How do you look up your ansestors?

Question:on those websites that allow it, how long does it take and are any of them free?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: on those websites that allow it, how long does it take and are any of them free?

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Easiest free way to do it - construct a family tree from personal knowledge, doing back as far as you can. Then start doing searches for both sets of parents i.e. "John Smith" "Jane Doe." Hopefully, you'll get lucky and cross into someone else's research. Once you go back a while, the chances of inter-connecting are pretty good.

There are some Web sites that you no doubt can store information for free; do a simple search for family trees. Ancestry.com is really good at this, but you'll have to pay for it.

A great site you can go to is FamilySearch.org. It's run by the LDS church, which have some of the largest genaeological archives in the world. And yes, it's absolutely free. I strongly suggest you check it out, it would be a great place for you to do some research and see what you can find. Did I mention it's free? :-)

You can usually start with the name of your grandparents and where they lived. Proof or documentation that you need are birth, death, and marriage certificates and also the census. Once you get them down then go on to their parents. Some of the sites that are helpful are: www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/
www.ancestry.com
www.rootsweb.com
www.usgenweb.net
www.ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-b
You can also send for vital records through each state or the county that your ancestors lived in.

Start by asking your parents for the full names of your grandparents; be sure to ask for the maiden name of your grandmothers.
Then ask your grandparents for information on their parents. If you have any great aunts and/or uncles, ask them.

Chances are, someone in your family has already started a family history search.

ancestry.com offers a free 14 day guest membership. If you use that site, print all of the info you find, everyday, so you will have a paper copy for reference later, should you decide to not join as a member.

Local genealogy groups, occasionally, offer free beginner classes. Local libraries have self-help books to get you started, as well as, published family histories of many local families.

It's you can collect 4 or 5 generations on your own, it will be easier to do a search on any of the genealogy sites.

Good hunting!!

Some of the sites are free and I find that if you start with your grandparents or gr-grandparents (someone born 1929 or before) you can usually get a good start. First you want to ask everyone in your family about all names, dates (birth, death, marriages) and places of persons that are in your family and write this down. If you start with the oldest person they remember and location you can usually go backwards and find your ancestry. I personally always start with myself, my parents, my grandparents, etc. and work backwards that way.

The amount of time depends upon you and how much info you want to find.

http://www.usgenweb.org is one I always suggest you start with and go to the state and county where your grandparents, gr-grandparents or parents were from and do a search on that surname and see if anyone else is researching it, or if they have any census, birth, death or marriages listed for that county and your surnames.

http://www.ancestry.com is the one I use most often, but then I treat myself each year to a yearly membership since I have been doing genealogy for over 50yrs - but they do offer search that can help you get started that doesn't cost anything (for instance you can put in your surname and state where you know they lived and it will allow you to see the various Social Security Death index names and you may find a grandparent who has died to find out their birthdate and date of death (a start) and where they got their social security card (usually birth state, but not always). They also have some other "freebies" - just look at results and see if it is "locked" or just shows a sheet of paper - the paper tells you it is usually free. There is a tab at top also for family histories and some of these are free - see if anyone else has your family tree started. Ancestry and I believe the LDS websites offer a 14day free trial too - but you need to give them a credit card to start (they won't charge it until after the 14days are up -- so you MUST tell them to cancel before the 14 days; but in the meantime you can do searches free of charge.

Indy had great list of research websites - use them and see what they offer. Sometimes they will have "specials" through the year and you can research their entire site or just a section for x number of days.

If you are totally confused, write me and I will help you get a start (no cost) - not something I usually offer to persons, but I love helping a newbie begin finding their "roots" jmurphy@erinet.com

Oh -- when you start it is names, dates, places and this is the skeletal structure of your family tree.

Later on you want to "put meat on them thar bones" by going into wills, newspapers, court records, family tales, old letters, photographs, military information, etc. to put more info (the flesh on the bones) about each person in -- this way you actually make the person "come alive". I take a tape recorder with me to old relatives and start talking - they NEVER know anything but when you start asking about this person and that person - wow -- what great stories I have gotten from them!!! Just remember that EVERYONE has American Indian in their family line and you have to PROVE it (and most families cannot do it or so distant not even a blood line from them) and everyone has tales that sometimes don't end up being true and you find the differing truth in documents.

Have fun - that is the main thing.

> how long does it take?

You should be able to trace 75% of your lines in the USA back to people living in 1850, if you have census access, in 200 - 300 hours. How many days, months or years that is depends. Someone who does it 2 hours every Saturday on dial-up will be slower than someone who has a cable modem, a chair with a relief tube and nothing else to do for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.

>are any of them free?

About 400,000 of them. Links to some not mentioned in the answers above are in the resolved questions.

The only way you can find any of your family online is if someone has submitted to a website. However, you cannot take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on ANY website, free or paid. The information is subscriber submitted and mostly not documented or poorly documented. You might see different info on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will see repeatedly the same info on the same people from different subscribers. That is no guarantee it is correct. A lot of people copy with out verifying. There are errors in family trees on the internet.

If you know someone who said their Aunt Sallie found their family tree on the internet,you should tell that person unless she has verified the information she doesn't know what she has is accurate or not.

I believe Ancestry.Com is the best for its records. It has all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They have U. K. censuses also. They have immigration records. It isn't free but your public library might have a subscription to it you can use.

Cyndi'sList.com is a website that gives a multitude of websites, free and paid. You might also visit it.