Useful Links
Over the years I have came across many, if not all, the genealogy sites that are available. But there are a handful that I always keep going back to.
Below I have listed my preferences (in no particular order) but obviously as new sites appear online I will update this as required. I hope that you find this list useful.
www.freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~leighann/index.html
Mentioned in previous pages, this site is a must for anyone with an interest in the South West of Scotland. The site covers far too many resources to list here and the members on the mailing list from this website have been very helpful for my research.
When I have spare cash this is where I always manage to spend it. For people not able to visit New Register House in Edinburgh in person, this is as good as they will get. After civil registration was introduced in 1855 all birth, deaths and marriages should be here - obviously when I say should, it means that not everyone was registered and although you will probably be lucky, I've been unable to find the odd record in Scotland due to the person not being registered, for reasons we will never know.
I'm definitely not a fan of paying subscriptions to sites when I feel the information should be freely available. For those of you with any connections to the USA this site could possibly help. For anyone in the UK please learn from my mistake - do not purchase any of their software directly from them (the CD's in the bundles aren't any good for us in the UK). I ordered the biggest bundle that came with FTM (Family Tree Maker) hoping to get lots of info, turned out I didn't get anything except a Customs invoice a few days later.
I can't mention Genealogy.com without closely following it with Ancestry.com. I find the Ancestry site more useful than the Genealogy.com one and I see that they also offer a UK site now. I signed up for a subscription to the Ancestry.com site in my early researching days and was dismayed that I had to telephone the USA to cancel the subscription. I have since found out that you can actually email them to cancel any subscriptions. The problem with telephoning is I was always calling when they were closed and I didn't know how far behind us, Mountain Standard Time was. Very nice man on the telephone though who 'loved' the Scots accent!
Mentioned previously on this website, some of my Gulline wills are available on this website and the other's are on their way. I'm not sure if they are doing it by parish but let's hope that all the old wills that are out there become available soon.
This is another one of the fantastic FREE sites. OK so there aren't many of my people on here yet but you may get lucky with your own research. The problem here is certainly not with the FreeBMD website but the fact that they can only provide you with a reference number so that you still have to purchase the birth, marriage or death certificates. Although it may be nice to have all the certificates it can be expensive and I only want to know the details from it - I just need a wee look, I don't want to purchase them. I feel that the English records business is trying to get money out of people whichever way they can and this site definitely helps ease some of the financial costs (otherwise incurred from a visit to the pay-to-view 1837 online website (notice no link!).
Well done to the FreeBMD team and all their efforts to help genealogists world wide!
This site would have to win the prize for the best and most useful (free) site ever. I understand that not ALL the old parish records are on this site but believe that the Church is in the process of trying to put them all on. Either way it's almost certainly my favourite site.
I feel that I have to add Rootsweb to my favourites list, as they have something for everyone and you can spend hours going around this site. The mailing lists and websites offered by Rootsweb are an excellent resource and genealogy on the web would not be the same without them - thanks Rootsweb!