Family Genealogy/Family Medical History?!?

Question

Are there any sites that are completely and totally FREE for me to do family research?!?

Answer 1

There are lots of websites. Cyndi'sList.Com has a multitude of them listed.  

However, your public library might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com which 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 also have U.K. censuses.

Just don't take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on ANY website, free or paid. The info is submitted by folks like you and me and mostly not documented or poorly documented.  Even when you see the same information repeatedly by many different subscribers that is no guarantee it is correct.  A lot of people copy with out verifying. The information can be valuable as CLUES as to where to get the documentation.  

A Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church is free to use but you need to find out their hours for the general public.  You can call them or go on their free website FamilySearch.org.  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 Family History Centers can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee.

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 that has used their resources.

But first, if you haven't, get as much info from living family as possible, particularly your senior members. Tape them if they will let you.  It might turn out they are confused on some things but what might seem to be insignificant story telling might turn out to be very significant.  

Find out if any family members has any old family bibles. Ask to see and make copies of birth, marriage and death certificates.  Also depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation, marriage records can have very important information.

As far as medical history, you aren't going to find that online.  It is HIPAA protected.  The best way is to get death certificates on family and see if there are any patterns.  If you are in the U.S., each state has its own laws about who, when and where a person can obtain vital records.  I know in Texas if a person died between 1903-1926, they can save a lot of money ordering them from the Clayton Library in Houston.  They only charge $3 for a copy.  

Only thing, remember when you get so far back often times what you see as cause of death is probably a symptom of something else. They did not have the diagnostic equipment in past years as they have today.

For instance, I have one where the person died in 1913 and her cause of death is listed as senility and colitis.  One of my grandmother's who died in 1935 has ileocolitis.  People usually don't die just of senility.  An inflammation  of the colon and ileum probably had some cause that wasn't detected at the time.

We do find a pattern of respiratory ailments on my father's side of the family.  Right now we know it is is his maternal grandmother's line,  Both my grandmother and her mother had children by 2 marriages and children with emphysema by both marriages.  Actually recently a great granddaughter of one of my grandmother's sisters made contact with me.  Her mother died of emphysema and never smoked.  My father had 2 sisters, one died in her 30s and the other died in her 50s and had to carry an oxygen tank with her everywhere she went.  He had uncles that had it.  I have never smoked but have been exposed to second hand smoke and have some airway obstruction which requires an inhaler as needed.  So, this raises a red flag of warning for Sallie's (my great grandmother) descendants.  Don't smoke.  It can exascerbate  a problem they just might have inherited.  Apparently it goes back to Sallie's McCarthy line in Ireland. A nun named McCarthy from Ireland  that said she was related to me through Sallie's line (don't know what degree of cousin) stated the problem was in her family.