Is there an easy way that I can find out about my ancestry family tree?

Question

any websites? would I have to pay?

Answer 1

No there isn't. There is no site where you can type in your name and get a family tree back to 1500. You have to do the work.

Start with yourself, then your parents, then your grandparents and work backwards. This is the only way to know anything about your ancestry.

You need to talk to your relatives, find out what they know. Believe it or not, the most difficult information to gather is information from the last 70 years or so - because no legitimate site will post information about living individuals. So talk to relatives, go through family records, scrapbooks, photo albums, etc. and build your tree from yourself working backwards.

At some point, you will be far enough back where you can start looking at some of the genealogy sites. But until you establish a solid foundation of a few generations, these won't do you much good because you will have no way of knowing if any information you find actually applies to YOUR family -- just because the surname is the same doesn't cut it.

Go for it! It's fun and addictive.

Answer 2

No, there is probably no easy way.

You start with your living family members and get as much information from them as possible, particuarly your senior members.
Tape them if they will let you. They might be confused on some things but what might seem to be insignificant story tellings might turn out to be very important.

Go to your public library and see what they have in the genealogy section. They might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can utilize. Ancestry.Com has lots of records and is getting more all the time. They have all the censuses through 1930. The 1940 is not available to the public yet.

Now, don't take as fact everything you see in family trees on any website, free or paid.
The information is user submitted and most is not documented. Even when you see the same information over and over by different submitters, that doesn't mean it is right. They are people who are copying without verifying and there are errors in family trees on the internet. Use the information as clues as to where to get the documentation.

A Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church has lot of records, not just on Mormons. In Salt Lake City, theyhave the world's largest genealogical colleciton. Their Family History Centers can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee. They don't bring up their religion and they will not send their missionaries by to ring your doorbell.


You will need to check courthouse records, wills, deeds etc.

You need vital records, births, marriages, deaths, usually these provide the names of parents. An applicaiton for a social security number also gives you the names of both parents, including mother's maiden name, and their place of birth.

Now it wasn't until the first quarter of the 20th century that any govenring body in the U. S. started recording vital information. Before that you will usually find the information in churches.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

The "easy way" would be to hire a professional genealogist.

Due to the amount of information required to do a fairly decent family tree, if you go back more than just a few generations, you will find it to be VERY time intensive. PCs now have humongous storage on their hard drives; but, if you COULD put everything into the computer, you will soon find it is very difficult to organize all that information. I currently have more than 100 MB of info, and most of it is not even in the computer YET.

If you are sincerely interested in your ahnentafel, your genealogy, you will need to be dedicated and organized. So, try these sites and suggestions:

The biggest expense will be TIME; I have spent hundreds of hours and have so much left to compile.
Remember, no matter where you obtain the information, there are mistakes (yes, I include "official" documents, such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, death certificates, whatever). My maternal grandmother's tombstone doesn't even have her name correct!
Anyhew, as to searching, try these:
Free sites: there are several to choose from. Start with:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

Assuming they emigrated from Europe, start with Ellis Island and the Battery Conservancy sites:
http://www.ellisisland.org
http://www.castlegarden.org
For those with native American ancestry, try:
http://www.tribalpages.com/

For a fee, try a DNA test:
When you really want to know where your ancestors came from, try such sites as: www.familytreedna.com, dnatribes.com, dnaancestryproject.com, and, of course, the National Geographics Genotype program, https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/geno...
For Jewish ancestry, try:
www.israelgenealogy.com
Have a look at these sites these are South African ones,
http://genealogy.about.com/od/south_afri...
http://www.rupert.net/~lkool/page2.html....
http://www.jewishgen.org/safrica/website...
http://southafricanfamilyhistory.wordpre...

Meaning of names:
http://www.winslowtree.com/surname-meani...

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f...

Finding live people:
Two good places I use are www.zabasearch.com and www.peoplefinder.com

Don't forget, use your local library. Ours (a small one, yet) has www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com, as well as periodicals, books and guidance from an experienced genealogist.

Keep good notes on where you find what: sources are very important.

I became interested in genealogy when I was a small lad, before I started to school, as my Mom would tell me about her parents, my Dad's parents, and on back. That is also when I first got used to the idea of "the power of 2": You have 2 parents, they each have 2 parents, and so on. 5 generations ago, you would have had 16 g-g-g-grandparents; by 10 generations ago, the number would be 512 "grandparents"; by 35 generations ago, the number is 16,179,869,184 persons (compared to a total of 6,700,000,000 people alive on Planet Earth today). In other words, basically every one on earth can trace their COMMON ancestry back to within the last 34 generations! (Or, since Medieval Times.)

Good luck!

Answer 4

There are a lot of good ways to find out about your family tree. One free site is http://www.familysearch.org/ the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has paid to make this available to all who want to find their ancestors in their family. There are also some great helps on how to get started in this site.

Another great site is www.ancestory.com. Here you can build a family tree. However to search records like census records and other all other us records there is a $12.95/month anual fee, which isn't all that bad. To search all world records annual fee is $24.95/ month for a year or you can purchase a membership for just one month or 3 months. There may be group rates also that you can check into.

Good luck. Finding ancestors is really fun and rewarding.

Answer 5

ancestry is a very very good site which is why you have to pay, a very good free site is linked below,

Your first port of call though should be to talk you any family members you have Parents, Grand parents cousins etc.

Gather any family papers Certificate of Birth, Death and Marriage and Baptism certificates, Family Bibles are good and any military paper work.

A warning Once you start on this road it will become addictive.

Good luck and good hunting

Answer 6

First talk to all your relatives. Esp the older members. pick their brains for any names they can come up with. Then go to local court house and look up all the names on public records, then go to free ancestry.com and make a family tree.

Answer 7

there is ancestry.com which is about £12 a month and there is also Genes Reunited - i dont know how much that costs. Ifyou are tracing family stuff, look on the site Free BMD that can show you some info..

Answer 8

There are over 500,000 free sites devoted to genealogy on the Internet.

Researching your family tree is about as difficult as writing a term paper in a high school History class. You don't have to be a rocket scientist, but it isn't as easy as looking up the capital of Peru. If your great-aunt has already done it and posted her line on the Internet, you might find a line from your (dead) great grandfather all the way back to Charlemagne tonight, without any work.

If not, you will have to do the work yourself. Most teens don't want to spend the time. If you are interested, read on.

These are large and free. Many of them, however, have subtle ads for Ancestry.com in them - ads that ask for a name, then offer a trial subscription. Watch out for those advertisements.

http://www.cyndislist.com/
(240,000+ links, all cross-indexed. If you want Welsh or Pennsylvania Dutch or Oregon or any other region, ethnic group or surname, chances are she has links for it.)

The LDS site and the RWWC here would be the places to look for Great Aunt Matilda's research. Don't enter everything on either form; just name and approximate birth year. Set the year range to (+/-) 5. Don't expect to find living people, either. Look for someone who was born before 1900.

http://www.familysearch.com
(Mormon's mega-site. Click on "Search", to start with, or "Advanced Search").

Roots Web
http://www.rootsweb.com
and in particular,
http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi
(Roots Web World Connect; 500,000,000+ entries, of varying quality)

Ancestry.com
http://www.ancestry.com/
(which has free pages and FEE pages - so watch out)
and, in particular,
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/default.aspx?ln=
Surname meanings and origins

http://www.tedpack.org/begingen.html
My own site: "How to Begin"

United States only:

http://www.usgenweb.net/
(Subdivided into state sites, which all have county sites.)
(The Canadians have Canadian Gen Web, by province)

http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi
(Social Security Death index - click on "Advanced". You may find your grandparents.)

http://find.person.superpages.com/
(US Phone book, for looking up distant cousins)


United Kingdom Only:

http://www.genuki.org.uk/
(Biggest site for United Kingdom & Ireland)

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
(Free Birth, Marriage & Death Records)

In the USA, some public libraries have census image subscriptions. Many Family History Centers do too. FHC's are small rooms in Mormon churches. They welcome anyone interested in genealogy, not just fellow Mormons. They have resources on CD's and volunteers who are friendly. They don't try to convert you; in fact, they don't mention their religion unless you ask a question about it.

This is a general hint: Even though you go in through YA Canada, YA Australia, YA UK or YA USA, all of the questions go into one big "pot" and get read by everyone in the world who speaks English. Most of the people here are in the UK and USA, but you sometimes get questions and answers from people who worry about kangaroos eating their roses. So - put a nation, or, better yet, if you are asking about a specific individual, a nation and a state / province, in all of your questions. It will help people help you.

Answer 9

plant an acorn and watch it grow