Why can't I find ANY of my relatives on any of the genealogy sites?

Question

Thank you for your kind responses. OF COURSE they are not alive. If they were, I could just ask them. I was born in and live in the USA. My mother was Swiss. My father was a 2nd generation American:his grandfather was German and his Grandmother was Scot. My maiden name is extremely rare. I know it's useless to try and get info from the Swiss, but I cannot even find and record of my father's parents. I have their full names (including grandmother's maiden name), but no DOBs. I have tried the Morman website and all the other free ones. I hesitate to use on that charges money, because I worry that they will have no luck, either. It's like they never exsisted. Thanks again.

Answer 1

Who are  you looking for?  Maybe we can help.

Answer 2

If they are living, you WON'T find them.  It is unethical and violates privacy laws to post living people on line like that.  If you are talking about ancestors who have died, then you will need to go back to about 1900 in most cases to begin finding any one.

Answer 3

There are 400,000 free sites. Ancestry has, for a fee, the US Censuses from 1790 - 1930. The Mormons have the 1881 UK & Canada Censuses for free. Somebody or other has a load of UK censuses for a fee. If you have searched all and come up empty, you are unlucky.

Without knowing what country you are in, where your ancestors came from and when, and what sites you have tried, your question is impossible to answer. Some possibilities:

You are entering too much data in the search form

You are trying for living people

Your grandfather was stolen by gypsies in one state and sold to a childless couple in another

You are in China, India or the Philipines

You aren't using "Soundex"

You come from a long line of secret agents

Your ancestors didn't trust the Government

Your parents invented names for their parents to hide the fact they had both been found in baskets on the front steps of a church with a note "Please take care of my child". They met and fell in love in the St. Andrew's Foundling Home.

Answer 4

Could be because of different spellings, or maybe because they just aren't there on them.

You could try to start your own family tree and include them if you want to.

http://www.geni.com

Answer 5

Are your relatives alive? It is not really ethical to put living people's personal details on the internet for everyone to see.

Answer 6

Are you sure you're looking for the right information in the right place? Have you asked your family for everything they know about their parents and grandparents? Once you have a grandparent's name, you can search for their birth certificate. This will tell you THEIR parents' names.

Also consider that your ancestors may have come from abroad. Half of my family are abroad, and I've had huge difficulty tracking them down.

Someone may have changed their name, or been adopted. Don't worry though, you can normally find adoption records. My great grandfather was called Edward Joseph ________, but he went by "Joe". His kids thought Joe was his real name, so I looked for Joseph, but couldn't find a match that seemed plausible. It's only when I ordered their birth certificates that I found out his real name. Even THEY hadn't known!

Remember, in many places it's an offence to not complete a census. This means that your ancestors SHOULD be there somewhere; you just have to dig a little deeper. If you get stuck on one line, you can follow another. With every generation back, you double the amount of lines you can research - plenty to keep you busy.

And finally, remember that people here will be happy to help you look up data if they can help.

Answer 7

Sometimes the names are spelled different or spelled how they sound. I found this out the further back I went. Check the census' many of the people who took the census' back then couldn't write that well themselves and so the spelling may be off.

Answer 8

Most sites make you pay for good search results. I've tried too. It's better to look up the numbers to the public records offices in the cities and towns they lived in. Give them a call. Tell them what you're doing and they will point you in the right direction.