The Genealogist

Free Databases to Help You Create Your Family Tree Website

November 25, 2006 on 4:48 pm | In Genealogy, Genealogy Tips, Geneology, Genealogie, Genealogist |

When you make the decision to trace your family roots, you may not initially understand the vast amount of research that has to be done on order to expand your familial history beyond that of your great-great grandparents.

With a family tree website, you have tools available to you that make the process run smoothly – and at a much faster pace than if you were keeping records offline for you and your heirs.

Many family tree website services offer built-in research tools for their members. But with genealogy, you always want to use multiple tools because you never know when one might pick up on a small detail the others didn’t produce.

Heritage Quest, located at http://www.heritagequestonline.com/, is one tool you can use for free with a library card as your access to the database. You can search Census records, databases about the Revolutionary War and Freedman’s Bank, and gain access to information published in book on people and places described throughout history.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission at www.cwgc.org makes it easy for you to access information on over 1.7 million men and women who were casualties during the two world wars.

At www.interment.net, you can search databases of cemeteries from all over the world. You can also submit your own transcription of information. This is a good idea because someone else in your family that you don’t yet have added to your own family tree could be searching these records and your information could lead them back to you.

The links go on for miles at www.worldgenweb.org because you can search all over the world, for different types of information. The site is run by volunteers, so it’s helpful if you contribute to the site as well as take from it so that others can benefit from the research you’ve already done and vice versa.

Once you visit the various free genealogical resources the ‘net has to offer, go back to your family tree website home and populate it with the new information you’ve discovered.

Always be sure to check back and see what new data has been added to both free and fee-based tools that you use because you never know when the missing piece of a puzzle with fall in place one day and your family tree will be complete.