Are they any good sites to lookup family trees?

Answer 1

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 2

Just be very careful about taking as fact everything you see in family trees in any website, free or paid. The information is submitted by follks like you and me. Most is not documented or poorly documented. You will see different information on the same person from different submitters. Then you will see repeatedly the identical same information from different submitters without documentation. A lot of people are copying without verifying. Use the information as clues as to where to get the documentation.

I feel Ancestry.Com is the best for the records. They have all the U. S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 is not available to the public yet. They have U. K. censuses also. Some find the price is high for Ancestry.Com. HOwever, many public libraries have a subscription to it that patrons can use.

Answer 3

I suspect you mean "Look up family trees and see everything there in front of me on a plate!"

It doesn't work like that! You will have to do a lot of detective work, although if your ancestors are in the UK there is a site - genesreunited.com, that does do this to some extent.
The only problem is, you don't know how accurate the person whose information you are sharing has been! I have seen people there with trees that show women in their mid fifties giving birth!

Answer 4

any Native American site has them, i don't know if they are any good or not or even if they cost money, some sites do.
you might check with your church if your family attends a specific one. some of the churches do keep tabs on your ancestors. (example Catholic, Mormon, Lutheran...)
you might also contact the county or state records department that you live in.
but on line??????????????? maybe contact a local library or historical society for a reputable site. they may know.

good luck.

Answer 5

If somebody has instructed you they stumbled on their kin tree on line all arranged, please tell the guy that if he/she hasn't shown it with archives/archives he/she would not be attentive to what has been stumbled on is precise or not. coaching in kin timber on line could desire to be seen very carefully. i don't care if the information superhighway website is loose or value. The timber are submitted by utilising persons such as you and me and confident, there are blunders. even once you notice certainly the comparable information on the comparable people from many diverse subscribers that would not propose that's precise. Too many people replica devoid of verifying. in case you disagree with coaching somebody has on any of your loved ones people who run the web pages will inform you it somewhat is between you and the different subscriber. No way can they get entangled and confirm each and all of the coaching submitted. on line kin timber could desire to in no way be seen as archives. There are web pages with archives like Ancestry.Com. in case you come across it too expensive, your public library could have a subscription to it you need to use for loose. nonetheless you may desire to distinguish between the archives they have gained and placed on line and their subscriber submitted kin timber. Now in case you prefer to truly hint your loved ones and you in all probability would be unable to do all of it on line, come back to this board and ask us how. there are a number of great people right here that could furnish you some great guidance and suggestion. additionally the sole way any of your loved ones would be in any of the kin timber is that if a kin member, possibly a much off cousin you have in no way met or somebody who has married a much off cousin has executed the examine and placed it on line and that they could have various blunders.

Answer 6

Ancestry.com