How can i find my families history on the internet for free?

Question

My last name is MCLOUGHLIN and i want to find out about my family from long ago

Answer 1

I am trying to do my family's history for free, as well, and I have traced it back to about 1730, so far and I have only just started and I have NOT paid for a single record or spent a penny.

Try MyHeritage.com, LDS.org, EllisIsland.org, and CastleGarden.org.  If you are in the US and don't have a library card, you might want to get one because some libraries have websites to reference electronic referenced websites such as HeritageQuest.com and the US Censuses from about 1790-1930.  It also entitles you to go into the branch (if your library is set up for the internet) to access Ancestry.com.  Of course, this website is a great big help (but be careful NOT to post names in the question title because it ticks off alot of people and is against Y!A rules!)

If you aren't sure of who or where your relatives are, you might try Peopledata.com (which is a FREE website that has a listing of public records of anyone who shares your last name and lists their addresses and in some cases, even their phone numbers and shows the date of when the information was added to its list) or Zabasearch.com.  Try Googling the last name and maybe even using an alternate spelling such as McLaughlin, MacLauflin (keep in mind that when people originally migrated from whatever country, the person writing the census information or the ship manifest may have written things like names and other information incorrectly because of the difficulty of understanding the accented language dialects) on some of the websites such as LDS, Ellis Island, Castle Garden or MyHeritage.  

One other one to try is RootsWeb.com

Good Luck and happy hunting!

Answer 2

The best way is to start by asking your relatives what they remember, especially your older relatives.  Get names and dates, plus the places where people were born, married, and died, if possible.  Then start to look at census records, marriage records, and death records.  Some of these records are available, free of charge, on the internet.  You have to pay to access others.  You can write to the courthouse in the county where some of these records are kept to get copies of some of these.  It's a long, slow process, but endlessly fascinating.

Answer 3

There are several sites that would be good:

www.gencircles.com

www.familysearch.org

www.rootsweb.com (go to worldconnect link)

www.genforum.com (put in your last name to get to the right board)

www.ancestry.com

don't forget www.google.com and go to the menu at the top and choose books.

Good Luck!

Answer 4

I have searched numerous sites and not found one that at some point doesn't ask for money.  Best bet is talk start by talking to older family members.

Answer 5

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have links to some huge ones, below, 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

Then 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 main link.

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

That page has links, plus tips and hints on how to use the sites, for a dozen huge free sites. Having one link here in the answer and a dozen links on my personal site gets around two problems. First, Y!A limits us to 10 links in an answer. Second, if one or more of the links are popular, I get "We're taking a breather" when I try to post the answer. This is a bug introduced sometime in August 2008 with the "new look".

You will need the tips. Just for instance, most beginners either put too much data into the RWWC query page, or they mistake the Ancestry ads at the top for the query form. I used to teach a class on Internet Genealogy at the library. I watched the mistakes beginners made. The query forms on the sites are NOT intuitive.

Answer 6

Try---GENES UNITED.

Answer 7

These are all good answers. Let me give you a word of caution about anything you find on the internet. The work is only as good as the researcher. There is so much incorrect info out there. My suggestion is that you get a book called Unpuzzling your Past by Emily Croom and follow what she says and do the leg work yourself and document along the way. It's the only way to know that your work is correct and not someone elses error. I learned the hard way years ago that you can't believe everything you find online.

Good luck with your quest

Answer 8

I'd recommend starting at familysearch.org, because it's the only site I know of that doesn't charge for anything; often on the other sites you'll get going and then when you're getting into they say you need a subscription to continue. Also, if your family has lived nearby for a few generations, local newspapers are an awesome resource