Research Your Family Tree For Free

There was a time if you wanted to search for any information about your family members you'd have to pay to be a member of a genealogy site. Now there is a ton of information available online for free, you just need to know where to look. The picture above is one of my Great X9 Grandmother, she settled in the area known as Sewell Point, now Norfolk Naval Base. She married Henry Sewell Sr. who came from England around 1630 or so. If you Google 'Sewell Point Virginia' you'll see a Willoughby Bay, both are named after my descendants. Pretty Cool!

The first place I like to do any searches is Family Search ,it's a free website run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You can search all types of records and also create a free account and make your own family tree. What I love most about this site is the fan chart they have, it makes it really easy to see everyone in your family. Keep in mind you will need a bit of information about your relatives, mainly names and birthdays. The more information you have the more successful you'll be. Another thing to consider is there are many people with the same name, so knowing any family names, like the name of the spouse or siblings, even the location will help you narrow down your searches. Last names were often spelled different and sometimes I've seen middle names used on a Census record which can make searching harder. Also when recording this information things can be heard wrong, in my searching for my great grandma I've see her name appear as Sophie, Sophia and Silva, so try searching different names if you can't find anything on your first try. Last names are another tricky thing in dealing with ancestry, often times the spelling has changed over the years.

Another site I like to use is Find A Grave. Just click on the link "Search 162 million grave records" to begin searching for your family members. Sometimes you can get lucky here and find other relatives by finding one match. For instance there might be a link to a spouse or child, which can give you more information than you might have had. It also gives you accurate birth and death dates, which you can take back to the Family Search site to try and match up more information. The neat thing about Find a Grave is you can leave virtual flowers for your loved ones along with a little note.

I also like to search old newspaper records. There are some sites out there that you have to pay to be a member of but I don't like to do that. If I end up finding a newspaper that does contain some family information but I'd have to pay for it, I try searching the name of the newspaper and the date to see if online records are available. I've had a lot of luck that way. It's a little more work then paying for a membership but if you keep at it you're pretty sure to find it online for free.

One final neat tip is about the Census records. Sometimes at the top of the page it will have the street name of the records being taken, other times this is written down the left hand side. Some records also have a house number listed, if you get lucky you can get the street and house number and actually see where your relatives lived, providing the house is still there. The handwriting can be a bit tricky, what I thought was Marker or Market street was actually Maher street. The Census records always have the towns name listed so even if you can't quite make out the street name you can get close enough to check a map. I hope with these few tips you can easily find some information about your family tree! If you have any questions or get stuck I'd be happy to help, just leave a comment. Good luck searching!

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