What is the best geneology website. I'd like to trace back my family.?

Question

French and Irish

Answer 1

Are you an American or Do you live in a different country?
geneology.com for citizens of the US.
ellisislandrecords.org can be a good place to start, it has a log of immigrant records.

Answer 2

You won't get much from most of the sites with regard to France. The site you need to search for their records is http://www.geneanet.org . It's the only site that really has a significant set of French records. France is very unusual in how they archive their records and they're not in one spot like they are in the US with the National Archives. Instead, each department (like US counties) of each province (like US states) keeps their own records in their own archives. There isn't a good system in place to transcribe the records and put them online. You'll also find that you'll need to order several films from the LDS to get the records you need in France.

Irish is also a bit complicated. There are an increasing number of sites that are widdling their way through the million-plus immigrants from the Irish potato famine. The important ones are:
http://www.castlegarden.org (Port of New York passenger records)
http://www.ancestry.com
http://www.ancestry.uk.co
http://www.nara.gov

This is one of the few times where the investment in the paid sites would be well worth the money. The free sites haven't been able to get the records online because of the sheer volume and the fact that the organizations holding them are selling them for extremely high prices. It may be a few years before we see them on sites like http://www.familysearch.org

If the investment of $100 to access the records is daunting to you, I'd suggest a free membership at Geneanet (very tedious, but you will make it through the records without a subscription, you just can't include the firstname in the search) and then go to your local library and see if they have a public use subscription to either Ancestry.com or Heritage Quest that you can use. That way you get to access the records without having to pay for a membership.

Hope it helps....

Answer 3

Assuming that you've already were given a tree of a few description and also you purely prefer to share it with the relax of the international, then someplace like Tribalpages, Rootsweb or maybe Genes Reunited is also helpful. in my opinion, I come across Tribalpages to be pleasant. in case you does no longer have a tree and prefer to create one from scratch, then that i'm afraid will be an impossibility. relations tree study costs funds. you'll probably no longer get very a procedures in searching to study your tree in case you do not initiate paying for the right starting up marriage and death certificate and gathering information.

Answer 4

The information you see on family trees on any of the websites should be taken as clues not as fact as much of the information is not documented.
Even if you see the same information over and over by different submitters, a lot of copying is being done.

However, Ancestry.Com has lots of records and is obtaining more all the time.

Answer 5

Now that you've said French and Irish - French isn't going to be easy but you may do well at familysearch.org and ancestry.com, plus the rootsweb resources and message boards. May be good advice for Ireland also. In both cases your local LDS family history center may be a good bet for research.

What you didn't give is a time frame, and it matters, for specific research, narrowed.

Answer 6

you will get a lot of "best" sites for answers- there are a LOT of sites out there. and many of them charge $$$ (ancestry.com is a biggee that way) me, im not willing to pay that kind of money on things i can find for free.(i just have to work a bit harder)

my own personal favorites are as follows

genforum.com

rootsweb.com (there is a link to the ssi death indexes there too)
and

familysearch.org. (this is the latterday saints site and an excellent site)

other thoughts
document everything you find- notes of who, where & when you find data will help you.
Do invest in a really good computer program (my favorite is family tree maker)
and acknowledge your sources! if you quote things - state your sources- its good manners!!

good luck and just remember 85-95% of research is finding what is NOT your family
but man,
when you find that 5-15%!!! wow what a rush!!! lol!!

good luck

Answer 7

I've found ancestry.com to be quite useful. It flags entries that it might have information with you.

I was pretty amazed at how easy it was to get a tree going, once I got the basics covered. Once you have some names from ancestry, try Googling names -- all sorts of good stuff comes up.

Answer 8

Cindy's List

Answer 9

Ancestry.com is awesome!! I tracked my family back to the 1500's using that site!

Answer 10

The church of jesus christ of latter days saints..its the only one that i found thats free,,,and they are updating their system so that more people can add their realitives and do more back tracking in their past.