Ancestry.com

Ancestry is an online family history site that lets users search their 24 billion records from 80 countries to research ancestors and create their own family trees. Ancestry has monthly and six-month pricing plans for its users. (If you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, you can get a free account with your member record number.) We prefer to use Ancestry over Family Search here at The Novice Genealogist: we like how it’s laid out and that you can make trees private and grant access as you see fit. If you’re LDS, you can record temple ordinances in both Ancestry and Family Search.

Family Search

Created and owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, this online family history site lets users search their 4.93 billion records and 481,000 books to research their ancestors and create their own family tree. And yes, Family Search is free! It is completely public; the idea behind this is that users can connect their trees to each other and eventually create one, giant family tree. If you’re looking for more security, Ancestry is a great option.

Find-A-Grave

We love Find-A-Grave! This free website lets users search for and record gravesites across the world! It integrates with both Ancestry and Family Search, so you can associate a Find-A-Grave record with your ancestor. Not only is this an amazing tool to find your ancestors with, it’s also a great service project that you can do by yourself or with your family: go to a graveyard and start recording* the graves that are there so people can find their ancestors!

*Not all graveyards are public. Some are owned by churches and other private organizations. Please verify that you have permission to be there before you start recording. Be respectful when you are recording: do not leave trash on the ground or desecrate any grave in any way.

The U.S. GenWeb Project

Originally designed in 1996 as Kentucky’s single point of entry for all genealogical records, this website caught wind and the idea quickly spread across the country. Today, this website provides free records and links to each state’s history so researchers can learn about the local history and find their ancestors and their stories.

VitalChek

VitalChek is the official place to request government-issued documents (birth, marriage, death, and divorce certificates) for any ancestor. The cost of a certificate varies from state to state and county to county but are usually around $20 to $30. We’ve used this when we’ve been stuck on an ancestor and can’t find his or her parents: these certificates will usually list parents’ names or other relatives or witnesses of the event and give us another vein of research to get closer to identifying our family tree.

Ellis Island

This is the official website of Ellis Island, where you can search for your ancestors’ immigration records and entrance to the United States. It also has genealogy tips and tutorials for searching their passenger manifests and ship records. If you had family who immigrated to America between 1892 and 1954, Ellis Island is the place you will find their immigration records.

Castle Garden

Castle Garden was the “predecessor” to Ellis Island. If you had family immigrate to the U.S. between 1820 and 1890, you will find their records here. The website includes the a search feature to search through records and a history of the Castle.

Historic Map Works

This site is the world’s largest compilation of historic maps. You can search for a map that is relevant to your ancestors by searching by their last names and adding their locations and dates they lived there to pull up the map that shows where they lived.

Congressional Township and Range

Township and range is a system of splitting up land into squares of 36 square miles to determine land ownership. This system was developed by the U.S. government around 1783 to replace the “meets and bounds” system, which split land up by landmarks like trees, creeks, etc. that were susceptible to change. This website shows every township and range in the U.S., and it’s useful to help determine where your ancestors may have owned land for agriculture.

Family Search Wiki

The Family Search Wiki is a great place to search through their records and learn about how to research specific genealogy, such as Jewish, Native America, Black, and much more.

Ancestry Wiki

The Ancestry Wiki is a great resource for searching through their owned records and getting tips and tutorials on how to do genealogical research.