how do you research ancestors with computer?

Answer 1

Hey Gerald,

The best way is to start with what you know, can get from living relatives, and certificates and vital records. The computer is a great tool to track your Family Tree. There are great software packages to use to organize your information. Listed below are a few.

After you get as much information as you can, and now you have a software program. Enter everything about yourself, your parents, grandparents etc that you have collected.

Some of this software will lead you to PAY sites for information, you should spend your money wisely - you are better to go to the town hall where your Great-Grandma was born and get her Birth, Death and Marriage records. Vital Records. Very important. It links us together with our past. Look at your Birth Certificate. It links you to your parents, and give valuable information about your parents.

So, you ask how to use the computer - find Vital Records. Look for the Town Libraries of the birth locations of your ancestors, and get their Vital Records. If you have to, go to the City, then County, then State, or Country. Each time you get a new record, enter the information into your software, and you will see your Tree grow with Ancestors.

Other places to go after you get the Tree started: Family Search is great for Ancestor leads on Census, Birth, Death information, and they even keep Pedigree records, and some CDs of Family Trees. Ellis Island helps trace many imigrants back to their country of origin.

Here are some great sites that you may uses. This is only the beginning, there are many more to help you. Good luck.

Answer 2

Here is a list of some of the free ones.

www.rootsweb.com -This is a good one that is free. It is run by Ancestry.com but shouldn't be confused with Ancestry.com- the pay site.

www.cyndislist.com

www.familysearch.org website for the Church of the Later Day Saints.

www.genforum.com This is a site that is full of individual message boards. You can search and post by last name, state, country, or county. This is a great one. Simply post your question on the respective board, and when people answer you will get a notification on your E-mail.

I must say, however, that a good genealogy query, doesn't just say. " I need information on John Smith" I good one would go something like this. " I am looking for information on John Smith of Holland, Michigan. John was born October 11, 1913 in Holland, Michigan and was married to Geneva Jones on October 12, 1937 also in Holland. He died on July 1, 2000. They had six children named. Abraham, Benjamin, Charles, Daniel, Edward and Franklin. I would really like to find out who John's parents are.

As you can see, a good query has

1) the persons name
2) all of the biographical information you know to date and
3) asks a specific question

The reason it is so specific is because people won't waste your time and theirs telling you what you already know. Also, by providing ALL of your known information (for example, the childrens names) it gives people alternate people to research to help arrive at your answer.

http://www.usgenweb.org/ -When you get to the main page, you can get to the state and individual locality pages by clicking on the appropriate links. Keep in mind that some towns are going to have more information than some smaller obscure towns. It all depends on what kinds of volunteers contribute information to their sites. Genealogy is very much a hobby that depends on people.

Check your local library. Many libraries have subscriptions to Ancestry.com or hertiage quest that you can Access from home with your library card number. Heritage Quest is geared mostly toward the US records.

www.interment.net or www.findagrave.com These are cemetery sites that have grown by leaps and bounds.

http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-b...

This is the link to the Social Security Death index. This is a very helpful resource to finding death dates of people who died in recent years (since about the 60's)

If your family immigrated to the US in the last 100-125 years you can try
www.ellisisland.org
This one is cool because you can actually have a look at the ships manifests!!

Good luck in your search. It is a satisfying and rewarding hobby with lots of twist and turns. Remember, you are not going to just find your entire genealogy in one search. It is an ongoing puzzle. I tell people, if you can find one thing every time you are searching, you are doing GREAT. If you find any more than that at any given time you are LUCKY!! Blessings.

Answer 3

You need to ask your living relatives for the names of their parents / grandparent and beyond to get you to those ancestors who were living in 1901 as they will be registered in the 1901 cencus. Once you get this far back plot your family in a family tree software such as Family Tree Maker or Roots Magic or on www.ancestry.co.uk or http://www.genesreunited.co.uk Once plotted you can then start to locate the people living in 1901 in the Census on both these sites or http://www.1901censusonline.com once you track the individuals down you can see their families which often leads you to locating their parents names and on you can go through each of the census to the first one in 1841 (1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901) Once you have tracked them all back to 1841 you will need to start visiting the Parishes where your ancestors lived to start looking through the Parish Records. Another good website to look at is http://freebmd.rootsweb.com as this gives you the record number that you will need to order the birth, marriage or death certificate of your ancestor to gather more informtion about them from the General Registers Office at http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

It's all very interesting, I just wish there were more parish records aavailable on the internet rather than having to travel miles to the aarea where you ancestors lived to look through the records. But more are coming on line slowly as people transcribe them.

Answer 4

go look up the country they were from and the city. if that doesnt work, than you could ask you grandparents, maybe they know something.

Answer 5

Go to http://www.searchforancestors.com/ancestrysearch.html I hope it helps!