UPDATED! My motto is, "The more you share your information, the more new and better information will come back to you."
****For family associations and surname related websites see my Resources page. For general searches on ANY name, see below.****
Ancestry.com has taken over Rootsweb, but has kept all Rootsweb sites free. Thank you Ancestry.com!!
ROOTSWEB:This is a comprehensive genealogy site that is an umbrella for many non-profit genealogy sites. They make genealogy on the net easy!
https://sites.rootsweb.com/ This is their main website and you can access most of the things I have below from right here. They have added some cool search engines to their main page.
http://www.usgenweb.org/index.html This is the address for the USGenWeb homepage. Read it and find out who and what they are. Then click on the link that says Project's State Pages. If your browser or Internet Service Provider (ISP) doesn't support very many graphics look for a list or menu of states. If your computer can handle moderate amounts of graphics click on MAP. From the map or list, click on the state you'd like to do research in. Then once you're into the state, choose the county you're interested in.
Go to the query section. If they have Genconnect, you can do a quick search for your surname. If they don't you'll need to read all the queries. Post a query that has to do with your ancestor. Remember to be specific. Te all that you know about them. I've seen queries that look like: "Does anyone know Joe Smith who used to live in New York." It would be better to say, "I'm looking for information on John Seccomb, b. 17 Aug 1780 in Massachusetts, who married a Sally Lamphere, b. 12 Mar 1860 in Skaneateles, Oneida, New York. Give where they lived, who their children were and at least for Genconnect CAPITALIZE ALL SURNAMES (Not the whole name) Then you post it and wait. I think you'll be surprised what kind of information comes your way.https://sites.rootsweb.com/~cemetery/ Cemetery Project of the USGenWeb To see lists of what cemeteries are on-line choose VIEW THE REGISTRY. This is the cemetery component of the USGenWeb project. Depending on the county you go to on the regular USGenWeb above, they may have more cemeteries than this does, but check both. You just never know what you can find. It can be wonderful. Click on "View the Registry" to see a choice of states. From there you can choose information by county, then by cemetery.
http://www.us-census.org Census Project of the USGenWeb Good county coordinators also have a link to their census information on the regular USGenWeb pages, but this will take you right there to the state index.
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~maillist/ This is a good place to look for information. Join these mail lists judiciously. Some are high volume and some are low. Common names are going to generate higher volumes of email. Less common names will have a much lower volume.
GENCONNECT
http://resources.rootsweb.com/surnames/ This site will take you to a place where resources are gathered together for a particular surname. There are several search engines on the same page that will look in different files. I've been amazed at some of the information I've found. It may take you to websites with that surname as well as to GenConnect message boards for posting Wills, Queries, Obits, Pensions, Bible Records, Bios and Deeds . The more you make your information available to others the more you will succeed at finding new information.
LDS
http://www.familysearch.org/ This is the LDS site. They have a lot of good information, but you need to check their sources.
Family Tree Maker
http://genforum.familytreemaker.com/ This is a family Tree Maker site. It is free and anyone can look there and post messages. I've been very successful here.
Explore all the info you can at a site and check out other links. I've found some interesting things this way.Ancestry
http://www.ancestry.com/ This site frustrates me a bit, but newcomers to it get a free subscription for so many days. They do have a lot of good information, but to get to a lot of it you have to pay. I'm probably going to break down one of these days and join them. They do have a lot of good information, however, some of it just tells you places to look for information. In other words they direct you to another source, but considering how long it might have taken you to find that source otherwise, it is probably a good deal.
Gendex
http://www.gendex.com/gendex/ Gendex This site is an indexed list of people found on genealogy homepages. It does not index all genealogy homepages, but some of them. It can be useful in finding others interested in your research.
Genealogy How-to pages
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/ This is a great How-to site that tells you all kinds of things about HOW-TO do genealogy.
http://www.firstct.com/fv/oldhand.html Decipher old Handwriting This tells how to decipher old types of handwriting.
State Archives for Indiana & Illinois
Indiana: http://www.statelib.lib.in.us/WWW/INDIANA/GENEALOGY/genmenu.htmlIllinois
http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html
If you have ancestors in Indiana or Illinois, these are MUST-use archives. I've found all kinds of things there! Their marriage index is especially good.WILLS
http://www.sampubco.com/ Sampubco is a great site for finding wills. I've mostly used it for New York, but others are also coming on-line. You don't have to pay him to get the wills. Just go to a family history center and order the film. However, if you aren't going to pay him, make sure you post the will to the GenConnect Website for that county. He likes people to share their info. :-) So do I. Of course you can pay him, it might be easier. I have found 3 wills there for sure. Recently, I think I have the potential for finding 4 more.
Homepage Construction & Learning Html
http://www.pagetutor.com/pagetutor/index.html Web Wizard Tutor. This is a great little tutorial for learning a little html. It has helped me a lot.
http://www.CyndisList.com/construc.htm This is Cyndi's Homepage construction kit. It is the best place to learn how to make your own webpages.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~rjacob/gedpage.htm Gedpage. This is the program that I used to take my gedcom and make a whole lot of html pages that also provide documentation. I really like it because it has an easy-to-read format. I'm not left wondering where the spouse is or where the children or grandparents are.
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Monday, 12-Apr-2004 09:34:09 MDT