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Getting Started | |
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Mega Data Sites | |
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International and Immigration Destinations | |
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State and Regional Resources | |
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Web Tools | |
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History Havens | |
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Geographical Aids | |
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Specialized Research Resources | |
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Blogs | |
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International and Immigration Destinations
Access to Archives
A guide for where to look rather than an actual storehouse of sources, “A2A” will point you to your British ancestors’ records among 9.2 million items in 411 repositories. The cataloged records date from the eighth century to today.
Automated Genealogy
This free census-transcription site keeps getting better, with the 1901 Canadian census now indexed and linked to images at Library and Archives Canada <www.collectionscanada.ca>. The 1906 census of the Northwest Provinces and the 1911 Canadawide census are almost complete.
Canadian Genealogy Centre
Passenger lists are coming aboard at this Library and Archives Canada site, which already boasts various censuses, western land grants, WWI service files and divorce records (1841 to 1968).
CastleGarden.org
Ellis Island’s precursor, Castle Garden, was America’s first official immigration center. You can find early New York arrivals among more than 10 million records covering 1830 through 1892; another 2 million records, dating back to 1820, await transcribing.
Danish Demographic Database
Find your Danish emigrants in a database of 394,000 police records from 1868 to 1908, and in census records from 1769 to 1921—11.7 million names in all. The growing index to probates now covers Thisted, Viborg, Aalborg and Randers counties.
Digitalarkivet
Norway’s digital archive provides the nation’s past, starting with censuses (1801, 1865, 1875, 1900), emigrant registers, tax lists, probate indexes and military rolls. Now webmasters are working to digitize all 11,000 parish registers—that’s 1.85 million pages.
DocumentsOnline
Searching this collection of digitized records from Britain’s national archives is free; viewing an image costs about $7. You’ll find more than a million Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills covering 1384 to 1858, Royal Navy service records, petitions from the time of Henry III to James I, the Domesday Book, even Victorian Prisoners Photograph Albums.
Ellis Island
Some 17 million newcomers to America passed through the port of New York between 1892 and 1924, and you can search for them in this milestone database of 25 million records. View manifest images free online, or order prints starting at $25.
Family History Online
The British Federation of Family History Societies has compiled more than 66 million records including parish registers, memorial inscriptions, censuses and, most recently, several thousand gravestone photographs. Searching is free and viewing your finds costs pennies, with a minimum deposit of about $10.
Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies
Conquer the challenges of Eastern European research with the tips and databases collected here, including the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia’s new Save Our Ancestral Records database of obituaries www.ahsgrsoar.org. And don’t miss the data from this side of the Atlantic, such as the index of newspaper records extracted to replace those lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
FindMyPast.com
This site—called 1837online.com until 2006—formerly focused on the civil-registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales (begun in 1837). But its scope has broadened to include the 1841, 1861, 1871 and 1891 British censuses, military records and, most recently, outbound passenger lists from the UK. Eventually the emigration records will cover departures up to 1960; those from 1890 to 1919 are already online. Various per-unit subscription plans range from about $14 for 90 days to $200 a year.
FreeBMD
This volunteer-staffed site includes not only transcriptions of nearly 131 million birth, marriage and death records from England and Wales, but also images of many of those records. Affiliated sites are now tackling censuses and parish registers, with more than 1.7 million church records to date at www.freereg.org.uk.
Genlias
Dutch genealogists have it good: This free treasure trove of 9.4 million records from the civil register—the most important source for Dutch genealogical research—documents 39.2 million people going back to 1811.
Genline
Swedish researchers willing to pay—Genline starts at about $29 for 20 days—can forget scrolling microfilm and browse more than 16 million pages of church records, the most valuable Swedish genealogy resource.
GENUKI
Let this favorite of Family Tree Magazine readers (in our fifth-anniversary poll) lead you through the intricacies of UK and Irish research, with tips, FAQs, user-contributed databases, maps, newsgroups and bulletin boards.
Images Canada
This Library and Archives Canada site searches more than 65,000 images in collections across the country, or you can follow a predesigned Image Trail or view a Photo Essay.
Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild
If you’re stymied by the Ellis Island and Castle Garden sites, turn to this Family Tree Magazine reader favorite, where volunteers have transcribed passenger lists from a variety of ports totaling 3.4 million entries.
Institute of Migration
Finnish records here include passenger lists (318,000 records), passports (197,000), farm names (227,000) and North American Finns (146,000 people).. You can search emigrants for free; full access costs about $40 for a year.
JewishGen
The widest-reaching online Jewish genealogy network offers the Family Finder database of 400,000 surnames and towns, ShtetLinks for 250-plus communities, the ShtetlSeeker database of Central and Eastern European town names and the Family Tree of the Jewish People, with data on more than 3 million individuals.
Origins Network
Total access to this umbrella site for Irish, British and Scottish data runs about $92 annually. Irish researchers might find that a bargain, since Irish Origins www.irishorigins.com includes the Griffith’s Valuation tax enumeration, the 1851 Dublin city census and a wills index covering 1484 to 1858. British Origins has the 1841 and 1871 censuses, plus indexes to marriages (1538 to 1840) and wills. No need to pony up for the free Scots Origins, which taps FamilySearch’s IGI (see page XX). The Origins Network also recently redesigned the Burke’s Peerage site, though access requires a separate subscription.
Programme de Recherche en Démographie Historique
Quebec researchers, commencez ici! This 759,400-record database draws largely from 153 parishes’ registers spanning 1621 to 1799, plus 45,000 burial records from 1800 to 1850. You can search for free, but results cost about $19 for 150 records.
ScotlandsPeople
Search 50 million records at this official site, including banns and marriages (1553 to 1931), deaths (1855 to 1956), births and baptisms (1553 to 1854) and censuses. The wills and testaments (1513 to 1901) database is free; others cost about $11 for 30 “page credits.” The sibling Scottish Archive Network adds a wealth of digitized historical documents.
TheShipsList
Another excellent place to find immigrant arrivals, TheShipsList serves up 2,000-plus free pages of passenger lists and other ocean-crossing info.
WorldGenWeb
Though spottier than USGenWeb (see page XX), this international version of the volunteer genealogy site is nonetheless a worthwhile starting place for foreign family history, with more than 400 sites under its umbrella.
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