Free Genealogy Databases: Researching Your Family Tree Easily

There are free genealogy databases on the Internet, and their history is almost as interesting as the history you will find when creating your family tree or writing your genealogy. These databases are there for anybody to access, and you will find that they contain the names of people in families from many, many years ago.

Why They Exist
They have been created for several reasons. One of them obviously, is to help people to trace their roots. When you are trying to build your family tree, you will find a lot of information that you need in them.
The other reason they exist is that they are records - of people who lived and their families and they can be used in various ways by organizations. Most important are organizations that try to reunite people who have been separated from each other through wars or migration. After the 2nd world war especially, a lot of families that had been torn apart were re-united through these databases.

Scientific Resources
They are also a major scientific resource when it comes to studying genealogy. There are, for example, killer diseases that seem to afflict a small number of people, and looking through these free genealogical databases, you might find that these people are genetically connected.

How they started
How did these databases come about? The initial records of family histories were kept by the Church of Latter Day Saints. The church of the Mormons, through an old tradition, required that records be kept of anyone who underwent saving rites in the church - marriage, baptism, death and so on. Because it was an open church and it welcomed so many people, the records grew and grew.
Eventually, when the internet came along, the church sponsored a project to get these records online, and they opened them up to everyone.

The best databases
There are a few main ones that are thought to have the most extensive records:

rootsweb.ancestry.com
Though it focuses mainly on families from the US and Europe, this free genealogical database contains extensive information. There are records of births, deaths, marriages, baptisms, divorces and they have extended to include government voter records. It has been instrumental in reuniting people who were separated by the 2 world wars, and to date, many social organizations that reunite people continue to use it as well as update it with new data.

genealinks.com
This one focuses on marriages. All you need to have is the name and location of the person you are searching for and it will bring up that person and whom they were married to and the rest of the details that are in the database about that person. It is vast, with about 30,000 recorded marriages for the US alone. It's the most unique because behind the scenes, it questions other smaller databases and gives you back a lot more information.

familysearch.org
This is a project of the Church of Latter Day Saints. It's preferred because of its ease of use; beginners can get data from it quite easily. All they need are the names of the person they are looking for and the event for which you are searching, say a birth or a death. This means that you can use it to track relatives from really far back. It would be instrumental in building the top-tier of a family tree. The other reason this database is preferred is that it includes minorities - you can use it to trace Jews, Hispanics and African-Americans.

olivetreegenealogy.com
This database is somehow different in that it focuses on people from all countries who have special circumstances. It has records of displaced persons, orphans, victims of war and missing persons. These are not easy to find in other free genealogical databases. It's also easy to question as it doesn't require much detail - all it needs is the names of the person. If you are looking for someone who has been missing for a long time, this would be the place to start.
These databases are available for you to use and should help you access quite a deal of information to get started on your family tree project. They help you research your family history easily and conveniently. Do make sure that you know what is required in order to question each of them. Some need a name, others a name and date of birth and so on. Be prepared with whatever information you already have so that you can search these free genealogy databases efficiently and extensively.

Margaret Ravenscroft has been a genealogist for over 20 years and has traced her family back to medieval times. If you have found this article helpful, visit Free Genealogy Databases to discover more. Click Here for your FREE Minicourse http://www.genealogyandfamilytrees.com.

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Getting Started

A good place to start is by speaking to your immediate relatives, parents, grand parents, aunties, uncles etc and finding out as much information as they can give about your ancestors. One important tip to make you aware of right away is that you must always always corroborate any information  they give you by checking with the relevant historical sources.

When you interview your relations make copious notes about anything and everything they tell you, do not omit any information thinking it not to matter or too trivial, because as sure as eggs are eggs further down the line with your research it will fit in somewhere. If you can use a voice recorder so much the better, then you can transcribe the interview in your own time. Remember to keep the tapes or discs so that you can review them later if needed.

You might well discover as I did some years ago that one of your relatives might already have done some research of their own and have a lot of information that they can share with you. In my case an aunt had done a little research and had filled out her findings with her own recollections, which gave me a good deal of information to work on. I did find however that some of her recollections were inaccurate when I looked at the relevant historical information, hence the recommendation to always corroborate, but at least I had a steer on where to start looking.

Its is also important to interview your relations sooner rather than later, the longer you leave it the more chance that fading memories cannot recall important snippets, or heaven forbid that someone passes away before you have spoken to them. So make it a priority before it is too late.