Family History Resources Online
Subscription-Based Sites
Ancestry. com is the grandaddy of online data sources for genealogy enthusiasts. I first subscribed over 20 years ago, when I had dial-up internet. Thank goodness for high-speed internet! Now, there are literally millions of records available on the site. Some are free; most require paid subscriptions. For full access to the site, it's not cheap for a subscription billed once a year and is comparatively more per month for a 6-month.or monthly subscription. Look for sales around major U.S. holidays. (Your local library may have an institutional subscription that allows you at least partial free access.)
I've gotten a lot of use from my subscription to Stirnet.com If you have British Isles heritage going way back, you'll probably find a treasure trove of lineage information.
Others: FindMyPast has a myriad of British resources.
Free Family History Resources Online
FamilySearch.org
The Family History Center of the LDS Church maintains a network of family history centers across the U.S. and in the rest of the world, plus the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City. These centers are open for research by non-church members. (In case you're wondering, I'm not an LDS member and have visited the Salt Lake "mother ship" three times for a few days each, as well as visiting the local site dozens of times. No one has ever tried to convert me or even discussed their faith with me.) But of more interest to people who research online, the church maintains a website called FamilySearch.org. Volunteers have been working for several years to digitize the millions upon millions of records from all over the world so that they'll be accessible (for free) online. There are limitations on some online records (the camera symbol is locked) that must be viewed in a Family History Center.
USGenWeb
This site, an amazing free database designed and maintained by volunteers all over the
country can be accessed at www.usgenweb.com. It's organized by U.S. state and counties; has
biographies, county histories, military service information, marriage records,
etc. Every state and county site differs -- some are stocked with tons of information; others
are pretty bare bones.
But sometimes you find records that you can't access other places.
People of Medieval Scotland People of Medieval Scotland (poms.ac.uk)
This site has information about historical documents from Scotland between 1093 and 1314. It's a searchable database. Enter your ancestor's name and see what pops up. If you have Scottish ancestors living in this time period, it's incomparable for finding tidbits that would otherwise be lost to history.
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For the next two sites, thanks go to Amanda, a teen from Maine who attended a workshop on researching family history (a collaboration between the local history society and library)
Helping Kids Build a Tree This resource was suggested by student Corrine Bass, who used it in a Social Studies class project.
HomeAdvisor Some up and coming young genealogists in an after school program suggested I link this page that they think is helpful. It's got tips on doing research from your home computer or laptop.
New York City and Historic Ellis Island Ava Gray, a Girl Scout working on her My Family Story badge, loves this website and wanted me to recommend it to you. Thanks, Ava!
Another enterprising Girl Scout named Colleen found lots of great information here and hopes you'll find something that will help you find your family's past.
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Ellis Island Immigration Records
For information about immigrants processed
through Ellis Island (1892 - 1924), including names of immigrants and
ships' passenger lists, go to the Ellis Island site at www.EllisIsland.org.
Besides being able to view your immigrant's names on passenger manifests, the
site often has historical photographs of the ship on which they arrived.
Ancestry.com also has a vast number of databases on immigration but entries are
not linked to photos. If you haven't visited Ellis Island itself, it's an extraordinary experience. It can be particularly moving if one of your ancestor's first steps on U.S. soil was at that small, forbidding island in the New York harbor.
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| S.S. Kroonland, the ship upon which my sons' paternal great-grandparents arrived at Ellis Island from their home in Lithuania |
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Federal Land Records
(Bureau of Land Management, Government Land Office)
To access records of land purchases from the U.S.
Government Land Offices (land transactions in states other than the original 13
colonies), visit the Bureau of Land Management - Government Land Office site at www.glorecords.blm.gov.
You can search the records for various states by surname or surname and
given name. Legal descriptions of purchases are given and in most cases,
digitized images of the original grant documents are available.
I've made wonderful discoveries using federal land records, including the information required to locate where my ancestor's land was and who lived around them (kind of my own version of a township plat map). Since marriages often were sparked by meeting as neighbors, it can give you leads on how intermarriages happened or who someone's parents might have been if you know who the neighbors were.
At the federal land records site, you can download digitized images on the original grant documents, where available, learning purchase date and so forth. Most tree builder software allows you to store these images in your ancestor's data file.
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Census Finder
Free online census records from the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, and Native American tribes. Census records can be one of the best sources for determining where your ancestors lived in various time periods (the U.S. Census began in 1790 and has occurred every ten years since then) and often lists the names of household members, as well as other tidbits of information. What you'll find depends on the required categories of data collected in a particular census time frame. www.censusfinder.com
National Archives
If you visit the National Archives data centers or the main National Archives in Washington, D.C., you can access Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest Online for free, as well as several other databases. If you access these databases remotely, there is a fee. There are Veterans Service Records available through the site, among other things. Archives.gov
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