How can I find out if I'm related to very famous people, all the way back to the Middle ages?

Question

Those family tree searchs, and all those sites don't help. And my parents don't know anything about their anscestors, and I only have 1 set of living grandparents, but they are pure German, and don't really know alot about their ancestory.

For example I look exactly like a girl in a painting from about 500 or 600 years ago, but I have no information on the girl and I don't remember what the painting was called!

ancestry.com sucks, i tried it, I can't pay for the subscription. I need free!

Answer 1

The reality is that genealogy is very time-consuming and not inexpensive. In order to get the records that we need in order to go back hundreds of years, we have to pay for more than just a service like Ancestry.com. We have to pay for copies of birth, marriage and death records, we have to send correspondence to Europe and (often) pay for translators. We have to order films from the LDS or through Interlibrary loan.

If you want to get started and can't afford your own subscription to Ancestry, then check out what's available through the larger libraries in your area. If you have one available to you with a genealogy room, then the odds are good that they have a public use subscription to either Ancestry or Heritage Quest, so you can use the library computers to get free access to the records that you need.

There is simply no way to get records back to the Middle Ages without spending a lot of money to do good research. I've spent more than $38000 to do just one tree because of all of the records I had to request from Europe and the travel involved.

You don't need living relatives to give you the information. In fact many living relatives fill us full of bad information. You can go out and do the research yourself and have the immense rewards that come from a job well-done. Find a free genealogy program through a library in your area or contact your local genealogy society and learn the basics of good research. The records are there for you, you just need to be creative enough to find them and pull them all together.

Answer 2

Try seeing if any of your ancestors are signed up with MyFamily.com, it is part of Ancestory, but only one person needs to pay yearly to keep your family site open if there is one. If you can't find anyone, you'll have to start by checking out where your great grandparents were from and see if you can go there to find out about their birth certificates. It will cost you around $20 apeice for them, but I am sure you can get the records to look at for free, and maybe take notes. From their birth certificates, you can find out who their parents were and where they were from and their parents and go on and on until you can't find anymore.

Answer 3

well the best thing I can think of is to find out anything you can from your grandparents, even if they dont know much about their ancestry, if you can just get THEIR parents names, and stories about them (where they came from, grandma's maiden name, ect) it may not get you back to the middle ages, but its a good place to start, especially if you can find out what town in germany your grandparents or their parents and so on originally came from, as you may have distant relatives there who will have family records farther back.

Answer 4

http://www.cyndislist.com
Genealogy links across the net organized all in one spot.

german sites from cyndi's list
http://www.cyndislist.com/germany.htm

http://www.rootsweb.com
Largest, oldest free site on the net

http://www.familysearch.org
Provide by the mormon church

A really big family tree chock full of famous people
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~tdowling/

Answer 5

Try http://www.ancestry.com

Answer 6

if you ever find this info, please e-mail me.