i need to research my family history for my history class. what websites should i use?

Question

its our final project. i need to trace as far back as i can but have no clue where to start. if you know any websites let me know.

Answer 1

Look here:
http://www.tedpack.org/genlinks.html

http://www.tedpack.org/genhead.html
may help too, but there is more there than you can read and practise in a week.

This question comes up every month or two. I always get thumbs-down for doing so, but I encourage people to lie. Asking students to trace their family tree is like asking someone who has never fished to go out and catch brook trout - enough to feed a party of 12, by Monday, and use just dry flies, not worms.

Ask your grandparents who their grandparents were, where they were born, where and when they died. If you find someone who fits on any of the sites, claim them, even if they aren't the right one. As long as you keep roughly 30 years between generations and keep your family moving west, the teacher isn't going to know.

If you want to be honest, interview your grandparents (assuming they are still alive, sane and speaking to you.) Ask them how they met and what their life was teens was like. Ask them about their parents, too.

Answer 2

I think Genevieve's Mom gave an appropriate warning about bad information.

Don't take for fact everything you see in family trees on any website, free or paid. The information is submitted by folks like you and me and most is not documented. You might see different information on the same person from different submitters. Then you will see repeatedly the same information from different submitters without documentation or poor documentation. All too often people are copying without verifying. Use the information as clues only to get the documentation. There are errors in family trees on the internet.

Answer 3

First you need to write down all the living people in your tree. You don't need to include all aunts and uncles and their kids, but you can if you want to. But you won't be able to pick up the trail with internet resources until you get back before 1930, and only on people who are already dead. So ask your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to help you flesh out the tree. The more information they give you going into it, the easier your trek.

You need six pieces of information on every person in the tree:
1. Get the correct spelling of names...nothing makes it harder than trying to track people with the wrong spelling.
2. Birth date/place
3. Marriage date/place
4. Death date/place
5. Spouse's name
6. Parents' names


You can download family history sheets for free from the Mormon Family History site at http://www.familysearch.org. Beware of the information on their site, though. Some of it's really bad and will be flat out wrong. It's not reviewed after people submit it...and some really sloppy research can kill a tree quickly.

Once you're organized, go to the largest public library near you and ask if they have free access to either HeritageQuest or Ancestry.com. These are the two best programs available to the public, and they're free if you use them through the library.

Finally, you may need a research buddy to help you go to the courthouse and county admin building in the county where your ancestors lived. Grandpas are really good at this...mine sure was. There are going to be birth, marriage and death records there which you won't find online. All of them are really helpful in finding parents and going back to the next generation.

Once you track down all the branches you can and need more help, drop me an email through my profile and I'll do whatever I can to help you.

Answer 4

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 5

This is a great way to learn more about your family, so try talking with them and see what they have to say. From there, the social security death index is a good place. You can type in their name and find out their exact date of birth, death, place of birth and place of death. Check out this site: http://www.familyresearchlibrary.com/ssdi.htm

Good luck!