Where can I find my Family Tree, and ancestors online for free?

Question

I have always been interested to see if Helen Keller ( or anyone famous) is related to me. Does anyone know a website were you can go find your family tree for free?

Answer 1

Geni.com is what I use.  Amazing site that I used to research my family history for a project I did in school.

Answer 2

You can try doing a basic online search -- for example, "Helen Keller genealogy" or "Helen Keller family tree" -- but most genealogical sites are subscription-based.  It's very time-consuming to research genealogy, and they don't want people to take advantage of their hard work for free.

Answer 3

Try www.rootsweb.com.  However, the information you are looking for may not be provable if you only rely on someone else's family tree information.

You need references to back them up, and see how they connect to your family.

Answer 4

I doubt very seriously that you are going to find your complete family tree on line.  You might find some of your family lines if someone in your family has put it on line or some of your family married into a family where one of their members put the information on line.

However, information in family trees on ANY website, free or paid, but not all be taken as absolute fact.  The information is submitted by folks like you and me and mostly is not documented or poorly documented. The people who run the websites have no way of knowing what is accurate and what isn't and really don't care.

Even when you see the same info repeatedly by many different submitters on the same persons that is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying.  If you have heard someone say their mother or their aunt or whoever found their complete family tree on line and they are related to various important people, you can tell them unless they have verified it all with records, they don't know if it is accurate or not.

If you really want to find your family tree, you have to trace it starting with yourself and working back one generation at a time and documenting everything as you go back.  Good documentation does not mean copying what someone else has posted.  

Anytime you are interested there are lots of good people on this board that can give you some great tips and advice.  Just ask.

Answer 5

At present time, genealogy research is the NUMBER ONE hobby in the entire world!  For those who say "the past is past, forget it" need to remember: you don't know who YOU ARE until you find out where you came from, and that means knowing who your ancestors were.

If you are wondering if you are related to anyone famous, the answer is an unqualified "YES !!!"  As it takes to parents to produce everyone and 2 parents to produce those parents, by the time you reach 34 generations back, it would have taken more people to produce YOU than exist upon the face of the earth today.  (In other words, people married CLOSE RELATIVES ! )

I have so many genealogy books that state the same thing.  Browse your local library and you can find some of those books.  In the meantime, I will suggest one to you:  "Mapping Human History; Discovering the Past Through Our Genes" by Steve Olson, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York & Boston, Copyright 2002.  On page 47, Olson states: "If a historical figure who lived more than 1,600 years ago had children who themselves had children, that person is almost certainly among our ancestors.  EVERYONE in the world today is most likely descended from Nefertiti (through the six daughters she had with Akhenaton), from Confucius (through the son and daughter he is said to have had), and from Julius Caesar (through his illegitimate children, not through Julia, who died in childbirth.  One need go back only a couple of millennia to connect EVERYONE alive today to a common pool of ancestors."

I am always amazed to read that some people feel that if a person claims ancestry back to the 1400s or even the 1700s that the family tree is suspect.  It is not necessarily so.   Many families, including one on my Dad's side and several on my Mom's side, kept family records generation by generation going back centuries.

Now to those websites:

The most popular hobby world wide right now is genealogy. People want to find out what their ahnentafel is (ahnentafel is a word from German basically meaning "your ancestors". In this modern world, people have lost their connections and feel lost. This is a major reason why people want to do their family trees, or their "pedigree", to have a sense of who they are.

To start with, ask all your living relatives for as much information as they can provide. Using notes, you can go to your local library and start checking. Our small town's library has a genealogy section with web connections to both www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com, periodicals, books and a volunteer to help people.

If going to the library is inconvenient, you can check these websites:

Free sites: there are several to choose from. Start with:

http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

http://www.geni.com/

There are many other genealogy websites, some of which allow a limited amount of research for free or offer a free trial (be sure to cancel or you will be charged). Cyndi's has the most links to genealogy websites, based upon origins, ship registers, etc.

Have fun and good luck!

Answer 6

You will find your family tree only if someone in your family has already created it. You can find your ancestors and create a family tree online. www.tribaljunction.com is one of the many sites which provides free information about creation of family tree. Here's the link:

www.tribaljunction.com/creating-family...