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Question:I would like to find out who my ancestors are without paying; is there a way to do this on the internet? Thanks!


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I would like to find out who my ancestors are without paying; is there a way to do this on the internet? Thanks!

There are a few sites out there. Try genesreunited.com, ancestry.com, many have a trial period or limited functionality to get your started. If you put your info on there and let others do the paying, it's possible someone else will have done your work for you already!

Ask your older family members for all the info they have on DoB, locations, brothers, sisters, cousins etc. Every little helps!

google!!!!!!!!

You can always ask your grandmother.

In my experience, no.

Not really.

However, the Mormon Church has the worldwide geneological record and each church building has an abridged copy of it. Anybody can use it to look up their family records.

You might also try ancestory.com.

Yes. Visit Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Start there. They have millions of names in their genealogy, includes non-Mormon. Main frame computer is in Salt Lake City.

I'm not a Mormon, they got us started.

The best place for free help with that is the Mormon or LDS Church. I don't know how much they can help you but I know they can point you in the right direction.

To me... No. DNA serves best and thats far from free in todays world.
The name search is faulty because some people cheat on their spouses and some are adopted and don't know it...
DNA never lies...

You can find out a lot by going through the back door, but the best is to join the genealogy site. It's my understanding that the Mormon libraries has a lot of information. I found our lost relatives by posting on a site dealing with last names. Someone emailed me that was a relative and the rest is history. Start with just looking up your last name and see where that goes. Sometimes they have a trial period on the genealogy site that you can use to view the census reports. That is how I found the names of many of my relatives.

Go to mormon site morst site u have to pay good luck

No. It takes long, hard work at a genealogy center. I'm from NYC but traveled to Fort Wayne, IN because they have one of the best genealogy centers in the US at their main public library. They may have online assistance but I am not sure.

There is a joke in genealogy - that is not far off the truth - that is, all white people basically come from Charlemagne, and all Asian people come from Genghis Khan, while Africans come straight out of Africa. This is all true.

From a biologists, genetic standpoint, genes are passed down one-half mother/one-half father. If you exponentially derive the backwards, going back only 4 generations, DNA, within a specific ethnicity, lets take Caucasians for example, everyone from your great, great, great grandparents will all be 1st cousins, with DNA like 99.8% exact. So, everyone is basically related. This is from a PBS show on the topic.

Another thing, a reason why I will marry outside of race, is that DNA is a long, intricate pattern, and most of it is still being undertoond. But by marrying someone of your own race, you mirror inbread (in family) by 99%. It's like marrying your own cousin or brother! The difference is minimal. Yuck! Plus, you increas your child's chances for deformity all the more.

So, I say marry a different race. You offspring will then be genetically superior by sharing two fresh sets of DNA, allowing more diversification; which, after all, is the purpose of nature. And, if everyone was mixed, we can eliminate racism in the future. Just food for thought!

Happy Holidays!

You try the link below:

There are thousands of free websites. The only problem is that you'll only find something if someone else is working on your family. Then again they probably haven't documented it so its not worth a hoot.

start with your family. make copies of their birth, death, marriage certificates. Right there you saved a bunch of money. From there work your way backward.

Honestly there is nothing free about genealogy. It is an expensive hobby. But worth it.

invest in a book called unpuzzling your past by Emily Croom. Its about $20 and worth its weight in gold. She takes you step by step. She is a very well known genealogist so she knows her stuff.

You can find out a lot on the internet. There are forums, for example, where people with your surname will share information that they have. There is an amazing volunteer spirit among genealogists. People spend their spare time walking through cemeteries, writing down names and dates from tombstones. Others transcribe local birth and death records or government records like military pension information or the US Census. They create indexes can be searched electronically.

You can get pretty far with free information at places like geneaology.com or ancestry.com (which now includes the old Roots Web). The Social Security Death Index is free and pretty much freely available, but only goes back as far as Social Security Death benefits were paid out (and only applies to the USA).

Eventually, you will be tempted by the tantalizing bits of data you can glimpse for free but can only read if you are a paid member. See how far you can go before you succumb.

I suppose my grandmother thought none of us were interested in family history. She never shared much with us, but when she died, we found a mimeographed family tree for one branch of the family, a book on another branch tracing our ancestry from the 17th century, and a stack of old (some of them a century) photographs. Some of the people were identified on the back of the photos, some we figured out eventually, but some we may never know.

I posted a photo of my great-great-great grandmother and got an e-mail from a relative in St. Louis I'd never heard of. She wrote, "I have the same photo on my wall, but I had no idea who it was." It was difficult to track the woman in the photo. She was a child in Alabama during the Civil War and probably never learned to read and write. Her first name was spelled a different way every time it was written.

I posted another photo I couldn't identify, but a more direct descendant of those folks could. The mother in the family portrait died from childbirth at the age of 38, and her twins died as well.

So, start at the source. Interview the elders in your own family about your own family before they die in a car wreck, God forbid!

Holly has given you the best answer.

There are tons of websites, free and paid. However, information in family trees on any website must be taken as clues not as absolute fact. Most of the information is not documented or poorly documented. Even when you see the same information repeatedly by many different submitters that is no guarantee it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying. Use the information only as CLUES as to where to get the documentation. You might find some of your family lines. Another thing, people merge trees. If they have Family Tree Maker and a subscription to Genealogy.Com, they can merge other people's trees into theirs and then upload those trees to websites. Unfortunately, GEnealogy.Com encourages it. This means they have a lot of unverified information.

You need to check with your public library. They might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can use. Ancestry.Com has lots of records and seems 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.

A Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church has lots of 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 fee.

They won't try to convert you and they won't send their missionaries by to ring your doorbell.

Rootsweb.Com and FamilySearch.org are probably the best free sites. They have good instructions on them on how to go about genealogy.

You should get as much info from living family as possible, particularly your senior members. Tape them if they will let you. It might be they are confused on some things but what might seem to be insignificant story telling might turn out to be very significant. Us old folks like to tallk about old timey. Find out if someone has any old family bibles.

Don't get tied down too much in trying to find out info on surnames. Not everyone with the same surname are necessarily related. Anybody that tells you to google your surname doesn't know much about genealogy.

It will eventually cost. You will need vital records, birth, marriages,deaths. In the U. S., each state has its own laws as to who, when and where a person can obtain birth and death certificates. Death certificates and applications for a social security number have parent information. Also, governing bodies(state,county,city) in many states did not begin to record vital info until the first quarter of the 20th century. Even after they did a lot of people born at home or died at home did not get recorded. That is where family bibles can be helpful. Also church records, Baptisms, First Communion, Confirmation, Marriages and Deaths. In many faiths these records have parent information.

Genealogy is like any other hobby... not totally free, but you can control what you spend. Think of it like eating an elephant- one bite (person) at a time. If you just punch in your name and find your whole ancestry, you have missed out on the fun of the search.
Start with YOU- pull out your birth certificate. With some exceptions, you have just 'proved' your connection to dad and mom (and use mom's maiden name). EVERYTHING in genealogy is about proof.. don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Mistakes mean money spent on someone else's ancestry. Using solid records is how you get around "but no one remembers". Of course they don't... how would anyone remember grandpa from the 1750s? That is why you get into the habit of using historical records.
Next.. verify your parents to their parents. If they are living, you can't find them online (would you REALLY want your birth certificate out there for id thieves? ) If they are not living, you can use death certificates and birth certificates. When possible, those documents will already be somewhere in the family... if not, you'll need to order them.
WHAT DOCUMENTS or records you use are unique to the person. It won't be the same for someone in Michigan in 1943 as someone in Alabama in 1875. That's where you have to get specific and use the internet to ask "how do I find <fill in the blank> You'll find that pre vital records, you'll use things like census, wills, court records, land records, Bible records... whatever is available. There WILL BE MISTAKES, so you don't want to rely on only one record. Odds are, it could be the wrong one (grandpa was not born in Georgia, he was born in Florida).
Ancestry.com is a fee based source, but the best one for census records (a must). It is worth the fee... or you may be able to use your tax dollars at your local library.
It is an ongoing project, not a one shot deal.
My favorite collection of resources is
www.cyndislist.com (start with the beginner area).