Brief Overview of Genealogy Web Sites

I will engage in general genealogy issues or provide summaries of genealogy sources on occasion. They will be found under the category, General Genealogy Issues. This is cross posted but a bit different from what I wrote on my other genealogy blog, Sharp Family in NC. Listed below are some of the main genealogy web sites. I will continue to research this and provide more later, as well as add them to the list on the side bar of this blog. I am going write a separate post on genealogy blogs.

I have found each of these sites useful. However, the family tree forums on most of them rely on information from many sources and there is no quality control or fact check on the information. So it is reader beware. I treat what they provide as clues, rather than facts, unless there is primary evidence to back up what is provided.

There is a tendency for people to copy what they see and accept it so misinformation gets spread around like virus and gets accepted as fact just by the sheer volume of similar content. This was the case when I looked into the name of William Ives wife (see Who was William Ives' Wife?: Part One) For example, a recent check of William Ives in the Ancestry.com family trees found many references to William Ives in many family trees. Almost all of them included Hannah Dickerman as his wife. While they may be right I have yet to see any record from the time that indicates this and some evidence against it. However, there is also no credible alternative to Hannah.

Having said this caution, clues can be a very useful starting point and I certainly made extensive use of these sites. You can also find access to primary documents through them and I have done this through Ancestory.com and Family Search.

Ancestry.com seems to be the most pervasive genealogy service that is not free. You can find some of the information for less expensive sources or even free ones but they bring it together. You can also access some of their services for free. But you cannot go far without paying.

Rootsweb is the free service of Ancestry.com and describes itself as the oldest and largest free genealogy service. There is also Access genealogy.com which showed up in Google searches for Ives family history. It says it is free but when you drill to get to actual records it takes you to the Ancestry.com site where you have to pay. You can access family trees that people have provided but like other free sites, there is no editing I looked at one for William Ives and found a number of mistakes including children born several years after he died. I do not think they had sperm banks in those days. I do not claim to be perfect either but things like this should be caught.

Family Search is operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They do it as a free service for everyone because “they are motivated by love for their deceased family members and desire to serve them.” They also allow families to make covenants with their ancestors once they are identified. Whether you agree with their goals or not, they services they offer can be useful. I was able, for example, to order parish records of London parishes in the 1600s and in Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England in the late 1500s and early 1600s as part of my research on William Ives and his wife. On the other hand, like many sites, there is no fact checking on the family trees you can access.

Gencircles is an online service where you can upload your family trees. They give you control on you work which is generally a good thing but like the other sites it means there is no independent fact checking on anything you see. I found it useful.

Geocities has not become part of Yahoo as I recently discovered. It was purchased by Yahoo in 1999 but I do not remember this connection being so prominent in 2004 when I spent more time there. They now offer a free web site or a free blog. But the free service is fairly basic. There are paid subscription options at reasonable rates that give you more options and storage. You read the history of geocities in the wikipedia.

Genealogy Search Help for Google - helpful tool to enhance Google searches for ancestors.

So here are a few of the basic sites. Family Chronicle has a list of their top ten favorites and none of the above are included except Rootsweb. Although almost half the links no longer work. Their top choice is Cyndi’s List. They describe it as “probably the most popular genealogy index on the web. Cyndi's site features over 16,800 links, categorized and cross-referenced, in over 60 categories, and is updated with impressive frequency.”

What are your favorites? I will publish updates in the future.

Comments

[V. Chris & Tom Tinney, Sr.]

Family Genealogy & History Internet Education Directory

Professional worldwide humanities and social sciences mega portal, connected directly to thousands of related sub-sets, with billions of primary or secondary database family history and genealogy records. It encompasses all other key worldwide genealogy sites.
http://www.academic-genealogy.com/

[bill Ives]

Chris and Tom

Thanks for mentioining your site. I loked at it and I have added it to my list of genealogy sties.

Bill

[Jane]

Great series of posts. Are you planning an update? Maybe something annually - with all the new sites popping up these days. I am into video - so I would add rootstelevision.com.