Can any one give me a good website where I can safely trace my family tree without having to pay or something?

Question

Alright, so far I can trace my family tree on my father's side back to 1791, when a great-great-great-great(?) grandfather was born. He became the Postmaster General of County Kerry.

I'd like to figure out more about my ancestors, but I don't want to pay for it or to have to give personal info or stuff like that.

Thanks all who give good answers!

Answer 1

Familysearch.org is a fine place to start.  If you happen to have family in Washington State, I recommend visiting www.digitalarchives.wa.gov  It's free and allows a name or keyword search across tens of millions of documents, including marriages, birth and death records, prison and early court records, land records and photographs.  

Good luck!

Answer 2

Holly gave you correct info. Also the site referred to above that the poster said would trace your family tree might be a site that just looks up info on submitted family trees on websites and provides them to a person as their family tree.

Ancestry.Com is not free but your public library might have a subscription to it. They have 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 through 1901.  They have military and immigration records as well as indexes to vital records of many states.  They also have mailing lists and message board and you can post messages or send emails out under a surname category or a location category.

Just be careful about their family trees or family trees on ANY website, free or paid.

They are subscriber submitted (by folks like you and me) and mostly not documented or poorly documented.  You might see different info from different subscribers on the same people. Then you will see repeatedly the same info on the same people from different subscribers, but that is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying.  Use the info as CLUES as to where to get the documentation.

FamilySearch.org and Rootsweb are 2 good free sites.

Answer 3

Use this link to Ancestry Aid, a free site.The members are most helpful.

http:www.ancestryaid.co.uk/boards/

index.php?referrerid=3309

Answer 4

Yay! A genealogy question. This is exciting to me because I have been tracing my family, too!

First and foremost:

http://www.rootsweb.com

http://wwwfamilysearch.org

These are both free sites, and they are very, very helpful.

http://www.findagrave.com may also help you.

Second, you want to look into county genealogy sites, for every state and county that your family has lived in. You want to search in this order: record of death, record of marriage, record of birth. For instance, I had family in Michigan, and I found, from searching, that Shiawassee County, where they lived, had an amazing genealogy website.

Third:

Check for military records.

http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/militar...

(free!)

Fourth: Census records. Search for them by state. You can get them up until year 1940. Very helpful.

Fifth: I know that you said you did not want to pay, but you can sign up for a free trial at ancestry.com, and then cancel before they bill you. You would be suprised just how much you can find in two weeks. Also, there are so many people who have family trees on ancestry.com, and you just may have a great-great third cousin who has your tree already figured out, and online. That happened to me-- my great-great-uncles grandaughters' mother had put part of my family tree online. They also have great message boards, and so many people willing to help you for free. One lady who I didn't even know responded to my post looking for help finding my family in a census record. She went through 30 or 40 pages of online images and found them for me, just to be nice. Another woman photographed my family's graves across the country from where I live.

  You can do it for free! Remember, death records, marriage records, census records, military records.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Most websites are contributed to by other researchers. The info is only as good as the researcher and should ALWAYS be double checked and documented before taken as true and accurate.

I just received my new issue of Family Tree Magazine and they list 101 Best Websites. Worth picking up a copy.

Answer 6

familytree.com