Cassey Hollinghurst: Don't expect to do it all online. Ancestry.Com isn't free but your public library might have a subscription to it you can us for free. There are ads running for Ancestry.Com. When someone finds their grandfather's WW1 draft registration card that is a good original source record. When someone finds their family in a census, that again is a good record. But when someone points to a family tree and said they found their family going back before the Civil War, that is not a good record. That is another subscriber's submission to Ancestry.Com which might be full of errors. You have to distinguish between the records they have obtained and put online and their subscriber submitted family trees. Information in family trees on ANY website must be viewed with caution. Even when you see the same information on the same people from many different subscribers that doesn't mean for one moment the information is correct. It takes one person to put in wrong ! information and nine other people to copy to wind up with 10 family trees with the same wrong information. Most of the regulars are delighted to have a good serious genealogy question as so much of the question we get are from kids wanting to know what their surname means or take a look at their picture and for us to tell them their ethnicity.Now I am not saying for one moment that Ancestry.Com has all the records for genealogy. Actually not all records will be online, but Ancestry.Com probably has more records than any other website. When I go into their website, I prefer to go under "Old Search" on a bar going across the top on the right. That way I can select specific records I want to view. They have all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They have lots of military, immigration, land and other records They have indexes to vital records of many U.S. states. . They have transcribed the records but you can view ! the original images. There are errors in their transcriptions! , particularly on censuses, but when you view the original you will have pity on the transcribers. Also there can be errors in original records. A lot depended on the informant's knowledge or the hearing of the person taking down the information. Again the census taker was trying to get a nose count and certain data required in that census year and he had no earthly idea that 100-150 years later people would be pouring over censuses trying to find their family history. That is why if you can it is good to get 3 source records for everyone in your family tree. That might not always be possible but you should try. A good source is a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church. They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City, they have the world's largest genealogical collection. Their FHCs can order microfilm for you to view at a fee of about $3. I have never had them to try and convert me nor have I heard of them! doing that to anyone else that has used their resources. Just visit their free website, FamilySearch.org, to get the hours for the general public to the nearest Mormon FHC.Also FamilySearch.org has a new pilot program where they are putting online and asking for volunteers to help the records the Mormons have. It is free. Now they have just started but I think once they have completed they just might blow all the other genealogy websites out of the water.http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.h...Don't expect to find information on the living in genealogy websites as that can be an invasion of privacy and can lead to identity theft.If you haven't don't so get as much information from living family as possible. Find out if any has any old family bibles. Ask to see and make copies of any birth, marriage and death certificates they might have. Depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage records from their church can! also yield valuable information. Interview your senior members and t! ape them if they will let you. I won't say that they won't be confused or wrong on some things. However, they will get into telling stories of bygone day you wouldn't write down but in those stories can be big clues. People who have done this state that after doing research they have gone back and listened to the tape again and heard things they didn't hear the first time around.Another thing if you run into a brick wall in your research, come back here and ask a question about it giving us as much information as you have as possible. There are people answering questions here that have resources that they frequently can help solve a problem....Show more
Carolynn Testani: you try http://onegreatfamily.eg1.us
Saran Stealy: You may be mistaking the rotating ads at the top for the input fields. Many of my students did, when I taught beginning internet genealogy at the library. Many free sites are supported by advertising, and it is targeted advertising. On genealog! y sites, the ads are often for Ancestry.com. Here are three huge free sites. If anyone sends you to Ancestry, you did something wrong.http://usgenweb.org/(Pick a state, then a county.)http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi(Fill in the name of someone born before 1900, and his birth year, using a (+/-) 5 range. Leave everything else blank. If you get 0 hits or too many, try spouse's maiden name in addition.)http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_se...(same as above - name, birth year, spouse.)You can search the resolved questions in this category only for the word "Free" and find lots of links and tips. The last time I looked there were 2,575, and at least 1500 of them were your question, phrased differently. Sometimes one or more of the top 10 paste a standard answer, sometimes we don't. We each have our favorites. If you looked at the cut-and-paste answer from each one of us, you'd see some overlap, but you'd get 40 - 50 links to huge free sites....Show m! ore
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