Wednesday, July 25, 2007

25 Genealogy Web Sites I Can't Do Without

The genealogy magazines print lists of web sites in occasionally - such as in Family Tree Magazine here and Family Chronicle here.

John D. Reid at the Anglo-Celtic Connections blog has posted his list of 25 genealogy web sites that he, as a Canadian researcher, can't live without - see his post here.

I haven't made a list like this for almost a year - my last top 10 list is here. Here are my top 25 that I, as an American researcher, can't live without (in approximate order of value to me) for online genealogy research:

1. Ancestry databases, family trees and publications (subscription site) and free articles - http://www.ancestry.com
2. Rootsweb databases, message boards, mailing lists, research guides, etc - http://www.rootsweb.com
3. LDS Family Search databases, research guides, library catalog - http://www.familysearch.org
4. US Genealogy Web state and county pages, user-submitted databases - http://www.usgenweb.org
5. Joe Beine's links to military, vital, naturalization, immigration, census and topic lists - http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/databases.html

6. Genealogy.com (subscription site) free family web pages and Genforum message boards - http://www.genealogy.com
7. Heritage Quest Online databases - using library subscription.
8. Steve Morse One-Step Web Pages links and search engines - http://www.stevemorse.org
9. Cyndi's List links to genealogy sites - http://www.cyndislist.com
10. New England Historical and Genealogical Society databases and publications (subscription site) - http://www.newenglandancestors.org/

11. Linkpendium genealogy links - http://www.linkpendium.com/
12. Olive Tree Immigration, Naturalization, Vital Record links - http://olivetreegenealogy.com/index.shtml
13. National Archives databases - http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/start-research/
14. Find A Grave cemetery transcriptions - http://www.findagrave.com/
15. Interment.net cemetery transcriptions - http://www.interment.net

16. Legacy obituary search - http://www.legacy.com/Obituaries.asp
17. Obituary Archive at Newsbank (subscription site) - http://oa.newsbank.com/
18. Encyclopedia of Genealogy - http://www.eogen.com/
19. Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness - http://raogk.com/
20. United States Vital Records - http://www.vitalrec.com/

21. Family History 101 State Genealogy Information - http://www.familyhistory101.com/states.html
22. Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System - http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/
23. BLM General Land Office Records - http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/default.asp
24. Ellis Island NY Passenger Lists - http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/
25. WorldCat Library Cooperative - http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/

There are thousands more genealogy web sites with very useful and helpful data. The sites above link to many of them.

I didn't include the recently created subscription sites like World Vital Records, Genealogy Bank and Footnote. I don't subscribe to them and have not evaluated them critically for my own use.

My list above does not include information or entertainment sites such as search engines, photos and videos, contests, humor, blogs, articles, societies, magazines, software, wikis, etc. I may make a separate list just for those.

Thanks to John Reid for the idea - making a list like this sharpens the pen, so to speak, and makes you think about what is important to performing genealogy research.

I'm sure you have a different opinion on many of these. What would you add to my list? What would you leave out? Either comment on this post, or write your own blog post.

2 comments:

Janice said...

Randy,

Thank for the wonderful list of genealogy links. Most of them are my favorites also, but you provided a few I'd never seen before!

Janice

Anonymous said...

Great list, thanks. About RAOGK, raogk.com will get you there, but they'd prefer you use raogk.org

Just sayin'