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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 from Chicago Illinois and one of my favorite sights is the Cook County Assessors Office. There is no cost to view or print these records. Since we are always locating ancestors on census records, which give an address and street name where they were living at the time of census, I always wanted to know what the home looked like. I stumbled onto this sight, which most have an image attached so you can see what it looks like today. I found it helpful to identify where an old photo was taken. You can search by parcel #, address or neighborhood. You also learn how big the home is and how old. It's interesting to see how much the property has changed since your ancestor lived there.

http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/Property_Search/Property_Search.aspx

Along these same lines, Google maps works just as well and they will cover the whole US and some of their images allow street view. Keep in mind these are current views.

http://maps.google.com
One of my favorites is the public library. Especially small libraries in small towns as they tend to have lots and lots of family information for that area. And some libraries are willing to do look-ups for a nominal fee or even for free.
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.
Dutch Door Genealogy has a lot of transcribed original records. A great resource for New Netherlands families and Rockland County, N.Y.
Casidy,

The Arizona website was great!! I was able to obtain my grandfathers birth certificate and my great grandmother and great great grandfathers death certificates.Thank you for the resource, I did not know that was available for free.

Casidy Andersen said:
Some of my favorites -

Arizona birth certificates (at least 75 years ago) and death certificates (at least 50 years ago).
http://genealogy.az.gov/

Utah death certificates from 1904-1956.
http://archives.utah.gov/digital/81448.htm

Land Patents
http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/PatentSearch/
Pickards Pink Pages for Warwickshire England are really interesting free website for people with ancestors from that county.
Volunteers are encouraged to submit extracts from PRs and there is also a section where people can list their interests. Pickard charges nothing for the service he provides. Well worth a look.
Also free is Northamptonshire Stray Marriages website, again anyone finding an out of county marriage is encouraged to add to the index, invaluable for the bride or groom marrying away from their home county.
Totally agree with you Nikki - fab site!

Nikki Trow said:
One of my favourite free genealogy resources is FreeBMD. It's an on-going project in which the birth, marriage and death indexes of England & Wales are being transcribed. While the whole index hasn't yet been transcribed, there is still a lot of information there, especially pre-1930.

You can search for all types or just birth, marriage or death, along with surname and/or first name. Other details such as spouse or mother's surname, along with date range and district or county can be included in your search information (the more information you put, the more relevent the result should be... although sometimes you need to only put a little information... It needs to be remembered that because the indexes are being transcribed human errors can occurr (and there may have been an error in the index anyway).

The results you are supplied with will give you the details with which (assuming you think you may have found the right person) you can go to the GRO (General Register Office) with and apply for the relevent certificate.

Over the years, I have found FreeBMD very useful... You can even select the district name and type in the volume & page to see who else was on that page of the register... Very useful if you suspect a twin or to see who else was married in the quarter.
For those with slave-owning ancestors resident in Virginia between 1736-1803, The Geography of Slavery at the Univ. of Va. furnishes fully searchable transcripts (with scans) of over 4000 notices of runaway slaves.
The Digitized Collections at the Springfield-Greene County Library have much to offer those with 19th cent. Missouri ancestry. Chief among the offerings to my mind are The Turnbo Manuscripts and Various Ozark Periodicals. Both are fully searchable.
Genesreunited is a great resource for British information
Hi Sheila -

Pickards set up a Warwickshire page at
http://www.genealogywise.com/group/warwickshire - go and visit !

Wendy

Sheila Steane said:
Pickards Pink Pages for Warwickshire England are really interesting free website for people with ancestors from that county.
Volunteers are encouraged to submit extracts from PRs and there is also a section where people can list their interests. Pickard charges nothing for the service he provides. Well worth a look.
Also free is Northamptonshire Stray Marriages website, again anyone finding an out of county marriage is encouraged to add to the index, invaluable for the bride or groom marrying away from their home county.
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.

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