We get a lot of questions at Family History Daily about locating free genealogy resources on the web. While we certainly have our favorites, and do our best to stay up-to-date on new research options, we also know that best is a relative term. Having a wide variety of great research and educational options to choose from is often key to making those important discoveries.
So, we wonder, what are your favorite free family history research sites and resources?
Whether they’re huge international databases, or tiny regional initiatives, please share them with your fellow readers in the comments below! Hopefully, we’ll all learn something new.
Image: “Craftsman in shop holding Boston newspaper.” Thomas Waterman Wood, 1884. Library of Congress
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A great free resource is LDSGenealogy.com. it has an extensive directory to help locate records, as well as helpful articles about doing genealogy.
My favorite website is http://www.genealogists.com. With over 1,000 professional genealogists, historians, DNA experts, and university professors worldwide, Genealogists.com is the world’s largest family history research firm. Their site explains what records can be found where and is an indispensable tool for anyone doing family history research.
This has tons of information for all over the world, plus digital images from microfilm/microfiche, plus digitized books. This is one of my first go-to sites.
For those with Cornish ancestry, you can’t go past the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks (OPC) website http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/
I agree about FultonHistory.com! That site is amazing when researching my New York ancestors.
I’m a dedicated Geni user. Most people know about Geni, I think, but I don’t think many realize that they can get the paid features for free at their local library, historical society, genealogy club, etc. through the Geni Public Access program. And the library doesn’t pay anything for it, either, so if you ask your library for it, they really should say yes. http://www.geni.com/corp/geni-public-access-program/
I am a big believer in checking historical society databases. http://www.chs.org/ is great for Connecticut. http://www.iconn.org/ is AMAZING for searching newspaper archives, but I’d have to check how much you can do without a Connecticut library card. But if you have one, you should be using that site!
I have found so much useful information in old, out-of-copyright books, such as country histories, biographies, etc. Many of these can be found on Archive.org and Google Books (http://books.google.com/). For American researchers, this site is especially useful as a compendium of links to these kinds of books: http://genealogybooklinks.com/
I’ll second the Fulton History site. It’s wonderful.
For Australian Newspapers there is Trove at http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper.
For everything you ever wanted to know about Genealogy in the UK: http://www.genuki.org.uk
And let’s not forget the FamilySearch catalogue and wiki at http://www.familysearch.org
http://www.fultonhistory.com Giant quirky free resource for New York state historical newspapers.