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The 101 Best Family History Web Sites: 2003 Index | |
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August 2003 Issue | |
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Mega Sites
Ancestry.com FamilySearch Genealogy.com RootsWeb USGenWeb Find news and reviews on more great Web sites in the August 2003 issue of Family Tree Magazine.
Hall of Fame
Paid Content
www.ancestry.com
This giant commercial site can meet almost every online genealogical need, from census images ($99.95 a year) to old newspaper pages ($79.95 a year) to family tree software (free). You'll pay for the best stuff here—$189.95 a year for the works—but Ancestry.com probably comes the closest to delivering on the dream of doing real research from your desktop. The basic US Records Collection ($79.95 a year) includes more than 3,000 sources of digital data; British Isles researchers will also want the UK & Ireland Records Collection ($99.95 a year). Even if you've maxed out your credit cards, Ancestry.com still offers enough freebies to be worth a bookmark, such as its message boards and pedigree files (both merged with RootsWeb's).
www.familysearch.org
Among the richest free genealogy sites, this online offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would be a must-visit if only for the Family History Library catalog, guide to worldwide Family History Centers, vast library of research guides and free Personal Ancestral File software. But it's also home to the International Genealogical Index of vital records, Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File databases of user-submitted family trees, the US Social Security Death Index of 64 million records, and special vital-records indexes for Scandinavia and Mexico. And now it's added census records: the 1880 US census, 1881 Canadian census and 1881 British census. See the December 2001 Family Tree Magazine for tips on getting the most out of this family tree treasure trove.
www.genealogy.com
Begun as a home for Family Tree Maker software users (who can still access the site via www.familytreemaker.com), this has blossomed into a valuable site for all researchers. You'll find a wealth of how-to information, celebrity family trees and user Web pages, plus GenForum genforum.genealogy.com, still arguably the biggest and best message board system for connecting with others delving into your surname or ancestral stomping grounds. For a fee, Genealogy.com also turns into your gateway to World Family Tree pedigree files ($49.99 a year), the Genealogy Library of digitized books ($49.99 a year, includes 1850 census images), the Family and Local Histories collection ($79.99 a year), International and Passenger Records ($79.99 a year) and the US Census Collection ($99.99 a year). See the December 2002 Family Tree Magazine for a guide to Genealogy.com's free offerings.
www.rootsweb.com
This ever-growing volunteer effort has survived an acquisition and partial merger with the for-profit Ancestry.com and remains a favorite for free online genealogy. Use the multiple search engines to probe RootsWeb's sprawling collections of user-submitted records (notably death records, obituaries, military records and cemeteries). Don't miss the guides to getting started in genealogy and to mailing lists on everything from surnames to the most obscure ethnic and geographic subtopics. Message boards and pedigree files match the data on Ancestry.com's versions, but many users prefer the RootsWeb interface. See the October 2001 Family Tree Magazine for more on digging into RootsWeb.
www.usgenweb.com
The idea sounds crazy, but the volunteers at USGenWeb have pulled it off: Build a county-by-county network of links, user-transcribed data and queries for the United States. Within the 50 state pages you'll find pages for individual counties; you can search the archives by state or all at once. Special projects include census transcriptions and tombstones.
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