Where is a "free" website that I can look up my families heritage and

Question:I am interested in learning about my geneology, but I am new to this so I do not know where to start.......if anyone has any information, I would really appreciate it! Thanks!!!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am interested in learning about my geneology, but I am new to this so I do not know where to start.......if anyone has any information, I would really appreciate it! Thanks!!!

Here is what everyone else said, more or less, but mine has more links.

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. The fact you have to do research stops nine out of ten teens and many adults.

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. Or, better yet, delete it and ask again, this time putting inthe 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.

simply go to ancestory.com

The first rule is to forget any ideas you might have about "free". The same applies to the words "quick" and "easy". It just doesn't work like that.

Most people who read this section of Y/A have been at this hobby for many years - some well before the internet came along so they had to do all their work the hard way. Not so long ago, if you wanted to search the census you spent hours or days hunched over a microfilm reader in some far-flung corner of the country. These days, you just click on ancestry.co.uk pay a few pounds for some PPV credits and you can do the same thing in five seconds flat. It's not free, but it is a lot easier than it used to be. Many other websites work the same way - the stuff that you used to have to travel hundreds of miles for is now online in many cases, but people have to be paid to index and transcribe these indexes, so almost without exception, all of the decent family history sites are commercial enterprises. Ordering birth marriage and death certificates is not free either.

There are plenty of useful sites out there which are free, but don't expect to find everything online and don't expect not to expand a huge sum of money in the process. I've spent well into four figures, and that's just in three years and is probably rather conservative at that.

The place to start is with yourself and work backwards and see where your research takes you. Don't expect that just because your surname is Drake that you might be related to Sir Francis. At these early stages people like parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles are the people to ask, and see how far "living memory" takes you. You certainly want to be asking elderly relatives about the family while they are still around and lucid enough to answer your questions. At some point you'll come unstuck, probably sometime in the early 20thC, and this is when you'll have to start purchasing birth marriage and death certificates to advance any further. This is when the hobby starts to get very expensive indeed. It's also when most people start to give up and become disillusioned.

There's always a chance that some distant great aunt has already done your tree and put it online somewhere. Googling your name can sometimes produce results, or else try registering at genesreunited and seeing if there are any matches among distant cousins, but to my mind this is cheating. If you're not going to do the work yourself then why bother?

here there is a collection of free Genealogy Search Engines
It may help as a beginner
http://www.ancestorhunt.com/

Do as Mental Mickey said, start with your family first. See if any has any old family bibles. Your public library might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can use.
Ancestry.Com has lots of records. 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.

Now, just don't take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on any website, free or paid. The information is user submitted, mostly not documented or poorly documented. Even if 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 as CLUES as to where to get the documentation. Documentation is very important.

A Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church has records on people all over the world and is free to use.
Just find out their hours for the general public. In Salt Lake City, they have the world's largest genealogical collection and their Family History Centers can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee.

Rootsweb and FamilySearch.org are 2 good free sites. They give instructions on the "how to" of genealogy.

I have never had them to try and convert me or send their missionaries by to ring my doorbell. I haven't heard of them doing that to anyone else either.

This question is asked about half a dozen times a day. Look up resolved Yahoo answers on the subject.

http://www.cyndislist.com/beginner.htm
This site has the largest collection of resources and tips for any research.
From my experience, my suggestion is to shift thinking from your "family" and think in terms of ancestors. Just from the easiest perspecitive.. you have 4 grandparents. Each of those persons are unique.. and the facts and history for each of them will be independent. There are thousands of places online where you can and will find information ... you limit yourself, in thinking of "one best" place. If you were able to do that (which normally you cannot), you completely miss the process and the fun/ challenge of finding who Grandma's parents were, or where Grandpa's relatives are buried.
Start at cyndis, to get familiar with the how to. Sit down and write down what you already know, AND what documents can you think of, to "prove" those facts? You will probably think I am silly to say "prove" what you already know. The process of "proof" using documents becomes completely clear, when you start hunting someone in 1860, that no one but you is aware of.
It's an ongoing project, not one shot. But.. that is the whole idea.

start with your grandparents and work back. The biggest mistake I made was to take family lore as the absolute truth, which might miss lead you. I always would not accept anything until I had absolute proof. Example is my mother had cousin that was bishop. Years latter I found it to be a secomd cousin. Also my uncle told me that his grandfather was in Civil War. Was not sure which grandfather. The worst thing is when your ancestors were orphans as children. That can stop you in your tracks. Mormon library and cemetery records if you have any idea were they might be. This id very hard but I was able to go back 8 generations but it took twenty years