Locating records on your genealogy quest can be confusing and difficult when you’re first starting out. Thankfully, today there are wonderful resources online that you can use to start your search.
1. Ancestry.com – This is probably the most well-known one because of all the commercials. They have a lot of user-generated content, and they know how to help newbies learn how to start their research. You’ll need a membership to really take advantage of the digital records, index and more from around the world.
2. AfriGeneas – If you are African American, this is the site to go to for researching your ancestry in the Americas. Due to the nature of how African Americans came to live in the Americas after leaving their home country, it can be difficult to trace, but this site seeks to do that.
3. Cyndi’s List – This is a site that indexes genealogical resources throughout the internet. It works kind of like a card catalog so that you can find the information you want. Cyndi has organized it so that you don’t have to.
4. Family Tree Magazine – This site has lots of “how to” articles and information for beginners to learn how to conduct an effective genealogy search and collect the right records.
5. Fold3 – This is a site that is for digitized US Military records. They go all the way back to the revolutionary war. You can organize galleries of content for your family.
6. Findmypast – This is for people in the US with British or Irish ancestry. They claim to have more Irish records than any other site. It’s simple to use and they offer a 14-day free trial.
7. MyHeritage – This is a site that offers search ability as well information on how to get a DNA test to help you find out more information. They have collaboration tools that you can use with other members.
8. GenealogyBank.com – This site teaches you how to search newspapers. It has millions of records on it already with an active community.
9. Family Search – This is the largest genealogy organization in the world. They have millions of members using their records, which means due to them sharing records there are more for you.
10. World Vital Records – You can find all sorts of vital records, plus U.S. Census information from 1790 to 1940. Plus, there are “featured collections” from other sites.
11. FamilyTreeNow – With this site you can search, build a family tree, and discover as much as possible about your relatives near and far. You can even search certain types of records free.
These sites should give you a good start at using websites to find out about your heritage and relatives near and far. The best thing to do is start with one site and see how far you get. If you don’t like how it works after the free trial is over, move on to the next. You never know what you’re going to find when you start searching your family heritage. It can be like a historical novel opening for you in real life.
