Your Favorite Free (or Low-Cost) Genealogy Resources

Tell about your favorite free or low-cost genealogy resources, online and off. Explain why it's a favorite and how it's been helpful in your research.

Tags: frugal, genealogy

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Permalink Reply by Brenda Jordan on August 8, 2009 at 9:07am

If you live or visit the southern Ohio region, the library in Ironton, Ohio, has a nice, informative genealogy room with very helpful people...Portsmouth, Ohio, also has a nice genealogy room and great help......It's all free unless you want copies of anything...just your time and travel......

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Permalink Reply by tami osmer glatz on August 8, 2009 at 10:42am

I made a toolbar of favorite links for internet genealogy research, and constantly add new great sites as I find them, so it is definitely a work in progress. I'm always looking for great sites to add to it and share with others. Anyone can download the toolbar for free, and you can easily uninstall it if you don't like it. http://RelativelyCurious.OurToolbar.com/

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Permalink Reply by wendy emrich on August 8, 2009 at 7:25pm

My favorite Free website is Trenton Historical society for Trenton NJ , They have a huge database of obituary index's , cemetery info, directories , and lots of other goodies , they add material regularly and are pleasant to deal with .

My favorite low cost site is Geneaolgybank.com , an Historic newspaper collection site , I got in on a sale and for a years subscription it came to 5.00 a month , I can search newspapers for every state from the 1700's to the present , its regularly updated with new content and easy to navigate . They also have SSDI, America's obituaries from 1977 to the present and a few other things . I have found so many interesting facts and tidbits about my ancestors from reading the old time news also through finding the obits of know family I have expanded my tree .

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Permalink Reply by Karen Trearchis on August 11, 2009 at 4:33pm

A great free resource for Early Massachusetts Vital Records 1600-1849 is:
http://www.ma-vitalrecords.org/

A group of volunteers has made this possible, free! See about us:
http://www.ma-vitalrecords.org/AboutUs.html

They take small donations.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Trearchis on August 11, 2009 at 5:17pm

Another free site in Massachusetts is the MA archives. This is an ongoing project, it includes indexes to vital records and passenger manifests.
http://www.sec.state.ma.us/arc/

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Permalink Reply by Marj Bogart Nickell on August 11, 2009 at 11:18pm

What wonderful genealogy resources in this thread; thanks to all.

I do a lot of research in Ontario, Canada, and have found ourroots.ca to be very helpful. It is similar to googlebooks and archive.org with emphasis on Canadian resources. When the search engine finds your results in a book, it lists the page numbers, which you click on, and it takes you directly to the page you need.

I also like the pilot site of familysearch.org. I was able to add a new set of grandparents browsing the Bishop's Transcripts from Co. Durham, UK. Felt like I had hit the mother lode of the genealogy gold mine with these old records.

For those who need free census records, try censusfinder.com. It covers the US and several other countries. Ignore the ads and go for the freebies.

Found an interesting tidbit on the "deep web" which is supposedly not searched by the regular search engines. Use www.completelplanet.com to search the "invisible" sites.

Have fun diggin' up bones, Marj

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Permalink Reply by Marj Bogart Nickell on August 12, 2009 at 1:07pm

One more: have recently re-discovered http://www.failteromhat.com. Tons of Irish information on the site, with emphasis on Cork. Search engine provided keeps you from having to access every record. Their links will keep you busy for months. And everything is FREE.

Marj

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Permalink Reply by Bob Mooney-Pa on August 15, 2009 at 10:45am

Heres a really good site http://www.sos.ga.gov/archives/what_do_we_have/other_state_archives...

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Permalink Reply by Bob Mooney-Pa on August 15, 2009 at 10:49am

http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/birthday.html Great free site.

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Permalink Reply by Suzie Strader Ridge on August 16, 2009 at 3:41pm

I use tribalpages.com and it's very cheap. In fact, you can start out not paying to use it at all.

Regards,

Suzie

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Permalink Reply by Robin R. Cordell-Inge on December 13, 2009 at 11:33am

findagrave.com is probably one of my Favorite. (its free) and I have been able to locate lots of information that has helped me solve lots of road blocks. I have also been able to locate family memebers and it has been a great avenue of information and photos that I never would have found. I am still in search for others, but most of them are expensive. I have also enjoyed GenealogyWise, because it has given me information and other avenues of research that I otherwise would not have had. I was able to find someone that could translate an old Greek Document for me that aided me in locating information about my Mother's family that I did not know about since the document was in Greek!.