Ambrose Mumma: There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have a page that has 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 whiteThen 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 la! te.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.htmlThat 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, expect too much accuracy, or 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 really intuitive....Show more
Clement Viscarro: Not just one but quite a few and a plan for someone looking to start a family tree.First, start by asking all your living relatives about family history and get any documents or pictures they are willing to share with you for your files. You can photocopy or scan these and return them to their owner. Your public library will most likely have both Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest.com free for anyone to use while at the library and with a library card you can use Heritage Quest at home. Ancestry and Heritage Quest both have census data and other source documents. Heritage Quest has some pension files that are very useful for family research.Another free online resource is U.S. GenWeb at: http://www.usgenweb.org/ they have a page for every state and everything is free. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention FamilySearch.org they! have many free online records and are digitizing more every day, all free. Their website is: http://www.familysearch.org/. Also, be sure to check each state that you need information from as many have independent projects, for example the state of Missouri has a great website that has many free source documents online at: http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/ and South Carolina has many free wills at: http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinear…Additionally, Cyndi’s List, one of the most well know websites in genealogy at http://www.cyndislist.com has a lot of links for both free and paid sites.I’m sure I could come up with a lot more but that should keep you busy for a while and I think your question was how to find family history for free…there should be lots of family history to be found for free with all these websites. Plus, I imagine you will start to find new websites on your own as you become a more experienced researcher and you might even find a cousin or two to share ! research ideas with....Show more
Marya Fehn: You should start by ! asking all your living relatives about family history. Then, armed with that information, you can go to your public library and check to see if it has a genealogy department. Most do nowadays; also, don't forget to check at community colleges, universities, etc. Our public library has both www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com free for anyone to use (no library card required).Another place to check out is any of the Mormon's Family History Centers. They allow people to search for their family history (and, NO, they don't try to convert you).A third option is one of the following websites:http://www.searchforancestors.com/... http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739... www dot usgenweb dot com/ www dot census dot gov/ http://www.rootsweb.com/ www dot ukgenweb dot com/ www dot archives dot gov/ http://www.familysearch.org/ http://www.accessgenealogy.com/... http://www.cyndislist.com/ www dot geni dot com/Cyndi's has the most links to genealogy websites, whether ship's pa! ssenger lists, ancestors from Africa, ancestors from the Philippines, where ever and whatever.Of course, you may be successful by googling: "john doe, born 1620, plimouth, massachusetts" as an example.Good luck and have fun!Check out this article on five great free genealogy websites:www dot associatedcontent dot com/article...Then there is the DNA test; if you decide you want to REALLY know where your ancestors came from opt for the DNA test. Besides all the mistakes that officials commonly make, from 10% to 20% of birth certificates list the father wrong; that is, mama was doing the hanky-panky and someone else was the REAL father. That won't show up on the internet or in books; it WILL show up in DNA.I used www.familytreedna.com which works with the National Geographics Genotype Program....Show more
Toshia Metzker: Many public libraries have a subscription to Ancestry.Com a person can use for free.Ancestry.com is the best for the amount of original source records o! nline. You have to distinguish between their records and their subscrib! er submitted family trees. Any website that only has family trees is not worth a plug nickel. Trees on all websites, whether free or one to which you have to pay to subscribe, are not submitted by some experts working for the websites but by folks like you and me and their are errors!!!! They are seldom documented and if they are documented, they are poorly documented. Documentation is the meat of genealogy and you must look for it whether the tree is online or in a published book. In online family trees you frequently will see different information on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will see the absolute same information on the same people from different subscribers, BUT that doesn't mean it is accurate. A lot of people copy without verifying. If you disagree with information someone has on family members, those who run the websites will tell you that is between you and the other subscriber. Believe me I found confirmation right before last Christmas w! hen I found out me, my younger sister and my brother-in-law were all dead. Actually this person had wrong information on my family from both sides. This was someone with almost 150,000 names in his/her tree. That is part of the problem with online trees. Too many people think it is more important to see how many names they can collect rather than a good verifiable family tree. There are not any records extant on all people that have lived so look and just smile whenever you see a tree that goes back to the time of Jesus Christ or Adam and Eve. Such trees are based on speculation and jumping to a conclusion.Ancestry.Com has all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They have lots of military enlistment and draft records and a large number of immigration records, some land records and other records. Not all records are online but the ones you find will save you time and money traveling all over to get them. Just don't expect i! nformation on the living as that can be an invasion of privacy and can ! lead to identity theft.They have transcribed the records but you can view the original images. There are errors in their transcriptions, particularly censuses, but when you view the original you will have sympathy and understand for the transcribers.Here is a link with links to various websites, some free, some not.http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.......Show more
Ardelia Liptow: check the mormon site
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