Sites to trace ancestry on?

[AlFrankenFan]

I've been looking for a while and have had no luck but do you guys know of any good site to trace your "roots" so to speak? Thanks.

[Heyo]

1. maybe try..

www.geneology.com (sp?)

I think they charge for it though

Heyo

[rwheeler31]

2. No do not do it on line.

nt

[Zookeeper]

4. Why do you say that? n/t

[JohnKleeb]

3. hmmm

I havent got any trees myself, but I have found relatives SSN by way of the social security death index, its fascinating, we found my grandpa's brother we think, no one knows what hpapened to him really.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. Here's a few...

Rootsweb is a pretty good "free" resource; many people upload their genealogies and make them available for the public to search. If you've ancestors who arrived in the US pre-1800, there's a better-than-even chance you'll find some of them there. The link below is for the advanced search page; you should also check out their message boards, though. They have forums for surnames and localities, and there's a chance someone may have posted info you're looking for (and if not it's a good place to get help from people researching the same lines). Oh, and a bit of advice: In the advanced search, you have the option to return only results with notes and sources. ALWAYS try to find information that's noted and sourced, first. That way there's a greater likelihood of its reliability.

http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi

Also, there's the Mormon genealogy site...not as reliable, minimal sources and documentation, but it can be a good starting point.

http://familysearch.org

And there are more free forums at http://genforum.genealogy.com

Hope these links are of some use.

[susanna]

9. These are excellent resources, Spider Jerusalem ...

What I do is gather everything I possibly can from non-paying sites like rootsweb and genforum, then use a paying site for a couple months to clean up/expand on the basic details.

Most of the paying sites really don't have great information, but a little more in-depth than I found otherwise. I think the paying sites I used were:

http://www.ancestry.com
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com

Interesting note, I found my maternal gr-gr-grandfather (who no one else had ever been able to locate; he ran away from his Cherokee family to avoid the Feds) AND traced my paternal gr-grandmother's family back to 1671 through a NON-paying site. There is some amazing stuff out there, and you'll find 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc., cousins all over the place!

Enjoy your search. :-)

edit for format

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Heh...I'm actually taking a break from fooling around w/genealogy...

I've been going back as far as I can, and right now I'm working on adding the medieval kings of Spain and Portugal and the Byzantine emperors (plus their spouses and THEIR ancestors)...helps pass the time, and it gives me a bit of a break from searching for elusive material. I was able to trace several lines on my father's side back to the seventeenth century, and at least one back to Henry IV of England and then past Charlemagne...all with free sources (but I guess it kind of helps to have ancestors who had lots of offspring and have been in the same place in Maryland and Virginia going on 400 years...I'm not exactly working fresh ground, for the most part)...

[carpetbagger]

6. online genealogy...

Social Security Death Index and a bunch of other stuff is available on Rootsweb.

The LDS(Mormons) have a big site whose name I can't remember
(something like familysearch). They have the 1880 census online.

If your name is uncommon enough, Google might get you more than you think. For my grandmother's family name, there's only about 350 hits, all from a common ancestor about 6-7 generations back. My surname is a bit more difficult, since in German it can also mean something similar to "box set".

Ancestry.com is the biggest database, and they do have a 30-day introductory period with money back on an annual subscription. Make sure you've gotten together all of your "stuff" before that though, since there's quite a bit to dig through, and census data usually has small discrepencies which make it sometimes tough to figure out who's the right john doe.

[silverlib]

7. ancestry.com is good if

someone else in your family, a distant cousin in my case, has already obtained information.

I was surprised to find that my family had already been done and was traced back to the 1700's. It's free if you are only lurking.

[Cooley Hurd]

8. ancestry.com

http://ancestry.com

I was able to trace my family back six generations in a short period of time (almost all branches and sub-branches, too!). They have census records scanned in (and with a searchable database) from 1790 to 1930, as well as birth/death record fragments, military and immigration records. There's a premium (about $100 a year) but I highly recommend it. As far as free sites, there's http://ellisislandrecords.org as well as http://usgenweb.org ...

But, if you're really serious about researching you genealogy, it's really worth the money to join ancestry.com...

Good luck and PM me if you have any questions...:hi: