Finding Your Family On The Internet

Beginner's guide to finding your family history online. --back cover.

Researching family history is the second most popular topic on the Internet (after sex). In Online Roots, Pamela Boyer Porter, a Certified Genealogical Records Specialist, explains how to search effectively on the Internet, how to assess the value of what you find, and the best way to make full use of the resources of the Internet to trace your family's history and heritage. Topics covered include: Judging your sources Checking modern lists and resources Finding clues to primary sources Researching military records When an ancestor has a criminal record Locating photographs on the web Researching on the Internet can be fun and challenging. Online Roots makes your search more effective and creative.

Learning about the past can be fun. It is even more exciting, though, when the stories you discover are from your own family history. Genealogy is an enjoyable hobby that helps you map your family tree. Do you know where your second great-grandfather lived? Do you know what he did for a living? Did your ancestors come to the United States from another country? If so, do you know why they made this life-changing decision? Technology can help you answer these and many other questions. One of your best tools for finding this information is the Internet. Your family history awaits—it’s just a few mouse clicks away!

Updated edition: A genealogist’s practical guide to researching family history online while avoiding inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading information. The internet has revolutionized family history research—every day new records and resources are placed online and new methods of sharing research and communicating become available. Never before has it been so easy to research family history and to gain a better understanding of who we are and where we came from. But, as British genealogist Chris Paton demonstrates in this second edition of his straightforward, practical guide, while the internet is an enormous asset, it is also something to be wary of. For this edition, Paton has checked and updated all the links and other sources, added new ones, written a new introduction, and substantially expanded the social networking section. As always, researchers need to take a cautious approach to the information they acquire on the web. Where did the original material come from? Has it been accurately reproduced? Why was it put online? What has been left out and what is still to come? As he leads researchers through the multitude of resources that are now accessible online with an emphasis on UK and Ireland sites, Chris Paton helps to answer these questions. He shows what the internet can and cannot do—and he warns against the various traps researchers can fall into along the way.

If you are a Pakeha New Zealander there is one fact you can count on: your ancestors came here from somewhere else. The answers to questions about who they were and where they came from is quite probably available to anyone with curiosity, a degree of determination and access to a reasonable Internet connection. There have been some excellent books written about setting out to discover and write up your family history. This one is different. Although it covers the basics of how to go about your genealogical quest, its main focus is on the resources available on the Internet. It offers a step-by-step guide to tracking down those elusive relatives. It also combines an analysis of the major family history web sites with a breakdown country by country, county by county of available resources. Along the way it conveys an infectious enthusiasm for the way a study of family roots becomes not only an absorbing hobby, but how it can also lead to new friendships with relatives and strangers, brings history alive and, most of all, leads to an appreciation for those brave souls who, for whatever reason, had the vision to move to the other side of the world in order to give all of us a better life.

A genealogist’s practical guide to researching family history online while avoiding inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading information. The internet has revolutionized family history research—every day new records and resources are placed online and new methods of sharing research and communicating become available. Never before has it been so easy to research family history and to gain a better understanding of who we are and where we came from. But, as British genealogist Chris Paton demonstrates in this straightforward, practical guide, while the internet is an enormous asset, it is also something to be wary of. Researchers need to take a cautious approach to the information they acquire on the web. Where did the original material come from? Has it been accurately reproduced? Why was it put online? What has been left out and what is still to come? As he leads researchers through the multitude of resources that are now accessible online with an emphasis on UK and Ireland sites, Chris Paton helps to answer these questions. He shows what the internet can and cannot do—and he warns against the various traps researchers can fall into along the way.

Your Guide to Online Genealogy The internet has made millions of records available to search any time, anywhere. Start finding your ancestors with just a few strokes of a keyboard using the detailed instruction in this book. Inside you'll find: • An overview of where and how to start your family history research • Detailed descriptions of the best online databases for family historians • Hundreds of helpful websites to further your research • Step-by-step search instructions to help you find exactly what you're looking for • Chapters dedicated to finding specific records, including birth, marriage and death; census; military; land; and immigration • Case studies that apply key concepts to real-life searches • Ideas for connecting with fellow researchers and distant relatives through social media, blogging and newsletters • Special resources for researching American Indian, African-American and Jewish ancestors • Plus access to bonus online video demonstrations If you're curious about who's hanging out in your family tree, there's never been a better time to find out. Get this book, get online and get started today!

With the growing availability of new material online, including censuses and birth, marriage and death records, the internet is becoming ever more important to anyone tracing their family history. Knowing where to look is half the battle. This guide points you to the websites and shows you how to get the most out of them.