the search box above your question, you can type in genealogy and see what comes up for other askers No, not really...the sites will tell you a little, but the real answers are going to require some money. This is a text file I paste to questions like yours. People ask similar questions 3 - 14 times a day here. You get a long, detailed answer, I don't get finger cramps. It is long because there are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. It is also long because researching your family tree is as hard as writing a term paper in a History class. You don't have to be a rocket scientist, but you won't do it with five clicks. I could tell you everything I know in 30 minutes, but not 3. If you didn't mention a country, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it. If you are not, please edit your question to add a country. Genealogists from the UK answer posts here too. They are more experienced and more intelligent than I am. I'm better looking and my jokes are better. The really good stuff is in your parents' and grandparents' memories. No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late. You won't find living people on genealogy sites. Don't look for yourself or your parents. So much for the warnings. Here are some links. These are large and free. Many of them have subtle ads for Ancestry.com in them - ads that ask for a name, then offer a trial subscription. Watch out for those advertisements. If you try the links and don't find anyone, go to http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html It repeats each link, but it has a whole paragraph of tips and instructions for each one. http://www.cyndislist.com Cyndi's List has over 250,000 sites. http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/f... The Mormon's mega-site. http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.c... RootsWeb World Connect. The links at the top are advertisements. They mislead beginners. Ignore them and scroll down. http://www.rootsweb.com/ RootsWeb Home. This is the biggest free (genealogy) site in the world. http://www.ancestry.com Ancestry has some free data and some you have to pay for. http://www.usgenweb.net US Gen Web. Click on a state. Find a link that says "County". http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa... Surname meanings and origins, one of Ancestry's free pages. http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-b... Social Security Death Index. Click on "Advanced". Women are under their married names. They are under their maiden names in most other sites. http://find.person.superpages.com/ USA Phone book, for looking up distant cousins. http://vitals.rootsweb.com/ca/death/sear... California Death Index, 1940 - 1997. http://www.genforum.com GenForum has surname, state and county boards. http://boards.ancestry.com/ Ancestry has surname, state and county boards too. They are free. Read http://www.tedpack.org/goodpost.html before you post on either one. Read the paragraphs about query boards on http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html before you search them. http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/lis... Roots Web Mailing List Archives. Read http://www.tedpack.org/maillist.html if genealogy mailing lists are new to you. Off the Internet, some public libraries have census image subscriptions. Many Family History Centers do too. FHC's are small rooms in Mormon churches. They welcome anyone interested in genealogy, not just fellow Mormons. They have resources on CD's and volunteers who are friendly. They don't try to convert you; in fact, they don't mention their religion unless you ask a question about it. There is no magic website. You can't just put your name in and out pop your relatives. You have to do the research just like the rest of us. Start with yourself, then your parents and your grandparents and so on. That is the only way you are going to find out your relatives. Get a book called unpuzzling your past by Emily Croom. She will take you step by step. If you want an accurate family tree, you can't take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on any website, free or paid. The information is submitted by folks like you and me and mostly not documented. You might see different information from different submitters on the same people. Then you will see repeatedly the same information on the same people from different submitters and no documentation. A lot of people are copying without verifying. The information must be used as clues as to where to get the documentation. Two good resources. 1. Your public library. Check out their genealogy section and see what all they have. They might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can utilize. Ancestry.Com has lots of records and seem to be getting more all the time. 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 also. 2. Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church. They have lots of records on people all over the world, not just on Mormon. 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 very nominal fee. They have never tried to convert me or have they sent their missionaries by to ring my doorbell. I have never heard of them to that to anyone else either that has used their resources. Now, no way are all records on line or at your library or at a Family History Center. You will have to do some digging, getting birth,marriage, death records, baptismal records etc., wills, deeds. Free sites: there are several to choose from. Start with: http://www.searchforancestors.com/... http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739... http://www.usgenweb.com/ http://www.census.gov/ http://www.rootsweb.com/ http://www.ukgenweb.com/ http://www.archives.gov/ http://www.familysearch.org/ http://www.accessgenealogy.com/... http://www.cyndislist.com/ Assuming they emigrated from Europe, start with Ellis Island and the Battery Conservancy sites: http://www.ellisisland.org http://www.castlegarden.org For Scotland, check: http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/ For ship’s passenger lists, try: http://www.immigrantships.net/ www.cyndislist.com/ships.htm www.geocities.com/Heartland/5978/Emigr... www.immigrantstips.net/ www.searchforancestors.com/passengerli... www.archives.gov/genealogy/immigration... For those with native American ancestry, try: http://www.tribalpages.com/ For a fee, try a DNA test: When you really want to know where your ancestors came from, try such sites as: www.familytreedna.com, dnatribes.com, dnaancestryproject.com, and, of course, the National Geographics Genotype program, https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/geno... For Jewish ancestry, try: www.israelgenealogy.com For people from India, try: http://www.fibis.org/ Have a look at these sites these are South African ones, http://genealogy.about.com/od/south_afri... http://www.rupert.net/~lkool/page2.html.... http://www.jewishgen.org/safrica/website... http://southafricanfamilyhistory.wordpre... Meaning of names: http://www.winslowtree.com/surname-meani... http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f... Here are some general sites with lists of African names: http://www.swagga.com/fname.htm http://www.behindthename.com/nmc/afr.php http://www.familiesonlinemagazine.com/ba... http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/... Military: www.military.com http://www.familymilitaryrecords.com/ http://www.archives.gov/veterans/militar... http://websearch.about.com/od/peoplesear... http://genealogy.about.com/b/2007/05/24/... http://userdb.rootsweb.com/ww1/draft/sea... Finding live people: Two good places I use are www.zabasearch.com and www.peoplefinder.com Don't forget, use your local library. Ours (a small one, yet) has www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com, as well as periodicals, books and guidance from an experienced genealogist. Keep good notes on where you find what: sources are very important. I became interested in genealogy when I was a small lad, before I started to school, as my Mom would tell me about her parents, my Dad's parents, and on back. That is also when I first got used to the idea of "the power of 2": You have 2 parents, they each have 2 parents, and so on. 5 generations ago, you would have had 16 g-g-g-grandparents; by 10 generations ago, the number would be 512 "grandparents"; by 35 generations ago, the number is 16,179,869,184 persons (compared to a total of 6,700,000,000 people alive on Planet Earth today). In other words, basically every one on earth can trace their COMMON ancestry back to within the last 34 generations! (Or, since Medieval Times.) Good luck! www.nationalobituaryarchive.com http://www.obitcentral.com/obitsearch/ http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/ http://zip.langenberg.com/ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/w2welc... http://www.tedpack.org/obit.html http://www.newspaperarchive.com/ http://ancestryresearchsitereviews.blogs... http://www.search-background.com http://www.birthdatabase.com/ http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-o... peoplesearch.com smartpages.com. to get to US Search http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-o... Two good places I use are www.zabasearch.com and www.peoplefinder.com http://www.ancestry.com/facts/-name-mean... http://www.netsleuth.com/ http://affiliates.reunion.com/ads/ads/la... http://www.peoplelookup.com/people-searc... http://people.yahoo.com/ http://www.addresses.com/ http://websearch.about.com/od/wendyssear... http://www.anywho.com/ http://www.zabasearch.com/ http://www.whowhere.com/ http://www.nola.com/forums/searching/ind... http://www.77investigators.com/messagebo... http://www.voy.com/48081/ http://messages.yahoo.com/ http://www.angelfire.com/va3/search/Mess... Good luck! |