What is a good way to find your genealogy, your ancestors and heritage, without having to pay money?

Answer 1

Try familysearch.org

Answer 2

First of all, you need to find out any information you can from other relatives. Even little tiny things can end up giving you ways to find them. If you know where an ancestor married or where they died you can get records of that and it usually lists parents names. Look in the phone book for the nearest Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Mormons, and call and ask them the nearest family history library. They will know where it is. You'll be amazed on the information you can find there, a lot of time with very little information. I looked for a John Sullivan who was born in Pennsylvania in 1902. I went through all the censuses of Pennsylvania from 1902 and 1903 and I finally found him. It listed his parents names and where they were from. I wrote to every Sullivan in a certain area of Pennsylvania and got some answers that way. Be persistent. If any of your family knows anything at all write it down, even if it's a story about something your ancestor liked to do, whatever. I don't believe familyhistory.com charges, maybe it's familysearch.com. Ancestry will give you a free trial to use their site, plus they do have a lot of information that is free, such as the social security index and etc. Good luck! It's fun when you actually do find some links. Those links keep leading to more links, and so on.

Answer 3

Hi Maggie,

1. Get your certificates, and documentation, your parents, etc all you can.
2. Interview all living relatives for dates, times, pictures, stories, etc.
3. Then start looking deeper, start at yourself, prove connection to parents, they to their parents, etc. Each generation your tree will get bigger.

You can go to genealogy libraries, or do your research on the internet. Here are some sites. You will learn what they mean over time. This is a long process. For every answer, there are 2 more questions.

Read other responses, right here in Yahoo Answers.

Answer 4

You shouldn't have to spend a ton money to access records, but you may have to spend some money to get to the places where you can access the records yourself! And you may have to spend some money for copies of records if you want them for your reference files. If you have to acquire records from any agencies (local, county, state, or federal), you will definitely have to spend some money!

There are several great genealogical libraries ... the best ones I know about are in Independence, MO and at the Mormon Church's library in Salt Lake City.

Start with whatever records your family has ... family bible, family photos, local church/school records, newspaper obits, cemetery records, property deeds, marriage, birth, and death certificates, etc. Talk to your oldest living relatives and get them to tell you everything they know/remember. Once you've traced things back as far as you can that way, check out census records looking for your relatives. It is MUCH easier if you know the county and township they lived in at the time of the census ... if you don't, you are going to have to look at an AWFUL lot of old records!!! There are websites like http://ancestory.com that charge a fee (around $300 a year or so, or a monthly fee) to access records through them. You can do some preliminary research for free, but if you find something that you want to check out further, it's going to cost you!

GOOD LUCK!

Answer 5

The Mormon church excels at this sort of thing because they baptize the dead. (I knew.. unscriptural and goofy, but at least they're great genealogists!)

So start at the Mormon home page...

http://www.ancestorhunt.com/mormon_church_records.htm

Good luck.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

familysearch.org