Family Tree Projects

many sites have free trials such as ancestry.com

but you arent going to find a decent site for free..

try national trust names – tells you what area you come from

Familysearch.org
Ancestry.com
Commonwealth war graves
References :

So many people ask this question that we top 10 all have a copy-and-paste answer to it. You may get 3 – 4 of them. All 10 are in the resolved questions. There is quite a bit of overlap – for instance, we ALL suggest the LDS site – but we each have our favorite sites and tips. You’d learn a lot in a short amount of time if you browsed them. That said, here’s mine:

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have a page that has links to some huge ones, below, but you’ll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.

If you didn’t mention a country, 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 white
Then 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 young 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 banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960′s by smuggling 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.html

It has links to
Cyndi’s List.com – A catalog of 250,000 sites;
Family Search.org – the LDS mega-site;

RootsWeb.com, plus sub-links to
RootsWeb World Connect – almost 600,000,000 entries;
RootsWeb Social Security Death Index;
RootsWeb California Death Index, 1940 – 1997;

Ancestry.com – some of their pages are free, including
Ancestry.com’s page on Surname meanings and origins;
Ancestry.com’s Query boards – 160,000 of them

US Gen Web, with sites for each state and each county within each state;
Superpages.com, a US phone book for looking up living relatives;
Find-a-Grave.com – 35 million entries;
GenForum.com – 50,000+ real genealogy query boards;

My page has links, plus tips and hints on how to use the sites. Having one real 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, expect too much accuracy, or 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 really intuitive.
References :

What constitutes a good site depends upon where in the world you reside and where your parents, their parents, etc., lived. The U.S., Canada, and Western Europe have kept good records for the past century and a half; most of the world still does not keep such records.

Also, uniform surnames did not begin until the 1900s for several Middle Eastern Countries; for the Philippines it did not occur until the later half of the 1800s.

So, if you are from the U.S., Canada, or Western Europe and the immediate previous generations are from one of those countries, it should not be a problem. Of course, for some of us it is easier; my grandparents were born in the 1860s, their grandparents in the 1760′s and 1770s, so it was comparatively easy to go back 5 generations.

For yourself, try all of these:

You should start by asking all your living relatives about family history. Then, armed with that information, you can go to your public library and check to see if it has a genealogy department. Most do nowadays; also, don’t forget to check at community colleges, universities, etc. Our public library has both http://www.ancestry.com and http://www.heritagequest.com free for anyone to use (no library card required).
Another place to check out is any of the Mormon’s Family History Centers. They allow people to search for their family history (and, NO, they don’t try to convert you).
A third option is one of the following websites:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

www dot usgenweb dot com/

www dot census dot gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

www dot ukgenweb dot com/

www dot archives dot gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

www dot geni dot com/

Cyndi’s has the most links to genealogy websites, whether ship’s passenger lists, ancestors from Africa, ancestors from the Philippines, where ever and whatever.

Of course, you may be successful by googling: "john doe, born 1620, plimouth, massachusetts" as an example.

Good luck and have fun!

Check out this article on five great free genealogy websites:

www dot associatedcontent dot com/article…

Then there is the DNA test; if you decide you want to REALLY know where your ancestors came from opt for the DNA test. Besides all the mistakes that officials commonly make, from 10% to 20% of birth certificates list the father wrong; that is, mama was doing the hanky-panky and someone else was the REAL father. That won’t show up on the internet or in books; it WILL show up in DNA.
I used http://www.familytreedna.com which works with the National Geographics Genotype Program.
References :
genealogical research