Genealogy Wise

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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.

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I am a fan of the free sites as well. However, I don't mind paying a reasonable amount of money for informational sites that can further my research. If we don't support the paying sites, they will disappear. Not only that, but I am sure a lot of people use free sites but the ratio of submitters to users is not close to being equal. It is just a matter of time before the information on the free sites will dwindle or go away. The pay sites have invested a lot of time and money into putting the information online and although I have had issues with them at one time or another, ultimately they have helped me find information that would have been cost prohibitive if I had to dig through microfilms on my own.
I forgot Genealogywise is fast becoming a free favorite for me. I've already hooked up with a new cousin on one line. It took 2 days!

Pam Drake in IN.

Pamela Ann Drake said:
My favorite free genealogy sites are:
www.genforum.com
www.rootsweb.com
www.usgenweb.com
www.familysearch.org

With my budget I have to look for free sites. Besides,I think they all should be free as it's our own history.

Pam Drake in IN.
I recently came across the site: http://opengen.net/ It has a very nice interactive map of the United States as well as links to each state in index form. Lots of information for free.
Ditto on the Texas Death Certificates. I spent a long weekend at my computer pulling up several hundred of them. Even for lines which other researchers and I have done a lot of work on I found new information, including several exciting new finds.

Debbie Blanton McCoy said:
The Texas Death Certificates on the Family Search pilot site (http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start) have been a great help to me. I have been able to prove many parent-child relationships with them. The most exciting find was being able to prove my 3rd great grandmother's maiden name which was given on the death certificate of one of her daughters.
Here is an excellent site for those of you who families in West Virginia.
Here you will find vital records from all 55 counties in WV for free.
You can print them off and have them for your records.
http://www.wvculture.org/history/archivesindex.aspx
I found my great grandfather's death certificate no one not even his daughter ,my grandmother, knew when he died. Its a great site
Yes indeed, state archives are getting to be one of the genealogist's best friends, as they put more and more content online. If you haven't seen it already, definitely have a look at the Digital State Archives website.
For UK resources this is a useful site:

http://ukfamilyhistory.bravehost.com/
Ruby,

What an awesome tip! Thanks!

Ruby Coleman said:
Not free, but low-cost. Mid-Continent Public Library in Independence, Missouri offers an out-of-district library card for $20 (annual fee) to access many genealogy databases from your home computer. It's a great resource for the cost as single subscriptions would be well over $100. Check it out at http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us.
For Scottish Genneolgy I have found scotlandspeople.gov.uk an invaluable site. It cost around £6 for 30 credits, which give you quite a lot of information. It costs 5 credits to open a certificate (marriage, death birth) you can print these off and it also saves all your previous searches.
A good resource for historical research/family research in Great Britain is Free Newspaper Archives in the UK and Ireland, while a similar source for north of the border (the US border, that is) is Free Newspaper Archives in Canada
These are both 'blog' entries that list other websites. But I found the archives of "The London Gazette" extremely useful, generally full of legal related notices and articles e.g. deaths, bankruptcy, name changes...

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/

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