Finding Family for Free

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Comment by Helen Pust on May 19, 2010 at 10:08am

Hi I have been a long time member of Ancestry and have had luck on some of the branches. But there are a couple that still give me fun at finding facts. The one I really have is find my grandfathers birth certificate in the UK. Apparently according to family he was born on a ship from Scotland to Eng. but even the Gov. UK seem to have trouble finding his birth certificate. Things become even more difficult when they changed his name during his service with the army in 1900-06. If anyone has a suggestion other the the UK gov. please let me know. I only know his father's name, James Louder, but there are some many of same name it is hard to pick,. If I can help others with info on family in western Canada please let me know.

Comment by Robin Foster on May 14, 2010 at 11:01am

Great Resource! Have you also seen: Best Free Online Resources at FamilySarch Forums?

Comment by ELIZABETH DILLEEN on March 31, 2010 at 4:36am

Hello, I am very interested in finding family without expense. I have used Ancestry. com before but since I live in australia and my history is in America, it can be expense especially when the dollar fluctuates. The 19.95 per month subscription can become 35.00 or 40.00 instead. I will surely be looking in on this section regularly.

Comment by Barbara Bradley Petura on December 27, 2009 at 3:15pm

Catherine Davis, below, has a very good point -- that most genealogy resources have costs, whether to taxpayers or businesses or non-profit groups. I suppose the only truly free genealogy information comes from our family records, scrapbooks, Bibles and conversations - which is why those are so important!

I chose the phrase Finding Family for Free for a series of postings in my blog called Relative Musings. I then used it here at GenealogyWise. My aim was to encourage newcomers to try to find more about their families and not be afraid they have no chance to finding resources without big outlays of money. Because there are many resources available at no cost to someone just beginning. [See my discussion above on the newly available DAR patriot records, for example].

One of the most amazing free resources is Google Books, with thousands of digitized books including those out of copyright with the full information. I have found much of my Bradley family records from their centuries in Connecticut and from there back to Yorkshire. I salute Google for investing some of their considerable earnings into this project to make the world's published knowledge available to all.

I commend the states that are making older birth and death records easily available online. Another example is my own State of Washington which has excellent Digital Archives.

I fully agree with Catherine - always thank volunteers who help you, take time to give back by helping others, and don't begrudge the modest fees of $5 or $10 or $15 to a library or genealogy society! I encourage you to join genealogy and history societies relevant to your family research to support their work. Become a volunteer yourself. Some of the finest free genealogy information comes from people helping people!

Happy New Year and best wishes for your family research!

Comment by Catherine Davis on December 17, 2009 at 9:39pm

The idea of free genealogy has also been a discussion in the forum under the topic "Fees for information from Genealogy sites." I encourage all of you to check out the discussion that has gone on there. In addition, I feel it is very important to say the same thing here that I did there, and that is that there is no such thing as free genealogy. A website may be free you or me, but someone somewhere is paying for it, whether it be the LDS church members on familysearch.org or the taxpayers of Missouri who bring us http://sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/birthdeath/. I'm neither a Mormon nor a Missourian, but I appreciate both groups of people because they have given me great leads in finding my family or in helping a client. Same with libraries, county courts, etc. In most instances, it is thanks to taxpayers or someone else somewhere that we can access information that looks free to us. Please say thanks to them, before you lambast those places that charge you $10 to use the library that has come under hard times during this economic downturn.

Comment by Barbara Bradley Petura on October 12, 2009 at 10:02pm

Hello Darlene, Thank you for offering to help members of the group with research in Columbus, Ohio. That sort of genealogical kindness can make a big difference!
Barbara

Comment by Darlene Ford on October 12, 2009 at 7:17am

I am willing to help do research here in Columbus, Ohio.
Darlene

Comment by Barbara Bradley Petura on October 11, 2009 at 1:44pm

Hello! We're almost to 100 members of Finding Family for Free, so welcome to new members and long timers alike. If you look under the Using Google Search for Genealogy discussion, you'll see I've posted a new resource outlining 18 ways to use Google tools and search strategies. I think you'll find something useful there!

Comment by Barbara Bradley Petura on September 15, 2009 at 9:17pm

Welcome to Finding Families for Free! There are now 6 topics in the Discussion Forum so please click View All to see the topics. And add your ideas in the forum or here on the Comments Wall. You will help others by providing your tips and suggestions on resources. Thanks! Barbara

Comment by Jennifer Denise Chambers on August 17, 2009 at 6:47pm

I use :
www.familysearch.com
www.us-census.org
BOTH FREE OF CHARGE

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