Finding Your Roots Online

by Don Rittner

My buddy Robert Hyatt runs the genealogical section at the New York State Library. When I visit him occasionally, I’m always amazed at how many people are at that section of the library tracking down their ancestry - some from far off parts of the country. The library has a great collection of resources. It appears that there is a great need for people to know where they came from and how many of their kind came before them.

To help satisfy this hunger and to alleviate some of the work load for my friend, this week we will look at some great Web sites that are devoted to genealogical research. The Net has become popular for those seeking their roots since it allows you to search large databases quickly and alleviates the geographical and time constraints usually put on people. You no longer have to spend your whole vacation in musty book shelves or basements thumbing through fragile records.

There are thousands of Web sites devoted to the topic. The following sample will get your started and point you to most of the good ones.

A Thousand Genealogy Links

http://members.tripod.com/~surnames/index.html

Actually there are over 3000 links to ships passenger lists, church records, cemetery transcriptions, and censuses for USA, UK, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Europe, Canada, Australia & New Zealand. It also has a nice glossary that explains Genealogy jargon.

Ancestry.com

http://www.ancestry.com/main.htm

Here you can search a database of over 240 million names in some 1612 database. Type in both given and surname, and/or state and it will find social security death records, phone and addresses and other info - even a message board with your surname. You can build your own free family tree Web site here as well. There is an ancestry search engine, as well as many other databases and message boards. If you are looking for books or software they have an online store. You can also subscribe to a free newsletter and read the latest ancestry news.

Cyndi’s List

http://www.CyndisList.com/

This site is one of the most popular sites with more than 40,000 sites linked to it. The site is arranged in more than 100 categories. The section on New York State at

http://www.cyndislist.com/ny.htm#USGenWeb has the GenWeb project, a county by county Web site for genealogical research. The Rensselaer County site (http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyrensse/) has a mailing discussion list that compliments it. There is census data, surname lists, wills, death records, maps, and much more.

Genealogical Page

http://www.angelfire.com/oh/DACUG/geneal.html

This is someone’s personal Web page and includes a few hundred good links to genealogical sites.

National Genealogical Society

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/

They offer an online course for beginning genealogical research although they have free introductory material online. An extensive bookstore for ordering books is available. You can keyword search their library catalog. For a fee, they will do some of the research for you.

Genealogy gateway to the Web

http://www.gengateway.com/

Looking for names? This site has an alphabetized surname link

Genforum

http://genforum.genealogy.com/

GenForum features over 1500 genealogy related online forums and a genealogy chat room. Search for your chosen surname, post and read messages from genealogy related individuals. Covers the U.S. and other countries. Searchable by keywords or listings. There is a forum for discussing genealogical software as well.

Genealogy Gateway

http://www2.shore.net/~amery/library/geneol.htm

This Yahoo site has links to several genealogical magazines, other genealogical web sites, software, and national organizations. Has a link to a Civil War page that lists thousands of Union soldiers buried in Oklahoma. A link to a great site that introduces to the whole field of geneology. Finally, if you think you are related to anyone that came over the Mayflower, you can look up those folks too!

©1999 Don Rittner

Don can be reached at drittner@aol.com or PO Box 5471, Albany, Nyt 12205