Does anyone know of a REAL free Family Genealogy website?

Renato Abatiell: There is an excellent tutorial for those who are new to family research at http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ; everyone starting out in genealogy should understand the basics and this tutorial covers them. After you complete the tutorial, the following is a basic plan and generally only requires the tools that you already have like your computer and Internet service provider. The person you know about is you, so, start with your birth certificate, which has your parents, and then ask your parents for copies of their birth certificates, which will have your grandparents on them. Then if you grandparents are living, continue the process. At some point, you will experience a problem depending on when you grandparents or great grandparents were born, in that; birth certificates did not exist before the early 1900s. However, you need to get back to 1930 with personal records because those types of records are not available to the public for 50 to 100 yea! rs depending on the jurisdiction in which they are held.By copying or ordering these documents, you have gone to relatively little expense and you have three generations plus yourself and you have it documented with primary documents. That will give you 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and 8 great grandparents names to start researching. Now, you can use death certificates, marriage records, census records, immigration records, church records, court records and many other sources to research your ancestry. Your public libraries will most likely have both Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest free for anyone to use while at the library and with a library card you should be able to use Heritage Quest at home. Another free online resource is the LDS/Mormon site, which has many free online records at http://www.familysearch.org/ and original documents on their pilot site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.h... . In addition to their online records, they have the Family Hi! story Centers where you can go for help with your research and! look at microfilm and they only charge nominal fees if they have to order something specifically for you or make photocopies . Find a location near you on their website and call to check hours of operation. http://www.familysearch.org/ .Additionally, USGen Web is another free online resource at http://www.usgenweb.org/ . This site is packed with how-to tips, queries and records for every state and most counties within those states. Then, there is Rootsweb at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ a free site hosted by Ancestry.com where you can search for surnames, post queries on the message boards and subscribe to surname mailing lists.Also, be sure to check each state that you need information from as many have their own projects, for example, the state of Missouri has a great website that has many free source documents online at http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/ and South Carolina has many free wills and other court documents at http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinearchives/sea.! .. Also, Family Tree Magazine’s 101 Best Websites, 2010 http://familytreemagazine.com/article/101-Best-Web... You may have to register for their free newsletter to access this list but you will find that helpful also.And the only site that is included on this list that has some links that are free and some that are not is Cyndi’s List but it will be well worth your time to look through the list for the free websites because of their quality: http://www.cyndislist.com/...Show more

Wally Gower: Was you grandfather John born in 1905 in PA? What used to be his mom's title? George Meade had approximately 10 brothers and sisters, so it's viable you're similar, however you need to do the study, opening with your self.

Elden Dedon: There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. Among themwww.cyndislist.com - 250,000 links, all categorized.www.familysearch.org - The Mormons. Gazillions of records.wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com - Roots Web World Connect - 600,000,000+ entries! usgenweb.org - Sites for every county in every state in the USAssdi.roo! tsweb.ancestry.com - Social Security Death Index, 83 million namesvitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/ - California Death Index, 9,366,786 recordswww.findagrave.com - 43 million recordsgenforum.genealogy.com - Query boards for every county in every state, and thousands of surnames.boards.ancestry.com - The other Query board site; counties and surnames too.archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com Roots Web Mailing List Archive - Over 30 million messagesI have a page with real links to all of those, below, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.If you search the resolved questions in this category only for the word "Free"(use "Advanced" to limit your search to this category only), you'll find there are thousands questions with the word, and at least 2/3rds of them ask "How can I trace my family tree for free?", just like you did. The answers to those questions have lots of links and tips. We top 10 paste our stock answer to that question 3 - 12 times a day, si! gh, and wonder why you kids haven't read the resolved questions. You are rare and special in some ways, undoubtedly, but not in your curiosity about your family. As of 7 June 2010 there were 4,456 questions with the word "free" in them in Genealogy.If you didn't mention a country, and you didn't go into Yahoo! by one of their international sub-sites, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it. If you are in the USA, AND most of your ancestors were in the USA, AND you can get to a library or FHC with census access, AND you are whiteThen you can get most of your ancestors who were alive in 1850 with 100 - 300 hours of research. You can only get to 1870 if you are black, sadly. Many people stop reading here and pick another hobby.No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a ban! jo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smu! ggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.You won't find living people on genealogy sites. You'll have to get back to people living in 1930 or so by talking to relatives, looking up obituaries and so forth.Finally, not everything you read on the internet is true. You have to be cautious and look at people's sources. Cross-check and verify. So much for the warnings. Here is the main link.http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.htmlThat page has links, plus tips and hints on how to use the sites, for a dozen huge free sites. Having one link here in the answer and a dozen links on my personal site gets around two problems. First, Y!A limits us to 10 links in an answer. Second, if one or more of the links are popular, I get "We're taking a breather" when I try to post the answer. This is a bug introduced sometime in August 2008 with the "new look".You will need the tips. Just for instance, most beginners either put too much data into the RWWC query page, or th! ey mistake the Ancestry ads at the top for the query form. I used to teach a class on Internet Genealogy at the library. I watched the mistakes beginners made. The query forms on the sites are NOT intuitive....Show more

Johnny Sirko: The free ancestry trial does ask for a credit card, but only to begin billing AS SOON as the free trial period ends.