Free Genealogy Websites

Nowadays, genealogy research is easy.  There are many websites that offer family databases.  The more you research your family's past, the larger your family becomes.

Do you know your family history?  If you are trying to fit together the pieces of your past, it helps to understand your family roots.  You can learn about your family by researching and studying your family history.  To do this you must collect bits of information from reliable sources to trace your family line back through the generations.  The easiest and least expensive way to get started is by using a free genealogy website.

Thanks to the internet, anyone can research their family history.  At one time, researching a family's roots was a daunting task.  It entailed long distance travel and digging through old records in libraries and other repositories.  Today, most of that data is available at the click of a mouse and sometimes for free.  However, to get the best results, you need to work with a reliable and accurate website.  You should learn about the various search techniques and the documents you're likely to encounter.

One important thing to remember is to keep highly detailed notes as you go about your research.  You may run across an detail that may not seem important right now, only to find out later that it was the most vital piece of information that you needed.  If you rely on your memory, you may miss out on a clue that allows the pieces of your past to fall into place.  Keep track of website addresses, data, and information.  Don't use abbreviations that you might not understand later.  Print out the historical documents that pertain to your family.  These documents could be the key to resolving conflicting information that will invariably pop up during your research.

Don't forget your living relatives.  They can be a great source of information too.  They can verify facts that you uncover and tell you details that lead you down the right path on your research.  Record the stories of your older relatives BEFORE they pass away so that they can be handed down to future generations.

Some databases you can search through online are census records, obituaries, death indexes, and other public records.  (I will include links at the end of this article.)  Many newspapers publish death notices and are now archiving them for future use.

Threading the information together is a laborious task but when you have one branch of your tree completed and verified, then you're ready to begin the next.  When you complete an area of research, you should share your findings with other researchers.  You may have a distant relative searching for the information you have and they may be able to assist your efforts too.

• FamilySearch FREE
• WikiTree FREE User submitted information. Some is sourced, some is not
• Rootsweb FREE User submitted information. Some is sourced, some is not
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