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Family Tree Magazine--Discover, Preserve, and Celebrate Your Family History

Collaboration

History and Reference

International and Immigration

Records Resources

Regional and Ethnic

Contact Information

Collaboration

Sites to share research, download GEDCOM family tree files or find friendly folks in far-off places to lend you a hand with your research.

AncientFaces
www.ancientfaces.com
Offering a visual twist on sites where genealogists exchange information, AncientFaces helps you find your ancestors and their old photographs. At last count, the site held more than 26,000 scanned photos of some 30,000 individuals. Besides family pictures, you also can search or browse military photos, family stories and even family recipes. Looking for the Gaydon-Shetley clan's Pinto Bean Fudge? Neither were we, but here it is.

Books We Own
www.rootsweb.com/~bwo
If you've ever been frustrated by an elusive fact in a book you just can't seem to get your hands on, Books We Own is for you. The more than 1,500 volunteers listed here will look up your ancestors in their home libraries—for free! Available resources are indexed by surname and locale, or try the new sitewide search.

DeadFred
deadfred.com
Another collaborative site that seeks to reunite families with their old photos, DeadFred covers more than 10,000 surnames in its picture collection.

GenCircles
www.gencircles.com
From the creator of GenForum (now part of Genealogy.com, see Records Resources) and Family Tree Legends software, GenCircles aims to take the next step in pedigree databases. Its "SmartMatching" technology connects people in your family trees with the 85 million individuals submitted to the site's Global Tree.

GeneaNet
www.geneanet.org
This pedigree database with an international flair boasts nearly 90 million entries. Searching is powerful and flexible, and you even can set up an e-mail alert when new entries that match your criteria arrive. Frequent users pay about $50 a year for Privileged status, but you can get plenty out of this site for free.

MyTrees.com
www.mytrees.com
Search a variety of databases—including the Ellis Island records—totaling 1 billion names with just one click, or delve into the site's own Ancestry Archive of 164 million pedigree-linked names. You can upgrade to more search options for $100 a year, or earn credits by submitting your own info.

Source: David A. Frywell, "The Strongest Links." Family Tree Magazine, (August 2004).

History and Reference

Places to bone up on the past, plus portals for finding libraries and links.

American Civil War Portal
www.americancivilwar.info
Explore your Civil War ancestor's world at this handsome site, which offers thousands of links, a photo database, battle reports, regimental histories and message boards.

Bartleby.com
www.bartleby.com
Imagine having your grandfather's library in searchable, digital form. That's Bartleby.com, where you can pop into pages of the past, ranging from the Harvard Classics to Fanny Farmer's cookbook. Also click here for a few more-modern reference works, such as the Columbia Encyclopedia and Gazetteer, the World Factbook and the Encyclopedia of World History.

Canadian Genealogy and History

www.islandnet.com/~jveinot/cghl/cghl.html
A perfect portal for researching your Canadian roots, this Web site serves up nearly 2,000 categorized, linked listings reaching from the Atlantic provinces to the Northwest Territories.

Cyndi's List

www.cyndislist.com
Still the queen of genealogy-links lists, Cyndi Howells' mammoth collection of categorized sites—more than 230,000 in 150-plus categories—makes it the Yahoo! of family history.

eHistory
www.ehistory.com
Now under the aegis of Ohio State University, eHistory offers more than 130,000 pages of historical content, 5,300 timeline events, 800 battle outlines, 350 biographies and thousands of images and maps. Most notable here for those with Civil War ancestors are the searchable 128 volumes of the conflict's Official Records (OR).

Genealogy Resources on the Internet
www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/internet.html
Kudos to Chris Gaunt and John Fuller for creating and maintaining this guide to the other genealogy goodies accessible via the Internet: mailing lists, newsgroups, and Telnet and Gopher sites. In particular, it's the best place to find mailing lists catering to your areas of ancestral inquiry, from geographical locations to surnames to special interests such as occupations.

Genealogy Today
genealogytoday.com
This all-purpose site offers tips and resources geared for all levels of expertise—even "junior genealogists"—plus state-by-state links.

Global Gazetteer
www.calle.com/world One of our favorite "undiscovered" online resources, this simple-but-deep site is now running on updated software. Just a few clicks will find the name of that elusive ancestral town, from Aberdeen to Zwickau.

LibDex
www.libdex.com
Looking for a library in your ancestral hometown? Search or browse this index to 18,000 libraries worldwide. LibDex includes links to some libraries' online catalogs.

Library of Congress
www.loc.gov
The site for the nation's library includes such glimpses into history as the American Memory Project, a collection of more than 7 million digital items spanning 100-plus collections, and the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, wherein about 90 percent of entries are accompanied by digital images. Don't overlook the library's regular catalog as a reference to pretty much any book you'll ever need, and the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), which indexes manuscripts placed in repositories nationwide since 1986.

Making of America
www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp
OK, we're cheating a bit here. This is really a pair of sister sites—the other is at library5.library.cornell.edu/moa—both serving up searchable digitized material from the 19th century. The University of Michigan version contains 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles; recent additions include 149 volumes focusing on New York City. The Cornell site encompasses more than 250 monograph volumes and 100,000 journal articles, plus the OR of naval activity during the Civil War.

Our Roots
www.ourroots.ca
As evidenced by the wealth of sites in this category, our neighbors to the north really know what they're doing when it comes to putting their heritage online. This slick multi-media celebration of Canadian local histories brings to life tales of the Irish at Grosse ële (see page 47), the American invasion of 1775, the Klondike Gold Rush, historic forts and trading posts, and much more.

Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection
www.lib.utexas.edu/maps When it comes to maps, this University of Texas library collection is as big as the Lone Star State. The collection comprises mostly historical, out-of-copyright maps—perfect for genealogical purposes. Whether you need a guide to Sioux Falls, SD, streets circa 1920 or a map of 1882 Italy, you're likely to find it among the 5,000-plus cartographic creations digitized here.

Source: David A. Frywell, "The Strongest Links." Family Tree Magazine, (August 2004).

International and Immigration

Web sites for tracing your ancestors' journeys to the New World and exploring their origins back in the "old country."

AncestorSuperSearch.com
www.ancestorsupersearch.com
Among the many excellent online offerings for researching English branches of your family tree, AncestorSuperSearch.com covers 1.46 million birth and census events from 1755 to 1891.

Arkion's Swedish Census Database
www.arkion.se
Those efficient Scandinavians have wonderful records, and they must spend their long winter nights putting that data online. This searchable subscription database, for example, concentrates on the Swedish censuses of 1870, 1880, 1890 and 1900—more than 9 million individuals in all. Recent additions include a database of prisoners released between 1877 and 1925, which links to photos of your Swedish black sheep. Access costs $6 for three hours, $35 for 10 three-hour sessions or $110 for a year.

Avotaynu
www.avotaynu.com
This leading Jewish genealogical publisher makes available online, for free, the Consolidated Jewish Surname Index of more than 370,000 Jewish surnames that appear in 31 different databases.

Danish Demographic Database
ddd.sa.dk/ddd_en.htm
Search for your Danish roots in free databases of censuses, probate records and, most notably for researchers on the US side of the Atlantic, emigration records covering 1868 to 1908.

Data Banks on Italian Emigrants
213.212.128.168/radici/ie/defaultie_e.htm
Don't let the decidedly user-unfriendly Web address—or the requirement that you register to use the site—scare you off. These databases cover 200,000 Italians who crossed to New York between 1880 and 1891 (before Ellis Island opened), along with a million-plus emigrants to South America.

Ellis Island
www.ellisisland.org
This is the only genealogy Web site whose launch was featured on the "Today" show—and no wonder: Ellis Island, the gateway to America for millions of immigrants between 1892 and 1924, is synonymous with the nation's "melting pot" heritage. Find your immigrant ancestors in the free online database, then view their actual passenger manifests and images of the ships they traveled on.

Federation of East European Family History Societies
feefhs.org
Start exploring your Eastern European roots with these links to member societies, maps and research guides. Don't miss the expanding array of databases, covering foreign-born voters in 1872 California, World War I Polish soldiers in France, and an ambitious reconstruction of vital records destroyed in San Francisco's 1906 earthquake, when the city was home to many European emigrants.

Find Your Swedish Roots
www.genealogi.se/roots
The Federation of Swedish Genealogical Societies maintains this exhaustive guide, written in both English and Swedish. Recent database additions include old photos and emigrant information. Click on the Anbytarforum link for Sweden's version of GenForum, where you'll be surprised at how many participants understand English (at least better than you read Swedish).

FreeBMD
freebmd.rootsweb.com
Another amazing volunteer endeavor, the FreeBMD project aims to create an online index of English and Welsh births, marriages and deaths. To date, nearly 78 million records, covering 1837 to 1903, have been posted.

Geneactes
www.geneactes.org/index-en.html
Voila! Your French ancestors are waiting to be found in these databases of civil records, including marriage documents searchable by keyword, name or place.

Genealogy.net
www.genealogienetz.de/genealogy.html
In addition to how-to help (in English) and links, this gateway to German genealogy offers regional resources; record-request form letters; and databases of place names, GEDCOMs, genealogy groups, marriages and obituaries.

GENUKI
www.genuki.org.uk
This virtual reference library can help answer your questions about researching roots in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Hamburg Link to Your Roots
fhh1.hamburg.de/fhh/behoerden/staatsarchiv/link_to_your_roots/english
Even if your ancestors came from elsewhere in Europe, the growing database of emigrants who sailed from this German city is worth a look: Your family might have left from Hamburg, a common departure port between 1850 and 1934. So far, the database covers 1890 to 1905. Searching is free, but you'll pay for full results according to a sliding scale, which starts at $22 for one to three names.

Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild
www.immigrantships.net
What if your ancestors didn't come through Ellis Island? Try this database of passenger lists from more than 5,000 ships, all transcribed by volunteer "guild" members (and read our article on page 42).

ItalianAncestry.com
www.italianancestry.com
You can explore all things Italian at this in-depth gateway site, including genealogy societies, Italian names, occupational terms and emigration information.

JewishGen
www.jewishgen.org
Besides being a popular starting point for researching Jewish ancestors, especially European Jews, this site offers an array of databases, such as the Family Finder of 300,000 surnames and ancestral towns; the Family Tree of the Jewish People, with data on more than 2 million individuals; the Holocaust Database of 500,000 victims and survivors; and the new Online Worldwide Burial Registry with 300,000 entries. JewishGen's ShtetlSeeker will help you locate ancestral towns in Eastern and Central Europe. The site also hosts Stephen Morse's one-step Ellis Island search tool.

Norway's Digital Archives
digitalarkivet.uib.no
This national archives site is packed with goodies: 1801, 1865, 1875 and 1900 censuses; tax lists; military rolls; and church, emigrant and probate registers. Plus, the new Digital Inn holds user-submitted data.

Origins.net
www.origins.net
This British Isles umbrella includes subscription access to Griffith's Valuation for Irish research as well as Boyd's Marriage Index and Bank of England wills and apprentice records for English research ($9.75 a week). Scottish researchers will find a free parish-level search of the International Genealogical Index (a FamilySearch database), plus free place-name searching. Origins.net also offers Origin Search, a proprietary Webwide genealogy search covering more than 450 million names ($5 a day).

Otherdays.com
www.otherdays.com
With subscriptions ranging from $8 for three days to $44 a year, this ever-expanding treasure trove of Irish data is a bargain if your kin came from the Emerald Isle. Databases and features include Griffith's Valuation from 1847 to 1864, Ordnance Survey maps from 1824 to 1846, Dublin wills and marriages for 1270 to 1857, gravestone inscriptions, directories, and free map and photo searches. (You can save a few bucks by paying $35 to join the Godfrey Memorial Library, whose Web site provides access to Otherdays.com, plus databases of digitized census records, family histories, newspapers and biographies from subscription services sold only to libraries.)

Palatines to America
palam.org
This organization for descendants of German emigrants—not just those from the Palatine region—continues to beef up its online presence. You can search the online catalog of its 5,000-volume library or find clues and like-minded researchers among seven years' worth of queries organized by surname.

PolishRoots
www.polishroots.com
Popular attractions at this gateway for Polish genealogy include a surname registry, databases such as Polish National Alliance Lodges and Galician Vital Records, and translated entries from the Slownik Geograficzny, a 19th-century gazetteer.

ScotlandsPeople
www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
A virtual Highland fling for researchers, this official online source of Scottish parish registers, civil registrations and census records contains nearly 40 million records. The data- bases—collectively among the Web's largest—include a searchable index of births from 1553 to 1903, marriages from 1553 to 1928 and deaths from 1855 to 1953, plus census data from 1881 to 1901. You can view, save and print images of many of the original documents you find. But you won't get off Scot-free here: The cost is about $11 for 30 page credits over 48 hours.

Scottish Archive Network
www.scan.org.uk
Thank Scottish lottery players for funding this national archives project, which digitizes a wealth of Scottish history plus 1852 to 1857 Highlands and Islands Emigration Society passenger lists and wills and testaments from 1500 to 1901 (you'll find these at www.scottishdocuments.com).

Spanish Genealogy
www.ldelpino.com/geneal.html
This bilingual site for digging into your Spanish roots is packed with links, tips and guides to Spanish towns and archives. You also can plumb a 27,000-entry database of Hispanic last names.

TheShipsList
www.theshipslist.com
A handy adjunct to other immigration sites, this collection of more than 1,000 pages (mostly passenger lists) is particularly strong on ships that arrived at Canadian ports.

WorldGenWeb
www.worldgenweb.org
This globe-spanning counterpart to USGenWeb (see page 31) is more of a mixed bag than its domestic cousin, and some sites require more foreign-language ability than many Americans can muster. But it's still a good jumping-off point, and you can reach several European-country sites from here. Among the best are PolandGenWeb and DutchGenWeb.

Source: David A. Frywell, "The Strongest Links." Family Tree Magazine, (August 2004).

Records Resources

Wide-ranging sites for research in the United States and Canada; many of these include databases of actual ancestral data.

Access Genealogy
www.accessgenealogy.com
A link-filled portal that's also grown into a destination by itself, Access Genealogy is home to biographies and census, immigration, cemetery, military and vital records. Be sure to bookmark this site if you're doing American Indian genealogy; resources include the 1880 Cherokee census and the Dawes Commission Rolls.

Ancestry.com
www.ancestry.com
If you'd really rather do genealogy from the comfort of your computer instead of scrolling through microfilm at a library, you probably can't live without Ancestry.com. Its subscription databases are the closest thing you can buy to genealogy nirvana—more than 3,000 databases in all. Pick from the original US Records Collection ($79.95 a year); the US Federal Census Collection, with images of all censuses from 1790 to 1930 and indexes for all enumerations except 1900 and 1910 ($99.95); the US Immigration Collection of 10 million names ($79.95); Historical Newspapers, with pages from 200 different US, UK and Canadian publications from 1786 on ($79.95); or the UK & Ireland Collection, covering 85 million names ($99.95). Even if you're on a tight budget, Ancestry.com's worth a visit for its message boards and pedigree files, which put a different face on the same info as their counterparts at RootsWeb.

Bible Records Online
www.biblerecords.com
If you can't find your family Bible, maybe Tracy St. Claire has found it for you. She digitizes the family Bibles she rescues—nearly 1,000 to date, representing more than 3,000 surnames—and puts them on this site, where you can browse them or search by surname.

Bureau of Land Management General Land Office Records
www.glorecords.blm.gov
If your ancestors claimed federal land in the states of the former Northwest Territory, the "old southwest" of the frontier South, Florida or Missouri, stake your own claim to their land records at this site. More than 2 million federal land titles issued between 1820 and 1908 are online here—many with digitized images—and the powerful search system makes it easy to find your ancestors' paperwork. Records after 1908, including those in western states, are now being added.

CanadaGenWeb
www.rootsweb.com/~canwgw
This northern counterpart to the USGenWeb project serves up user-submitted data, pages on every province, Canadian history and tips on starting your Canadian research.

Canadian Genealogy Centre
www.genealogy.gc.ca
Bringing together the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada, this umbrella site makes it easy to access the research tools and services of both institutions. Databases here include scanned images of the 1901 Canadian census and a new file of immigrants naturalized in the early 20th century.

Census Online
www.census-online.com
Still our favorite gateway to the oodles of free census transcriptions hiding out on the Web, Census Online offers more than 38,000 links to US enumerations, plus lesser collections of census pages for Canada and the British Isles.

City Directories of the USA
uscitydirectories.com
Often overlooked as a genealogy resource, city directories can fill in the blanks between censuses and help trace wandering ancestors. But how to lay your hands on them? This helpful site attempts to identify all printed, microfilmed and online directories for the entire United States—and then tell you the repositories where they're held.

Civil War Rosters by State
www.geocities.com/area51/lair/3680/cw/cw.html
Not as pretty as some sites, this nonetheless remains your first stop for links to lists of Civil War unit rosters. Not only can you find your ancestors' names on the rolls—you also can begin learning about where and when they fought.

Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System
www.itd.nps.gov/cwss
This ambitious project—putting online the names and other basic information from 5.4 million Compiled Military Service Records—now numbers more than 5 million soldier names from more than 30 states and territories, North and South. If you find your ancestor's name, you can click on his regiment for a brief history and a list (in Excel format if you prefer) of all soldiers in the unit.

Colonial Ancestors
www.colonialancestors.com
A useful starting place for researching early arrivals to America, Colonial Ancestors includes resources for all 13 original Colonies; a "This Day in Colonial Times" feature; and databases of early Harvard alumni, Valley Forge officers and records submitted by users.

FamilySearch
www.familysearch.org
Genealogists were thrilled when the Church of Jesus Christ of Lattter-day Saints put online the International Genealogical Index of vital-record data, and the Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File databases of user-submitted family trees. But that's turned out to be only the beginning of the free resources at FamilySearch, which has since added the US Social Security Death Index, vital-records indexes for Scandinavia and Mexico, the 1880 US census (now linked to images from Ancestry.com), the 1881 Canadian census and the 1881 British census. This also is the place to search the Family History Library catalog, find your nearest Family History Center, tap a trove of research guides and download free Personal Ancestral File software.

Find A Grave
findagrave.com
Locate a cemetery or search 5.4 million user-submitted grave records at this popular site, where you also can create virtual memorials or add "virtual flowers" and a note to a loved one's grave.

Genealogy.com
www.genealogy.com
Now owned by the same genealogical behemoth as erstwhile rival Ancestry.com, this site continues to grow as a subscription database must-see and to expand beyond its origins as a home for Family Tree Maker software users. The collections here now include the unique resources of the Genealogy Library of digitized books ($49.99 a year) and the Family and Local Histories collection ($79.99), plus World Family Tree pedigree files ($49.99), the International and Passenger Records ($79.99) and the US Census Collection ($99.99), which has grown to cover all years and includes the 1900 and 1910 indexes that Ancestry.com's census collection lacks. This also is home to the free GenForum, an old (by Web genealogy standards) and thus gigantic collection of message boards, grouped by surname and locality.

Interment.net
www.interment.net
Search more than 3.7 million records from 7,800-plus cemeteries worldwide. Can't find what you're after? Sign up for the e-mail alert service, which notifies you when new data goes online.

Local Catholic Church & Family History Genealogical Research Guide
home.att.net/~local_catholic
Church records can be the answer to your research prayers, but getting started can be, well, hell—unless you have some guidance. This link-filled site is heaven-sent help for finding your Catholic ancestors.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
www.archives.gov
Besides guides to researching at the main archives in Washington, DC, and its regional branches nationwide, NARA's Web incarnation offers the Archival Research Catalog of the vast holdings at the "nation's attic," including almost 58,000 digitized images and 15,000 documents. And the Access to Archival Databases system makes clickable nearly 50 million wide-ranging historical records created by more than 20 federal agencies.

Newspaper Abstracts
www.newspaperabstracts.com
Sort of the newspaper counterpart to USGenWeb (right)—and organized by county like that site—this volunteer project has ballooned to more than 12,000 pages from papers published prior to 1923.

Obituary Central
www.obitcentral.com
Billed as the "headquarters for researching obits on the Web," Obituary Central collects links, obituary searches and related tools all under one roof.

Public Record Finder.com
www.publicrecordfinder.com Was your ancestor a dentist in Louisiana? You might never discover that his records are online (via the Louisiana State Board of Dentistry) without this useful library of links to public records of all sorts—not just vital records—organized by state and county, as well as by type.

The Quaker Corner
www.rootsweb.com/~quakers
You don't have to be a member of the Society of Friends to have a Quaker ancestor. They were important settlers in the American Colonies and kept marvelous records, which this site and its related mailing list can help you discover.

RootsWeb
www.rootsweb.com
This sprawling volunteer effort can be a bit confusing to master, with more ways to search and more paths to explore than you may have patience for. But it's one of online genealogy's great bargains—it's all free. User-submitted databases include death records, obituaries, military records and cemetery information, as well as the WorldConnect pedigree files and message boards whose data you also can find on Ancestry.com (but many users prefer RootsWeb's setup).

USGenWeb
www.usgenweb.com
It's no dollarcidence that we've compared so many of this list's honorees to USGenWeb. The voluminous volunteer effort, with pages for every state and most counties, is an essential tool for researching your family history from coast to coast. Besides the links, queries and tips found on each state and county page, you can search the user-submitted data nationwide or by state. USGenWeb also houses a gigantic collection of free census transcriptions and a growing tombstone-transcription project.

Where to Write for Vital Records
www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/w2welcom.htm
Sorry, sometimes the answers you need can't be found online, and you have to resort to the old-fashioned technique of writing for them. At least there's this online guide to tell you where to write and, if there's a fee, how much.

Source: David A. Frywell, "The Strongest Links." Family Tree Magazine, (August 2004).

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