FAMILY HISTORY?! Geanealogy FEES?

Question:I want to find out my family's history and genealogy, but every site that I visit you have to pay a fee for the services? Can I find out this information for free? Does anyone know of a site that is REALLY free?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I want to find out my family's history and genealogy, but every site that I visit you have to pay a fee for the services? Can I find out this information for free? Does anyone know of a site that is REALLY free?

My personal experience (looking at the crates of 25+ yrs of work) is that MAYBE 1/2 of the information I have, might be online at this time. The best documents or records that I have, come from courthouses, cemeteries, etc. that are 1/2 way across the country, and for the most part, those records are not now online, nor will they ever be. This does not include anything such as family Bibles, that are not public records, but remain 'owned' by family members. Most American families started at the eastern side of the country, and migrated to the west. Meaning, to access local court records, it involves travel to where the records are.
In the first part of your research, you will require either family knowledge, or birth/death certificates that you can order. These are not normally online, except for rare exceptions. An index like the social security death index is free.. it will tell you the name, birth and death date and location. What it does NOT have is the certificate itself, that shows the name of the parents, location of burial, etc.
IF you are in the US, every county has a volunteer site through US genweb, which has county based records. The amount of records varies on what has been submitted by persons who donate their time to transcribe records, such as marriages, census (sometimes), etc. These sites generally don't tell you who your ancestors ARE... you still have to know enough about your family to read through the info and recognize what you need.
There are thousands of free sites. www.cyndislist.com is a site that has nothing but a list of different genealogy resources, which she has collected for over 10 yrs. For the most part, these are like the county sites. They are not family "trees" but information. You still need to learn what it is they offer, and how it applies to putting your family together.
You may or may not find your ancestors online. There is work involved in knowing how to find genealogy sites, and other sites that say nothing at all about "genealogy" but still have pieces of your history there.
Many persons like the LDS website. What you see online is a tiny fraction of what they have. The bulk of their info is in microfilms of original records, including court records. Those films are NOT online. Their submitted genealogies (from church members) are subject to the same errors you find anywhere else. I worked as a volunteer at one of their libraries.. I know this from experience.
I didn't subscribe to a fee based service until last month, and have researched over 25 yrs. Ancestry.com offers ALL US census records, which is worth the cost... or, as mentioned, you may be able to do that from your local library. Depends on the size of your town. At one time, I lived in a rural area, and town was 20 miles away..and it was a small town at that.
With all respect.. there is a HUGE difference between finding what is online, on ANY site, and fully researching your family's history. It all depends on what you want, and the effort you are willing to invest.

www.familysearch.org Absolutely 100% free and excellent as well.

The quality of sites depends on the countries where you're researching, the years, the region and the religious beliefs of the people you're researching. Independent Baptists from the mountains of Tennessee fall off the face of the earth pre-1880. French-Canadian Catholics from Quebec can be researched at your local library for free...and in 3 days of hard writing you'll have the entire tree back to 1580.

If you really want to do GREAT research for free, don't try to do it from home. Someone had to do a lot of work to put together the "great sites"...and that's why they charge. If you want the secret, it's that your local library pays for public use subscriptions and you can save $450/year in site fees by using the library's free access computers.

yes type in family history you will see mormon latter day of saint which is free i had some really good luck there

rootsweb.com
Cyndislist.com

You gotta use more than the internet.

Actually, don't take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on ANY website, free or paid. The information is user submitted and mostly not documented or poorly documented. Even if you see the same information by many different submitters that is no guarantee it is correct.
A lot of people copy without verifying.

Go to the library and look up census records, they're a real good place to start

The Mormons give an excellent service, free, no better place to go.