Where can I research my family's past?

Question

I want to research my family's past, and find out what they did, and if they were of any importance. Is there a website of some sort where I could find these things out? If you don't know of anything, what should I put in the search barr on google? A great thanks to those who help.

Answer 1

ancestry.com

Answer 2

You are (I believe) thinking of your family history as a painting, and wanting one website to find it on.

Instead.. it is a jigsaw puzzle, made up of many different persons, and each person made of different facts (birth/death/marriage.. and anything in between).

The pieces are all over the place, both online and off. The challenge is to know which pieces are yours, where they will be (US? Ireland? Germany?).  

http://www.cyndislist.com/beginner.htm

Here is one place to START, and to also browse the site, to get some idea of the sites that are out there.

In the meantime.. pull out your own birth certificate, and pretend you know nothing. From that record, you will find info about you, and who are your parents. Specific and explicit records are what you use. Next, identify (with a record), who are your grandparents? (use maiden names for the ladies).  BUILD FROM THERE, BACK.  Each person will be based in differnet records (there was a time when there were no birth/death certificates.. you can use the census, wills, other items).  That is the PROCESS.  One person at a time.

I am politically incorrect. Or more experienced, take your pick. You want to use ALL sources that you possibly can think of.. not just one website. Once you realize that you need cemetery records from Kaufman county, Texas or Lincolnshire, England...NOW you know what to put in the search box of google.  

Answer 3

I agree with Ancestry.com.

Search for 'family name' genealogy

Also, there is www.USGENWEB.com.  They have a web page for every state.  There is a lot of great info for most states.

Good Luck.

Answer 4

The way I use google search is:

Put in the whole name of the person, the county they were born and the state.  You can start with something like this

John William Smith "Bastrop County" Texas

I put the county between " " because I don't want every county in Texas to come up.  If you don't find something that looks familiar, take out the middle name.  If you have a common name like John Smith, put these words like "John Smith" then try "Smith John".

I also like the search of John Smith obituary "Bastrop County" Texas if they died within 10 years or so.

A good site for you to start if you know where they lived is www.usgenweb.org.  Select the state on the left to get to the page of the county.

Good Luck and get all the information you can from your older folks while they are around.

Answer 5

I totally agree that genealogy is a puzzle.  You can't find everything you want in one place.  You need to search multiple sources to put together a better picture.  There's also the problem that not all records are alike and there might have been mistakes made in transcription.

A few sites to start with are:

www.ancestry.com

www.familysearch.org

freebmd.rootsweb.com (UK records)

automatedgenealogy.com (Canadian census)