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Mega Data Sites
Access Genealogy
This links portal also features a variety of useful databases, especially if you’re researching American Indian ancestors—for example, it has easy-to-search versions of the 1880 Cherokee census and the Dawes Rolls (19th-century enrollment records of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole—click Index and Database of Indian Rolls). A national cemetery database search of more than 35,000 names is a recent addition.
Ancestry.com
This ever-expanding data collection comes the closest to realizing the dream of being able to do real genealogy in your pajamas. With a dazzling array of databases at your fingertips, including images and every-name indexes for every extant US federal census, Ancestry.com is easily worth the $155.40 cost of the annual US Deluxe membership. Especially if you have ancestors in the British Isles, where the coverage is most thorough, consider an upgrade to the $299.40 World Deluxe package, which unlocks the rest of Ancestry.com’s nearly 25,000 databases. Even penny-pinchers can benefit from the free user-submitted pedigree files in Ancestry World Tree.
FamilySearch
For a peek at what’s in the works from the Internet home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ vast family history resources—and a chance to put in your two cents—check out FamilySearch Labs at labs.familysearch.org and labs.familysearch.org/blog. While you wait for new ideas to emerge from the lab, continue to enjoy FamilySearch’s free access to the transcribed 1880 US, 1881 British Isles and 1881 Canadian censuses; vital-records indexes for Scandinavia and Mexico; the US Social Security Death Index; the International Genealogical Index (IGI); user-submitted family trees in Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File; the Family History Library catalog; and research guides.
Footnote
Through a contract with the National Archives and Records Administration (see XX), this private site is digitizing and offering paid access to Civil War pension index cards, Southerners’ property claims against the US Army, and naturalization records for New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, among other records. Subscriptions cost $59.95 per year or $7.95 per month, or purchase a single image for $1.95.
GenealogyBank
This new player among nationwide data sites emphasizes historical newspapers. The site draws upon more than a half-million editions of 1,300 newspapers dating from 1690 to 1977, as well as 24 million obituaries from 1977 on. A $19.95 per month or $119.95 per year subscription also buys access to more than 11,700 pre-1900 books and other printed items, plus more than 115,000 historical documents spanning 1789 to 1980. The latter include all the American State Papers (1789 to 1838) and genealogical content from the US Serial Set (1817 to 1980).
HeritageQuest Online
You can’t subscribe to this site, but your library or other such institution can—visit it to use HeritageQuest on site and ask if you can get access from home through the library’s Web site. Dig into the complete US census, 20,000 family history books, the Periodical Source Index to 1.9 million genealogy journal and magazine articles, Revolutionary War pension and bounty-land application files, and Freedman’s Bank depositor registers.
MyTrees.com
This site’s own Ancestry Archive boasts 233 million names in pedigree files, or you can search a combination of databases, on and off the site, totaling 1 billion names with one click. Don’t want to pay the $15 monthly fee? Submit your own family tree files and earn free access.
National Archives and Records Administration
OK, we admit it’s not the easiest or most-intuitive Web site around. But the archives’ online home is a must-visit destination for US genealogists—even if only for the lessons on how to access its treasures in Washington, DC, and regional facilities. Its Access to Archival Databases searches more than 85 million electronic records. Popular data sets include 9.2 million WWII Army enlistment files and 604,596 arrivals in the Port of New York during the Irish famine, 1846 to 1851. The Archival Research Catalog contains more than 124,000 digitized maps, photos and documents—among them WWII casualty lists and the Dawes Rolls of American Indians.
RootsWeb
New at this biggest free genealogy site are an improved mailing-list search engine and a more-robust server for the WorldConnect pedigree files, which now number more than 480 million names in 400,000 trees. The message boards—shared with RootsWeb sister site Ancestry.com, as are the family trees—recently surpassed 18 million posts.
USGenWeb
With sites for every state and most counties within those states, the volunteer-run USGenWeb remains a superb starting place for researching ancestors across America. You can most efficiently search its zillions of user-submitted transcriptions and other files via the (somewhat hidden) basic and advanced search pages.
World Vital Records
An attempt to apply the user-edited Wikipedia concept to genealogy, this site aims to make a Web page for every deceased person and every location in the world. In the meantime, for $49.95 a year you get Everton Publishers’ pedigree and family group sheets collection, a mixed bag of vital records and nearly 1 million pages from small-town newspapers. Much of the content is free, so see what you can get before paying up.
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