How can i find my ancestors online from the 1800's?
the only problem is that i only know both my parents names, date of birth, and birthplace and marriage stuff like that. i don’t know all the information on my grandparents. is there a free website where i could find my ancestors with this information?
i’ve tried ancestry.com.
i’ve already entered my name and info, my parents’ names and info, but i’m really not getting anywhere…
Tagged with: ancestors • ancestry com • date of birth • free website • grandparents • marriage • parents names
Filed under: Research
Genealogy is about researching dead people - if your parents are still living you should not be able to find their details online. You should be able to get some information about your grandparents from your parents’ birth and marriage certificates.
You should begin by talking to all your relatives, ask to see old photographs, records of birth, baptism, death and marriage, family Bibles, funeral service sheets, etc, and make copies. To protect the privacy of the living, some records are closed for 70 to 100 years, or you have to pay to see them, so the more information you can get from your oldest living relatives the better. Too many of us family historians regret not questioning the oldies closely before they popped their clogs.
Get all the names, dates and places you can and then check these against the official records. Then you work back one generation at a time, using birth/baptism, death/burial and marriage records, and the census. More help with how to begin your research is given on these sites:-
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Search/RG/frameset_rg.asp
http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
Find out where all your deceased relatives are buried, visit the graves, transcribe the information on the gravestones and take photographs. If you don’t know where people are buried or are unable to visit the graves, you may find them on http://www.findagrave.com
The free LDS site has a large collection of parish register transcripts in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which you can search online. You can search many more records at your local LDS Family History Centre. Find out where the nearest one is on their website http://www.familysearch.org
You may strike lucky and find some of your family history online, if a relative has already done the research and uploaded it to a family tree website or lineage-linked database. You could search the World Connect project to see if anyone has already done research on your ancestors. View these trees with caution as much of the ‘research’ is suspect - verify anything you find online by consulting the original records before incorporating the data into your family tree. http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com
Cyndi’s List has a page with links to other lineage-linked databases (family trees):- http://www.cyndislist.com/lin-linked.htm
Make a family history folder in your Bookmarks or Favourites and put all these sites in it for future reference. These sites have links to worldwide resources:-
http://www.worldgenweb.org/
http://www.cyndislist.com/
You will want a family history program to record your ancestors as you find them, and to print out ancestor charts, descendant charts, family group sheets, etc. Personal Ancestral File (PAF) is free from familysearch, and RootsMagic is available in a usable trial version. Download both and see which you prefer. http://www.rootsmagic.com/
When you have identified what you are looking for and where, come back and ask some more questions, giving as much info as possible about dates and locations.
Ancestry.com is a very good website and thats plenty to get to the 1800’s
familysearch.org Try their new BETA ‘pilot’ program.
If your parents are still alive and married ask them if you can see their marriage certificate. Depending on the year and the state, the marriage certificate might hold some useful information. Also Mom and Dad’s birth certificates will give the names of their parents.
Your parents’ birth certificates, death certificates, SSN applications, marriage certificates, death certificates may all have their parents’ names. The SSN application is the best, because the person almost always fills it out him/her self. They are $27. Write if you want details.
If your can find a wedding story in the society pages of the newspaper, on microfilm in the library, you may be able to reap genealogical gold. They will often give the names of all kinds of relatives, and both mothers’ maiden names.
With rare exception you have to use non-Internet sources to get back to 1930, then start hitting Ancestry.com’s data bases, starting with the census.