Is there any way to......?

Question

find your EXACT families origin on the internet for free. I am having the hardest time tracing back my families heritage. None of my living relatives know either. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I dont think there are ANY sites on the internet, but you might be able to find it at your local library though!!

Hope I Helped!!! :)

Answer 2

You can access the census records from your public library.  You need to identify an ancestor who was born prior to 1930.  Maybe your granddad or great-granddad was born in 1925 for example.  Then if you look on the census for 1930 you'll be able to find him and his parents.  The census will give his parents' birth years, let's say 1895.  Then look them up in the census of 1900 and you'll find them and their parents.  You can just keep going back until the census of 1850.  The census records will also tell you which state these people were born in or if they immigrated to the U.S. it will tell you from which country.  It will also give you their occupations which is interesting.

Prior to 1850 the census only listed the head of the household and not the wife and children so then you'll have to do a more extensive research which may cost you a membership fee to join www.ancestry.com but you be able to find a great deal of information before 1840.

Answer 3

Before I paste my standard answer, a warning. No genealogy save DNA testing is EXACT. To take an extreme example, if a childless settler and his wife found an orphan baby boy whose parents had been eaten by a bear / killed by Indians / fallen off a cliff / etc., and raised him as their own, never telling him the true facts, he would go through life thinking they were his parents. (This assumes they were not Danish settlers in South Africa and his parents were not Zulus.) Every scrap of evidence - census, marriage license, death certificate - that you find would have them as his parents. Birth certificates came into use in 1880 - 1920, depending on the state.

Here is the standard answer.

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 link.

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

Yahoo! now limits answers to 10 links. The link above goes to a page with 12 links to huge, free genealogy sites. It tells you a little bit about each one and gives you some tips on how to use it. Here are the top 3 from those 12.

http://www.cyndislist.com

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

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