geneology sites?

[2mnyteens]

I am thinking of starting my search for ancestors :). What are the best free and pay sites that you've used?

[lt34102]

The absolute BEST site is Ancestry.com but they charge for their services. I believe they have a 2 week free trial. Familysearch.org is the Mormon site. They're not as accurate but they're free. Genealogy.com - Family Tree Maker Family History Software and Historical Records is also free. Both of the free sites may be a good place to start.

I have found that just googling a name and date will often result in a lot of information. I found a tree under one of my ancestor's names that lead all the way back to the 900s!!! This just happened to be a branch that is shared with a lot of prominent Americans and Brits. It has been researched to death.

Gustave Anjou was a notorious forger in the early 1900s that defrauded a lot of families. FRAUDULENT LINEAGES He has a lot on the LDS site and you must navigate carefully and discard any of his work. I've got at least 4 branches of my family listed on that page.

[2mnyteens]

thanks!

[StacyNVA]

Ancestry.com is awesome but does cost a bit. My mom has a subscription that I use. You can also access it free on site at a lot of public libraries.

FamilySearch.org (the LDS) site has made tremendous improvements. They have added the censuses and I would trust any of their "historical" information. I would be very careful of Family trees on there. Many people get it wrong. They just add anything that seems to work to their trees.

Heritage Quest is another site that is pay but you can often access through your local library. I can even use it from home after logging in with my library card.

There is also USGENWEB which is all free. There is a page for every county in every state. People put records up there for free. You can find marriage records, censuses, death records etc or nothing at all depending on researcher contributions.

Lastly check your state of interest for their archives website. Quite a few states are digitalizing their records and putting them online. A few examples: IL has marriage, death; MO has images of actual Death certificates online; VA had old Wills and land records. And want to hear something funny? Everything that happens in Vegas is on the Clark County, NV website for the whole world to see. I found my SIL's marriage record, my husband's cousin's criminal court record, the cousin's divorce record, an uncle's home information including a digital copy with a signature.

As for Family Tree software I use Legacy Family Tree. There is a free version and a pay version that unlocks about 5 extra features. I love this software - it is waaaayyy better then Family Tree Maker.

When you first start out researching you will primarily use the censuses but once you get older then about 1850 you will need a lot of other records - church, probate, wills, land, etc. to to confirm relationships. Before 1850 only the head of household's name was listed.

I have traced my husband's family back to the late 1600's.