Do not forget – you need computer security at the highest level for online searching, licking strange links and countless sites have cookies and you need to stay safe for enjoying the process of finding ancestors.

Everything you search is seen leaving a trail – I add the Gedmatch eye to remind online genealogy has eyes. Many sites are more public than others but always live as if it is all public

 

(DNA sites below)

Check back often – I am adding weblinks on this one page as I verify the links on the website websites again

Make a ‘sign in’ everywhere you are allowed, some sites have bookmarks to easily group your finds. Use the free signins on even the pay sites and get on the mailing lists to be notified of free days.

Rootsweb.com

First love, the first I knew about, Rootsweb.com with their trees with indepth notes and stories of documentation, the mailing lists with people whose special interest is what you are looking for, and maintain email questions, and answers, and also the amazing message boards, posting questions to specific categories and like the lists – by locations by professions by topic and other categories and I should check if they have active DNA sections – in the last years Facebook took over the universe and Rootsweb has fallen somewhat into obscurity.

But what you will find is being able to get to a category of research, like a location and ask it to show you all the posts with your surname or your two surnames or some events. And from about 1999 us old genealogy hounds were adding our stories about ancestors and their friends – it is a gold mine. (You can use quotations for phrase searching, keep it simple)

Rootsweb Message Boards

http://boards.rootsweb.com/?o_iid=33216&o_lid=33216&o_sch=Web+Property

Rootsweb Mailing Lists

https://mailinglists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/listindexes/

Rootsweb Family Trees

https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi

Find A Grave

https://www.findagrave.com/

Billions of records online and all for free – 

https://www.familysearch.org/

USGenweb

http://www.usgenweb.org/

Rootschat

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php

National Genealogical Society

Welcome to NGS’s Free Genealogy Resources

Google Google Google

And search from a Google page and make sure you do not have a browser that flips you to another search engine. Using quotations to make a phrase in searching ads another way to get specific results

“john doe” “jane smith” +Poughkeepsie gives specific results

on the other hand if you search

john doe jane smith Poughkeepsie

You might get John Poughkeepsie from Smith (michigan) watching a doe named Jane

United Kingdom

https://www.freebmd.org.uk/

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

http://www.genuki.org.uk/

Northern Ireland

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni (has purchase)

Ulster and beyond

https://www.ancestryireland.com/ (has pay section, careful)

Canada

http://automatedgenealogy.com/

https://ogs.on.ca/databases/birth-marriage-death-records-in-ontario/

Facebook

Search for keywords as genealogy and family history with your names and places

You know you are from…. if…

Random acts of kindness groups

DNA

Our DNA project on Family Tree DNA

https://www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?Group=FrenchBroadRiverFamilies

 

many sites

https://www.familytreedna.com/

https://www.insito.me/

https://www.ancestry.com/

https://www.23andme.com/

http://www.africanancestry.com/

https://www.livingdna.com/

https://www.myheritage.com/dna

https://www.gedmatch.com/

more