How to Search for Your Ancestors for Free
I'll be the first to admit that subscription sites like Ancestry.com are unbelievably valuable resources for researching your family history. But there are also plenty of free resources in the wonderful world of online genealogy, and you should certainly take advantage of these as well. Here how's to find the best of the free family history search tools for digging into your roots.
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Instructions
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**Check the Free Genealogy Tools Blog**
freegenealogytools.blogspot.com focuses on family history search sites that are (1) large, usually with millions of names (2) friendly, with easy and powerful genealogical searching (3) not always well known, so you'll find something new and cool, and (4) free!
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**Look Over Cyndi's List Collection of Freebies**
CyndisList.com is one of the most popular genealogy sites on the internet, and for good reason. It is a fantastic and very well-organized collection of thousands of resources, all related to uncovering your family origins.
Under the Main Category Index, look for the link to Free Stuff, where you'll find several hundred useful links. These include sites where you can search on your ancestors' names, of course. But you'll also find here excellent charts, forms and software for keeping track of family history, creating family trees, and so on. There are also tips on getting started in ancestry research, forums where you can ask for help tracking down your roots, and endless pointers to additional resources.
All in all, one of the internet' s real gems.
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**Select from the Ancestry World Tree**
I already mentioned ancestry.com, a subscription service. But there is a free part to Ancestry worth checking out... their collection of family trees. They are arranged in different collections with different names: Ancestry World Tree, and OneWorldTree. Together, these are collections of hundreds of millions of names (really!) with information on each one.
Visit Ancestry and click on the family trees tab to begin searching. Eventually, the links will take you to information that is no longer free. But well before you get to that point, you'll almost certainly unearth something of value in your family history search.
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**Don't Forget the Daily News**
Old newspaper archives in English or in the language of the 'old country' are also very rich sources for family history research. Surprisingly, there are hundreds of free newspaper archives from around the world, stretching back hundreds of years. Your ancestors are in there, somewhere, so be sure to have a look.
Links to the sites mentioned here are listed in the Resources section.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Flickr Commons
