Where Do You Find Free Genealogical Records?
An Ancestry member asked me where she could find additional records online. As you probably know, Ancestry owns two other genealogical sites that require payment - Newspapers and Fold 3.
The appeal of paying and using Ancestry is the millions of family trees, the documents and the DNA matches. The Fold 3 site contains military records for the various wars, and the Newspaper site has many publications, and both have a way to link the information back to your family tree at Ancestry.
However, if you don't want to pay, there are many sites that offer much of what Ancestry and its sites offer - at no charge.
Find-A-Grave is owned by Ancestry but is still free. Since all the information has been added by volunteers, I would hope they never decide to charge. https://www.findagrave.com/
WikiTree https://www.wikitree.com/ and Family Search (LDS site) https://www.familysearch.org/en/ offer the ability to create and share online trees. You must register but there is no charge. The problem with those trees is that they are shared and others can modify. Ancestry allows you to invite others to edit your trees, but you have control over those people and how much you allow them to participate.
But you can use what Family Search has to offer without creating a tree there. FamilySearch has many documents online. The personal trees there that people have added are full of errors, but the documents are helpful and some of them are not on Ancestry.
If you have Ancestors from West Virginia, for example, there is a great site with birth, marriage and death records: http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx
Other states have similar online records to search. You can often find tax, birth, death and marriage records. Here's a link to the Missouri site which has 9 million records. https://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/ And there are many other states that offer vital records online.
The National Archives site has newspapers and many other records. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/.../free-online.../...
Another overlooked resource is to search in Google Books: https://books.google.com/ Some are not available because of copyrights but there are many available there. When searching narrow your search by adding "history" or "genealogy" and then be specific with names, dates or locations. I have found many family histories this way.
Another site filled with books on genealogy is Genealogy Gophers https://www.gengophers.com/#/. This is a free site, and you can view or download a minimum number books. They ask for a donation after 3 downloads. The site is worth a donation.
