Genealogy Resources on the Internet--Almost All Free!

 
 

Tips for Getting Started
(Introduction, with links to other sites with tips!)

Start by interviewing your living ancestors (the Oral History Form might help with the interviewing. If your living ancestors (parents, grandparents, great grandparents) are not 100% sure of where or when they were born, it is possible that this information is given in their marriage application--all you need to know is when and where they were married, then order the license, then the application![1] From there, you may be able to check their birth certificates for their parents' birth places and ages. (Please note that births were not recorded in all states -- Georgia is one such state -- in the early nineteenth century, and so you may have trouble getting birth certificates from some states for births before the Civil War or even before 1900.)

A great place to look next is on one of the censuses, such as the 1880 census[2] -- that census (and subsequent available censuses) lists each person's approximate age, relation to the household head, place of birth, and place of parents' births! The 1890 census is available but in fragmented form (most of it was burnt), so very few listings from it have survived. Censuses from 1900 on provide a birth date (month, day, year) but this information may not always be completely accurate (the singing of "Happy Birthday did not start till 1910!; see Shirley Cherkasky, May, 2000; rpt. online at http://www.chowdc.org/Papers/Cherkasky2000.html). The 1920 and 1930 censuses also provide information about both occupation and industry!

Other resources for the twentieth century include World War I and World War II draft registration cards as well as Social Security death indexes (for people who died after the social security system was started). The draft registration cards completed during World Wars I and II by men of many age groups, provide the registrant's current address and occupation, as well as the birth date (month, day, year) and place. They are easy enough to locate if your ancestor lived in a small town, but you may find yourself going through multiple records under the same name if he or she lived in a larger city.

From here you can try to locate your ancestors in earlier censuses, for example in the 1870, 1860, or 1850 censuses (the last two also had slave schedules [3]). You may also wish to try to locate household or plantation Wills mentioning possible ancestors.

Links on How-To Research

U.S. Gen Web's Archives
(Databases and Search Engines, with maps; formerly part of Roots Web; some files are from Roots Web thus)

  • http://usgenweb.org: USGenWeb.To peruse these archives, go to the index (at http://www.usgwarchives.net/index.htm), then select a state of interest in the index, then look through the folders of documents offered. Wills are great to find, though not many are posted! Among the information you may find in wills are the first names of slaves, who may be "willed" to one or another descendant of the person writing the will; names of people to be freed are sometimes also listed!
    Occasionally a legal document "manumitting" a slave may be included in the U.S. gen web archives! (This is the case for Burke County, Georgia.)
    Another good place to look is a county's marriage records (in the vital records folder in the individual counties) -- at http://usgwarchives.net/marriages/. In Southern states, marriages of persons considered Black are generally not listed before 1860 -- although you may find some Freedmen's marriages listed in the early 1800s. Some Civil War and post-Civil War marriages were recorded by the Freedmen's Bureau (see below).
    http://searches.rootsweb.com/htdig/search.html is a search link to the U.S. Genweb Archives.

  • http://www.usgwarchives.net/search/search.cgi/search.htm?form=extended: Search. At this U.S. Genweb link, you can search the whole U.S. Genweb's archives by state, and you can select specific records to search for, such as census records. Use the key to select multiple states or multiple record types. (You can search under both a first and last name under all states; however, sometimes leaving off the state will bring up pages of unrelated data!).

  • http://usgwarchives.net/gsearch/googlesearch.html: USGenWeb Archives Advanced Search Page. This search engine allows you to enter multiple names that should occur in a record; you can enter state and county names the same way -- if you enter "Virginia" both records mentioning the state of Virginia and records mentioning persons named Virginia come up.

  • Individual state and county records at the U.S. Genweb can also be searched from each state's search page. Go to http://usgwarchives.net/search/searcharchives.html, the USGenWeb Archives Search Engines page, and select the state to search. Here you can select individual counties to search. (Alternately a state's search engine may be accessed through its index -- for example, for Louisiana, go to http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm: Louisiana Table of Contents Page; clicking on [Louisiana Search Engine] will bring you to http://www.usgwarchives.net/search/search.cgi/searchla.htm a page entitled Search the Louisiana USGenWeb Archives Project, the same search page you access through the USGenWeb Archives Search Engines page).

  • http://usgwarchives.net/census/
    Search the U.S. census! Though the U.S. census started in 1790, only heads of households were given then. And the census only started in these years in the original thirteen colonies, with Georgia's census being pretty sketchy as Georgia had much land to acquire yet in treaties with Indians. Other household members were simply enumerated as slave or free, White, Colored, or Black, male or female, within a particular age category.
    By 1850, names of heads of households were listed with all free household members. Unfree household members were still enumerated without names.
    By 1870 everyone's name was listed along with an occupation (for children who were not working, that might be "in school" or "at home") and by 1880 the census also listed the relationship between every person on a census to the head of the household that person was listed under. Unfortunately though, the best list of censuses is not free, but for pay, at http://search.ancestry.com/search/ (ancestry.com) -- however these are available free in some libraries, for example in the Fort Worth library! (Go to the Fort Worth Library Home page; click on "Online Databases," click on "History and Genealogy," and then click on "Ancestry Library Edition." Alternately, go directly to "History and Genealogy" using this link and click on "Ancestry Library Edition"! (Unfortunately, some ancestry images for some years may have the part showing the page listing slaves cut off--whether that is ancestry's decision or the U.S. census suppliers' I cannot say; complete slave schedules are available for the year 1850, and that is probably where to start once you determine what last names you are looking for and what counties you are looking in-- by taking a family history and searching through ancestors in the 1880 census and also in lists of marriages for the various states--which were recorded generally before births were registered.)
    Another great place to find census records is Family Search (see below).
    To search through the census, you need to know the county an ancestor lived in (see map links below). Some years may not be available in some states, as the gen web is looking still for volunteers to transcribe these!
    Go to: http://www.usgwcensus.org, if you want to transcribe! If you do not have access to a copy or image of a census to transcribe (the ones at ancestry.com -- http://www.ancestry.com, if you have or if your library has access to this database -- are fine for transcribing). Other sources of census images are listed at the U. S. Gen Web's link, http://www.usgwcensus.org/locate/5b.htm. You can also become a second reader of someone else's transcription!

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~caribgw/cgw_archive/na/rodney1.txt The Rodney Rolls, 1781, from the Caribbean Antilles, part of the Caribean GenWeb Project, this population list identifies households with slaves (many slaves came to the U.S. by way of the Caribbean)

  • http://usgwarchives.net/maps/ Here you can research Indian land cessions by treaty -- click on Indian Land Cessions to the United States Treaty Maps; and look up the treaty # of a region to see what land was ceded when--there will be scant U.S. records for a region before it was ceded to the U.S--though settlers were living there of course--that's why the Indians ceded the land; people wanted it.
    Also, check out the State and County Maps link here to see what counties are near a county -- as some counties were subdivided later so earlier records and later records for the same place may be in different counties; also since some county records have been burned or lost it helps to do an exhaustive search of nearby counties for any that might pop up in them.

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson29.htm Roots Web's guide to using information from land resources to locate ancestors. In the early days, not only Southern planters but many whites are listed in these records as well as some minorities; today, less than half the population owns land but the resources still can be valuable. These records can locate a plantation, industry where someone worked, or neighborhood landmark perhaps, as well as land mentioned in Wills and other documents.

  • http://userdb.rootsweb.com/colored/ Roots Web's New Colored Records -- not much here except a few Pennsylvania records, but it would be great if you shared your records with Roots Web; the more people who share records with Roots Web, the more records in Roots Web.


Family Search
(Search records from the U.S. and also other countries here, including census records, military records and more)

  • https://familysearch.org/: Family Search.
    Besides the census records described below, the Family Search database contains birth, marriage, death, and divorce records. Vital records from outside the U.S. include records from the Bahamas and Canada, and also English parish records.
    There are also passenger arrival lists for New York's Ellis Island, New Orleans, Honolulu, and other U.S. cities, as well as for some other countries such as Brazil and New Zealand.
    Military records include army enlistment records and draft registration cards, war dead, veteran cemetary records, military pension records, U.S. Revolutionary War bounty land warrant applications, as well as United Kingdom Seamen records, and Panama Canal Zone employment records and sailing lists (1905-1937).
    Finally Family Search is an online source for Freedmen's Bureau Assistant Commissioner Records (1862-1870).
    To use its search engine:
    • Go to: https://familysearch.org/search.
    • Type in type in first name if you have it then last name of person you want to search for.
    • Now scroll down to "Filter results" and click on [Collections] to filter the search results by collection.
    • If you want census records, scroll down through the list of records available til you see "Censuses and lists." Select the census record[s] you want to peruse. As noted the U.S. censuses from 1830 to 1940 (excluding the 1890 census, most of which burnt in a fire) are available, along with the 1850 (but not the 1860) slave schedules.
    • If you prefer draft records, Other records available include World War I and some World II draft cards. The draft records for the three World War I registrations that took place between 1917 and 1918 ([1] for men aged 21-31 on June 5, 1917; [2] for men under 21 June 5, 1917 but 21 or over on June 5, 1918; and [3] for all men aged 18 to 45 on September 12, 1918), as well as the "old men's draft" records for World War II (for men who were aged 45 to 64 in 1942, born between 1877 and 1897) are available.
      These draft records indicate each registrant's current home address and age, birth place and birth date, employer, and place of employment. The World War 2 records also provide information about the registrant's spouse.
    • You can also indicate that you want to search records in countries outside of the U.S. such as Mexico, Taiwan, or Cuba, although fewer records will be available.


National Records Archive (NARA) -- Genealogy Research Room
(The Research Room, The Freedmen's Bureau Records, Native American Enrollment Lists, and Military Records)

  • http://aad.archives.gov/aad/: List of Databases in the archives! (Or access the complete list, at http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/subject-index.html.)

  • http://www.archives.gov/research/start/online-tools.html: National Archives Online Research Tools and Aids (how-to research these records online).

  • http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/ List of Topics you can research at NARA. (Click on the topic to see how to search first before hitting the yellow search button and entering search terms!)
  • http://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/index.html: Introduction to African American Research, with links to history and information on The Freedmen's Bureau Records

  • http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/
    freedmans-savings-and-trust.html
    Information on Records of the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company -- tells you where to write to to get records. (The Freedmen's Bureau Records are now also available through Ancestry.com and of course Fort Worth has a library edition subscription; it's in the link to "recent databases" under the heading "More Collections;" click on list "recent," then look for the records! Some places you may find Freedmen's Bureau Records online include: http://www.africanaheritage.com/Freedmens_Bureau.asp; some marriages are listed at http://freedmensbureau.com/marriages.htm. FamilySearch.org has United States Freedmans Bank Records, 1865-1874; and North Carolina, Freedmen's Bureau Assistant Commissioner Records, 1862-1870; see below. See also the article, "The Freedmen's Bureau", by W. E. B. Du Bois, http://history.eserver.org/freedmens-bureau.txt.

  • http://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/guion-miller.html Index to the Applications Submitted for the Eastern Cherokee Roll of 1909-1910 (Guion Miller Roll) -- with Case Numbers!

  • http://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/final-rolls.html: the Index to the Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory (Dawes) lists citizens and freedmen for all of the 5 major southeastern tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole). Freedmen are listed with each tribe in a separate section for that tribe!

  • http://www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/m2104.pdf The 1928 Baker Roll and Records of the Eastern Cherokee Enrolling Commission

  • http://www.archives.gov/research/military/ Military Records at the Government Archives. (You might also want to search directly at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-list.jsp?cat=GP23 The Access to Archival Databases.

    State Archives -- Georgia, Pennsylvania
    (Georgia's "Virtual Vault", searchable online; also African American Records in Pennsylvania's state records collection)

    • http://www.georgiaarchives.org/ These Georgia Archives include a "Virtual Vault" you can search online http://cdm.georgiaarchives.org:2011/cdm/ ; in the "Virtual Vault" are miscellaneous records, including county deed books, colonial wills, confederate enlistment oaths, confederate pension applications, county tax lists, and death certificates!

    • http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/african_american_resources/4421/guide_to_african_american_resources/692726

    County Formation Maps
    (Maps Showing Counties, Censued, and Dates of County Formation, County Boundaries)

    • http://www.mapofus.org/-- Click on a state to show its county formation maps -- what counties were censused in what years, and the county boundaries (boundaries indicate where people lived who were censused in a particular county)!
      Since county boundaries changed over time, an ancestor who lived in a particular county may have records in several counties -- for example ancestors of mine censused in 1820 in Walton County, GA, actually attended church, lived in a cabin, and were buried in what is now in Gwinnett County as they lived near Bethlehem. Likewise Clarke County, GA tax and census records were part of Jackson County, GA records till 1801. And one early "Georgia" County, Bourbon County, was established on the Mississippi in 1785 (see also the note on "Western boundaries" below), then eliminated three years later! This is why it is so important to check county formation maps to determine in what county a particular place was situated at the dates when your ancestors lived there -- as well as what counties it ultimately broke into! Then you'll know more about where to look for records.
      The early counties in realty had no western boundary! That is the settlers from Europe envisioned their counties as extending to the Pacific (though they would find themselves arguing with the Spanish over California). Thus even if you lived way to the West of a county, if no County had been established where you lived, you could pay taxes in an Eastern county. Before the formation of Walton County my Bethlehem ancestors probably paid taxes in Franklin County, established from Cherokee lands in 1784 (there are several persons with their last name listed on early Franklin County tax rosters in the 1700s).
      As noted the map indicates that Franklin was established from Cherokee lands! These maps show what Indian tribes were active in a region, what tribe's lands were included in a county! My a north Georgia Walton County ancestors all lived in Cherokee lands, above the Creek-Cherokee divide (the Creeks themselves were divided into upper and lower Creek but the maps alas do not distinguish these; see Carol Middleton's web site, Among the Creeks, indexed below, for more on the divide).
      When you click on the state, a page for that state loads. From that page, just scroll down till you see the "Interactive Map" of that state's "County Formation History". Then either click [play] or [next] to view the successive county boundaries along with the dates the boundaries were set. After moving forward, you can click [previous] to move backwards in time.

    Other Online Resources
    (List of Slaves -- primarily from Wills, Surname Tracking, Louisiana Slave Records, a link to Alex Haley's Family Tree, and . . . what about DNA?)

    • http://www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata/ (Afrigeneas's African American Slave Data: This seems to be essentially the same collection of Wills, Inventories, and other records that is listed above; again it is indexed by surname.)
    • http://www.afrigeneas.com/surnames/ --Afrigeneas's African American Surnames: this site lists mainly the names of people collecting data on specific surnames.
      Surnames may often be derived from the names of the plantation owner, as slaves often just went by first name. Thus, the person tracking these has to track the movements of slaves through the plantations--through sales and wills, and through the marriages of the planters' families as well as through those of slaves themselves. The person also must track information about persons freed who have this name--persons who served in wars could be freed, or living among the Indians. You can email with specific questions about the names' histories, but also be sure to email these people when you encounter information about a surname--through a will, a document stating that someone was freed, or whatever. Don't send information that is important only to you and your cousins, of course--send that to your cousins!

    • http://www.searchforancestors.com/quicksearch/ -- this site lets you to search for a surname in a variety of databases, including those at Roots Web (which are free) and those at ancestry.com (which are not free but which the Fort Worth library subscribes to)

    • http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/ A good place to see some African-Indian Surnames!

    • http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave/ Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy. Created thanks to the research of Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, now professor emerita of history at Rutgers. If you have ancestors from Louisiana, this very searchable site has documents about slaves from the time when Louisiana was French! Go to the search page (from the main page go to the [Introduction] then to [Search the Database]; you may also want to check out [How to Search], and fill out the form as completely as you can; feel free to leave some blanks.
      If you opt to [View Original Documents], they are in French, sometimes with elements of "Middle French" (French as spoken in the past). Click on the documents to enlarge them. Also check out the guide for deciphering the text in the originals below!

    • http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cmamcrk4/ Carol Middleton's Among the Creeks at Roots Web (the search engine here does not work alas; http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cmamcrk4/abtcrk.html#anchor748911, About the Creeks -- links to information about clans, towns, and whether each town was part of the upper or lower Creek nation; http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cmamcrk4/crkdxndx.html#anchor1421596 , The Creek Documents include documents from the half-Scottish Creek Chief, Alexander MacGillivray (MacIntosh, the other mixed-blood Creek Chief, was his rival), along with genealogical information about the Adam Hollinger family including names of slaves and names of children slaves were passed to; the names of some other mixed-blood Creek Indians and people who married Creeks are scattered through the documents as well)
    • http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/contents.html Texas Treasures includes some Texas State archives online (many letters and historical documents; also at least one or two slave documents

    • http://www.kintehaley.org/ Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation Check out the Haley Family Tree (but it downloads slowly) and also the resources sites indexed under Genealogy.

    • http://www.africanancestry.com/ This is not a free resource, at last! African Ancestry offers DNA testing for folks who may have hit a brick wall using more traditional resources. It tests for the father's father's father . . . by checking the Y chromosome DNA (since only men have this chromosome, only men can get this test), and supposedly also the mother's mother's mother . . . as far back as can be done, by checking the mitochondrial DNA. (One news article I read said it might be possible for men to pass on mitochondrial DNA, too, however--Tallahassee Democrat, 2003. I am not sure whether both sexes can take the mitochondrial DNA test or only women; if both sexes can take this test, then men must have this DNA!!!)
      Problems with this DNA test include:
      (1), you have many other ancestors besides your father's father's father's & so on, and your mother's mother's mother's!; (2), the test does not indicate how long ago your ancestors split off from groups with similar Y chromosome ormitochondrial DNA, nor can they be sure without testing DNA from the world over that the DNA they link to Africa is not also found in some other place besides Africa. And the African peoples have migrated like others, so the geographic location of the DNA in Africa today may or may not be the same place that your ancestors lived in. Finally, the one specific ancestor this test tests for may not have been from Africa, even if all other ancestors are.
      What can the test do?
      It may give you an area to start researching with hopes of finding some story or ship's record to link to your ancestor, but working forwards in time from a vague location and possible tribal identity to your known ancestors is probably going to be difficult. Is it worth several hundred bucks? I do not know. I would suggest you read first Bolnick (2003), "Showing Who They Really Are": Commercial Ventures in Genetic Genealogy (http://shrn.stanford.edu/workshops/revisitingrace/Bolnick2003.doc.) (you can find an HTML version of this document at google.com).

    Sites With Collections of Links to Other Resources
    (Collections of Links on Genealogy; some include ways families have told their stories)

    Off-line Resources
    (Books -- history, genealogies, how-to)

    • Lane, Mills. Masters and Slaves. 3 in The People of Georgia. Savannah, Georgia: The Beehive Press.
      This book contains many photos of slaves, slave housing, and plantations, especially photos from the 50's. It also contains photos of cotton mills, where some slaves were hired out, and mentions the names of a few slaves (a fugitive, William Ball), and planters.

    • Ball, Charles. (1998). Slaves in the Family. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
      This book contains research into the lineage of the Ball slaves. The Balls were one of the great South Carolina slave holders before the Civil War.

    • Fears, Mary L. Jackson. (1995). Slave Ancestral Research: It's Something Else. Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books.
      This is an excellent story of one woman's very exhaustive search for her ancestors' records--which led her to the woman from whom she inherited her middle name, who was born around 1780. In the process, she has looked at records of several families--and if you have ancestors from Georgia, you may just find a name among these, but this book is best as a "how to" book. Of course, Ms. Jackson Fears not only got microfilms of records, but actually travelled as far as the Washington, D. C. archives to do some of her digging! If you can't travel, you may find a librarian who can help you with getting microfilms of some records.

     
    Notes
    1. Some marriage licenses available are listed online at ancestry.com.
    2. To locate an ancestor on the 1880 census, you will need to know what county to look in; if you know the name of the town and state, you may be able to locate the county on the maps at mapquest. Or try SE Genealogy's County Census and County Formation Maps (linked to above).
      (If you are having trouble trying to decide where someone lived in 1880, you might try first a later census--1890-1930 are available--and try to work backward. Of course, information about place of birth and parents' places of birth may 'change' slightly from census to census--and you'll have to try to sort out fact from fiction.) Since ancestry.com allows you to do a "ranked" search for your ancestors, you may be able to search for them without knowing the exact county they lived in. You'll also want to check the county census maps for the year(s) your ancestors lived in a particular area, as well as check county formation maps showing the formation of counties where your ancestors lived.
    3. Places to start looking for information about ancestors before 1880 include the 1870, 1860, and 1850 censuses. No individuals--except for heads of households -- are listed by name in any U.S. census taken before 1850 -- all you can get is information about gender, presumed race, and approximate age. Slaves are not listed by last name in the 1850 or 1860 census, but complete lists of slaves by age and gender are listed in the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules. Wills left by persons with the same last name or from the area your ancestor was born are another place to look for information, as are oral histories of persons interviewed during the Great Depression at American Memory (online). Additional oral histories are at Documenting the American South (online). The last name taken by a person who was a slave could have been either that of the owner of a plantation on which that person lived or that of a parent. It is possible for some persons to sometimes use one name and sometimes another. It is also possible for a slave to retain a prior name after being sold to a new master.
      Databases online at ancestry.com (which you can access through the Fort Worth library) that might be helpful include:
      • Freedmen Bureau Records of Field Offices, 1865-1872
      • 1850 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules
        (also check out the 1850 Census Slave Schedules)
      • U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
        (look for marriages just after 1860)
      • U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records, 1861-1865
        (but note that all that is listed in this last database is the soldier's name and the location of the division served in!)
    4. Deciphering the Original French Documents: typical phrases plus translations; notes in brackets indicate the kind of information that goes in the preceding blank.
      • une Negresse: a Negress
      • un Negrillon: a Negro
      • nommée ____________ [name here; for women]: named ____________
      • nommé ____________ [name here; for men]: named ____________
      • ____________ [profession here] de profession: ____________ by trade
      • ____________ [race here] de la ____________ [country where brought from; often one in the Caribbean]: ____________ from the ____________
      • nation ____________ [country of origin here]: nation ____________
      • agée de ____________ [age in years here, for a woman, age written out in French; check out wordreference.com for translations of numbers] ans: aged ____________ years
      • agé de ____________ [age in years here, for a man] ans: aged ____________ years
      • une ____________ [profession/trade here; for women; such as "cuisinière," 'cook;' again wordreference.com may help translate the trades;]: a ____________
      • un ____________ [profession/trade here; "un" is masculine so this will be a man's trade]: a ____________
      • estimée à ____________ [price in piastres; for a woman] piastres: estimated at ____________ piastres
      • et son enfans [name of child follows]: and her child
 
 
   
 
[U.S. Railroad Occupations]
 

[Some Family Trees]
   


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This page last updated, 2014.