FREE GENEALOGY SITES
I have been doing genealogy for a number of years, traveling back and forth across the state visiting cemeteries and reading gravestones, spending countless hours at the Maine State archives, as well as at the Maine State Library, local libraries, and county court houses. Nothing will ever replace doing a live search at a county court house, but a large volume of genealogy information is available online, and if you know where to look, free. This is just a few of the online places I make use of.
Okay, the name suggests this is a Maine only site, but I will show you how to use this site to do genealogy research in all 50 states. Clcik onto the link below and go to their site - there is no sign in, and its free.
Now your all set to do your Maine genealogy research, but if you want to do searches in other states, on first name near top of the page, type in Clyde, and on last name, type in Rice, this will produce some search results for Maine, which you need to access the next section where you can do searches in the other states.
Got that typed in, now hit the SEARCH DATABESES button, which will bring up a number of results for Maine.
To search other states, the one that is marked Family Search Record Search Results, you want to click the VIEW RESULTS for that heading, which will take you to the results that were found for the family search site. I know, simply placing a link to it would of been much easier, but they have the site fixed so you can't link to it.
Now the upper left hand corner of the page should say FAMILY SEARCH, which is where you want to be.
Now in the boxes to the left, simply change the first and last name to who it is you want to look up.
In the box that says ANYPLACE type in the state you want to do the search in. As an example, Ohio. If you can narrow the search down, add a town or city, example, Canton, Ohio.
I usually leave the YEAR boxes empty.
I usually do not check the box MATCH ALL EXACTLY, but you can, it's up to you.
Now hit the search button and wait for the results.
Specail note, pay attention to any links that might show up near the bottom of the page after your results come in, they usually take you to some one's family tree that might be connected to your search.
Once I am at the FAMILY SEARCH page, I usually stay right there and work off of that page.
And stay away from the bottom section on the MAINE GENEALOGY page, where the box heading says REFINE YOUR SEARCH - that is a sponcer site that will have results, but you will have to pay to see the results.
Find a grave is a site I only recently discovered, and it is a free site and fairly easy to use. The main purpose of the site is to help people doing their family genealogy find the grave site's of family members. Volunteers, like myself, visit cemeteries and write down the information off of the gravestones, than place that information onto the FIND A GRAVE website.
Simply type in the known information under name, first, middle, and last, if unknown, leave that box blank.
Born and died, if you know, you can type it in, other wise leave those boxes blank.
In the COUNTRY box, select your country.
If doing a United States search, next choose the state.
A county box will pop open, select the county you wish to search.
Now hit the search button and view the results.
Question; Why ain't I finding the person I searched for?
Remember, this is a volunteer site, the person your searching for might not of been listed yet, maybe the cemetery hasn't even been listed yet. New information is being added to the site every single day.
Want to become a FIND A GRAVE volunteer, it's easy, the site walks you through on how to do it.
Rootsweb is another nice genealogy site that is also free. I do have to say that of the free sites, this one has the most links on it that will take you off site to a genealogy pay site, so steer clear of any search boxes not marked ROOTSWEB.
At the top of each page there is usually a link to ancestry.com, a pay site. Next is a long wide banner ad for FOLD3 - another pay site. Than you come to the SEARCH ROOTSWEB - do all your searches from this box, unless you want to pay. To the right of ROOTSWEB is yet another ancestry.com ad box, which will get results, but for a price.
There are one or two other links there as well.
I know the site has a lot of genealogy information for Washington county.
For all of you doing genealogy in other places of the United States or anywhere else in the world, click onto this link, WORLD CONNECT PROJECT
From here you can do family genealogy searches world wide. Again, avoid the ads, this page had a banner ad for newspapers, which will take you off site to a pay site.
You want to do your searches in the boxes below ADVANCED SEARCH.
This is not just any online book, and if your family name is Libby, Larrabee, or any other spelling of Libby, or if someone married into your family line with one of those surnames, than you may want to check this book out. It contains many, many Libby family lines. The free online book does have a minor problem, say you want to jump to page 87. it will often bring you one page to far, simply click to go backwards one page.
There was three Libby books made by the Libby Association, this free online copy is the most acurate of the three.
THE JOHN LIBBY FAMILY ASSOCIATION
They are the one's who published the book above, THE LIBBY FAMILY IN AMERICA. They have a guest book worth checking out, as well as a chat room and forum. There are other tools on the site as well. Yes, if you wish to become a member, you have to pay, but it costs nothing to do research on their site.
