Genealogy Starting Points on the Internet

[Panache]

Hi all,

My real Scottish connection is through my great grandfather and my parents haven't been very useful in providing a lot of information about him. After a couple of years of "oh I'm sure we have some records somewhere" I have decided that I will need to bypass them.

Sadly there is no family left alive on that side of my family tree save my Mother.

I started today looking online with the (probably) stupid idea that government records (birth, death, census info, military registration) would be easy to search. It seems that pretty much everywhere I look eventually links to Ancestry.com.

For those of you out there who are experienced in these kinds of searches, should I bite the bullet and sign up or are there better ways of looking into these records?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Cheers

Jamie

[Sionnach]

Can't advise you, just know that I, too, have hit the same wall. My father's side is the place to go for me, but I have lost that connection for various and sundry reasons I won't go into. I'll wait to see what good info comes up on this thread. Thanks for taking the lead.

[Sheep In Wolf's Clothing]

You can always try the Church of LDS research site. It's free and lists many records from all kinds of government sources.
It can be found here:
http://www.familysearch.org/

Good luck with your search!
Sara

[Drillagent]

SIGN UP FOR ANCESTRY.COM!!!!

Not only do they have important documents (I found a Civil War veteran ancestor, and the WWI draft card of another) they have millions of people on thousands of ancestry trees donated by others searching for their ancestors. You could very well find a cousin who is searching for the very same thing. Well worth the money!

[Southern Breeze]

Ancestry.com is what I use. Well worth the expense.

[gilmore]

Ancestry.com is what I use. Well worth the expense.

While ancestry.com is limited in some ways, it is the best online. Typos abound.

I would be very careful of the LDS site for anything but government records. They accept anything that is given to them by private researchers with no quality control that I know of. You may find seemingly relevant info there, but it needs to be verified elsewhere from more nearly primary sources.

[george7]

If you sign up just once, get the records you were looking for and post a trail for those to find you... you may get priceless information.

[Daniel Hyde]

Hi Jamie,
There are many free internet sites. Rootsweb.com, is where others upload their info for mutual help. Familysearch.org, is the Mormons site. It can be very usefull. Another is the USGenweb. All fifty states are represented here, some with better on line data and services than others. Your nearest LARGE public library may be of great help as well. As far as Scots go, an author, David Dobson, has written dozens of books on the Scots migration to America. Some of my MacGillivray's are in there, and they were a small family.
There are many resources out there, I have just scratched the surface with these. Take heart, it's not impossible.
Regards,
Dan

[tartanherring]

Hi Jamie,
I actually work in the history field and used used to be a reference archivist--a job in which I helped genealogists to do research. It really depends on the state in which you need to do the research. Some states have their county records centralized in the state archives and some states leave them in the counties. But you need to start with what you know and work backwards using birth & death records when available (many Southern states didn't keep these until the 20th century), wills, estate records, marriage records, census, deeds, etc. Genealogy libraries are good starts if you have one nearby. But Ancestry is getting better the census is its strong point in terms of remote geneaology. Beyond that it depends--it is great if you can solve everything via the census and some scanned reference books. But not many people can. I do use Ancestry regularly in my job--it is good for military pensions, as well--but that isn't really what you need when getting started trying to trace your family. People don't list their parents in military pensions.
So all that said--you can probably get access to Ancestry at a library and try it out--you may also be able to do a decent amount of research at a genealogy library. If the line you are working on is actually from CA, try to use the original records if possible. There are also genealogists for hire in most areas.
Good luck!
Ansley

[macwilkin]

Hi Jamie,
I actually work in the history field and used used to be a reference archivist--a job in which I helped genealogists to do research. It really depends on the state in which you need to do the research. Some states have their county records centralized in the state archives and some states leave them in the counties. But you need to start with what you know and work backwards using birth & death records when available (many Southern states didn't keep these until the 20th century), wills, estate records, marriage records, census, deeds, etc. Genealogy libraries are good starts if you have one nearby. But Ancestry is getting better the census is its strong point in terms of remote geneaology. Beyond that it depends--it is great if you can solve everything via the census and some scanned reference books. But not many people can. I do use Ancestry regularly in my job--it is good for military pensions, as well--but that isn't really what you need when getting started trying to trace your family. People don't list their parents in military pensions.
So all that said--you can probably get access to Ancestry at a library and try it out--you may also be able to do a decent amount of research at a genealogy library. If the line you are working on is actually from CA, try to use the original records if possible. There are also genealogists for hire in most areas.
Good luck!
Ansley

Well said, Ansley!

What do you do in the history field?

Todd

USNPS Seasonal Park Ranger
History Instructor, Librarian