Hi is thier a good free website to look for ancestors in the past and relatives in the family tree?

Question

me and my mom want to find her dads side of the family for free

Answer 1

Okay, there are lots and lots of websites. Cyndi'sList.com has a ton of them.

Now when you talk about websites, there are various functions in them,  family trees submitted by its subscribers, records, in mamy cases original source records, message board and mailing list.

Information in family trees on any website, free or not free, must be viewed only as CLUES not as absolute fact.  They are subscriber submitted and mostly not documented or poorly documented.  Even when you see the same information repeatedly by many different subscribers that is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying.  Also don't expect to find living people as that is an invasion of privacy and can lead to identity theft.

Records.  I believe Ancestry.Com is the best for its 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.   They have military records, immigration records(their transcription as well as the original images),

Also, they have indexes to vital records of many states.  Your public library might have a subscription to it you can use.

Message Board and Mailing List.  Ancestry.Com, Rootsweb(free site)  and Genealogy.Com have message boards.  In additional Rootsweb has mailing list.  These are categorized under surnames and under location.  In other words if for instance the U.S., you go under U. S., then state or county.  If you put one on Rootsweb's message board it will also be on Ancestry.Com's and vice versa.  It will also show up on their mailing list.  

I have made contact with family with the location message boards.

Just don't expect it all to be online.  If someone tell you that they have found or their Aunt Gertie has found their complete family tree online, you need to tell them unless they have verified it with documentation, they don't know what they have found is accurate or not.

Answer 2

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have put links to some huge ones, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.

If you didn't mention a country, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it.

If you are in the USA,

and most of your ancestors were in the USA,

and you can get to a library or FHC with census access,

And you are white

you can get most of your ancestors who were alive in 1850 with 100 - 300 hours of research. You can only get to 1870 if you are black, sadly. Many young people stop reading here and pick another hobby.

No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.

You won't find living people on genealogy sites. You'll have to get back to people living in 1930 or so by talking to relatives, looking up obituaries and so forth.

Finally, not everything you read on the internet is true. You have to be cautious and look at people's sources. Cross-check and verify.

So much for the warnings. Here is the link.

http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html

It has links, plus tips and hints for each of these sites:



http://www.cyndislist.com

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/f...

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.c...

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.usgenweb.net

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...

http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-b...

http://find.person.superpages.com/

http://vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/d...

http://www.tedpack.org/goodpost.html

http://www.genforum.com

http://boards.ancestry.com/

http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/lis...

If you've never seen them before, you'll need the hints.