Best website to find info on my family??

Question

Free websites would be most appreciated^^

i've tried ancestry.com and it didn't really help><

Answer 1

I agree with what Mickey is telling you, and can go one step more.

The idea that your ancestry is all on ANY one website, or even online.. it what messes many people up.  There are literally THOUSANDS of websites with family informaton.. the MORE YOU USE, the better off you are.  It is a ton of puzzle pieces.. ie a cemetery survey on one site, marriage records (for a single county, perhaps) on another, and so forth.  And for beginners.. the concept that most genealogy sites have HISTORICAL records (ie over 100 yrs), will confuse them.  We tend to expect more recent info online, when the fact is.. the OPPOSITE is true.

I personally think ancestry is best for census records ( in the US).  These are not submitted by other researchers, but are full copies. It does take some experience to figure out how to &quot;pull&quot; all details out of the census, as well as alert for spelling errors, indexing errors (a standard problem.. ANYONE reading an old record, is putting down their interpretation, not always what the record originally has).

No hostility intended.. define what is MOST important to you. Finding ancestry? or finding it all done for you, on a web site?  A huge number of cemeteries exist, that no one has surveyed, but that is likely where your ancestor is.. including dates for his birth/ death.

http://www.cyndislist.com/beginner.htm

As for suggested website.. cyndis is an encyclopedia of genealogy resources.. am giving you only the beginner area. Please take some time to cruise around to get familiar with the different types of sites.. and which WORK for you, is depending on what the exact circumstances may be.

I researched for years BEFORE the internet. Use your imagination as to the records that may have your family. Once you have that in mind, then start using the internet as a tool to find records (not family trees).  No one likes spending, but it is part of any hobby.  I didn&#039;t sub to ancestry until the last few months, but found tons of info with other sources.

It is ALL IN WHAT you are looking for.. and your expectations on how it may be found.

Answer 2

There is no &quot;best website&quot; for the simple reason that everyone will have a different &quot;best website&quot;. It is a simple mathematical situation: by the time you go back 33 generations, there would need to be more people on your family tree (and mine and everyone else&#039;s) than what are alive today, meaning in simple terms that everyone&#039;s ancestors married near relatives (i.e., first cousins and closer) and that everyone is related to everyone else in historical times.  

For some suggestions, try:

You should start by asking all your living relatives about family history.  Then, armed with that information, you can go to your public library and check to see if it has a genealogy department.  Most do nowadays; also, don&#039;t forget to check at community colleges, universities, etc.  Our public library has both www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com free for anyone to use (no library card required).

Another place to check out is any of the Mormon&#039;s Family History Centers.  They allow people to search for their family history (and, NO, they don&#039;t try to convert you).

A third option is one of the following websites:

http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

http://www.geni.com/

Cyndi&#039;s has the most links to genealogy websites, whether ship&#039;s passenger lists, ancestors from Africa, ancestors from the Philippines, where ever and whatever.

Of course, you may be successful by googling: &quot;john doe, born 1620, plimouth, massachusetts&quot; as an example.

Good luck and have fun!

Check out this article on five great free genealogy websites:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...

Then there is the DNA test; if you decide you want to REALLY know where your ancestors came from opt for the DNA test. Besides all the mistakes that officials commonly make, from 10% to 20% of birth certificates list the father wrong; that is, mama was doing the hanky-panky and someone else was the REAL father. That won&#039;t show up on the internet or in books; it WILL show up in DNA.

I used www.familytreedna.com which works with the National Geographics Genotype Program.

In his book, &quot;Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes&quot;, Steve Olson makes the claim that everyone alive on earth today is descended from Nefertiti, Confucius, and Julius Caesar.

Answer 3

I&#039;ve never understood why so many people on this board advise complete newbies to genealogy to dive straight in at ancestry.  Before any newcomer to the hobby does anything or subscribes to any paysites they really need to take the time out to go and buy a book on the subject.  &quot;Genealogy for Dummies&quot; might not exist, but there are plenty of reference books out there that cover the hobby from beginners to advanced and cover specialist fields and countries, because frankly, until you know how the system works in the country that you are researching, trying to dive straight in at Ancestry is a pretty stupid idea, because you wouldn&#039;t know what you were looking for if it jumped up and bit you on the nose.

The first obvious thing to point out about websites is the little problem known as the &quot;Data Protection Act&quot;, which in simple terms, means that very little information about anyone born within the last 100 years is online.  It&#039;s why you can&#039;t look at any census more recent than 1901 (UK or 1930 in the USA) and why you won&#039;t be able to bring up records like birth certificates online.  If you&#039;re trying to search for your granny born in the 1920s for example, its no wonder you&#039;re not having much luck in a random search.  You need to know how to find her entry in the national BMD indexes and how to use that information to order a certificate from the General Register Office.  Done properly, this hobby can get very expensive indeed, and if you think you can find it all out for free you will soon be in for a very nasty shock in the weeks months and years ahead.

Ancestry is the best website out there by miles - assuming that is that you know how to use it and get the best out of the resources it has.  The internet doesn&#039;t really come into its own as a resource until you get back to 1901 when the census comes into play.  If you can&#039;t get back that far through living memory by yourself then you will struggle to make much use of Ancestry in your early days of research.  It can be a difficult barrier to break, and invariably it is not cheap, and it is not something that can be done in 20 seconds flat.  Often, you&#039;ll find yourself camped out at your letterbox waiting for the postman to arrive with that certificate you ordered just to prove who grannies parents were.  It all takes time and it is a matter of knowing and understanding how the system works in your part of the world.  As I said above, invest in a book (or several books) and learn everything there is to know about family history research before trying to jump straight in online.  It is a long-term committment and shouldn&#039;t be taken lightly.  I always liken it to detective work.  You need a lot of patience to get anywhere in this game and you&#039;ll inevitably need to get subscriptions to a lot of different websites.  You&#039;ll also have use for some of the free ones as well, but as I said before, they don&#039;t really come into their own until you get back at least to 1901.  Then it is really a matter of luck.  Some local historian or group may have made available all the parish records for free online from your ancestors ancestral village.  Other people may be doing a ONS (one-name study) of your surname.  You may already have a great aunt somewhere online you has put most of your tree up at genesreunited, rootsweb or tribalpages.  Not many people are that lucky though. Invariably you have to do things the hard way.

My four grandparents are all long dead.  They were born in 1912, 1913, 1917 and 1924 respectively.  To find out who their parents were (and thus my great grandparents), I had to find and order a copy of each of their respective birth certificates which named their mother and father and then try and find a matching marriage for them before I could get back to the year of the first available census in 1901.  It wasn&#039;t easy and took a while before I got the hang of what I was doing.  That will probably be your problem too.  Trying to break down the &quot;1901 barrier&quot;.  It can be quite daunting if you don&#039;t really know what you are doing.  Take your time.  You&#039;ll have plenty of it if you do the hobby properly.

Most of the top contributors on this board have been working on their trees for years and still don&#039;t have all the answers.  I certainly don&#039;t.  But never never write off Ancestry as a resource.  Yes, I&#039;ll buy into the argument that it is overpriced, but not that it is of no use at all.  Once you find your first ancestor who was alive in the late 1800s, your tree will suddenly advance decades or centuries in a matter of hours.  But first you have to get that far yourself by traditional means, and that usually means buying the proper birth, marriage and death certificates.  And the word is BUY.  Nothing is ever truly free in this game.