Thursday, October 11, 2007

Can you recommend a web site?

I'm busily putting together my presentations for the 20 October seminar, and thought that I would ask my faithful, experienced and really smart readers for their recommendations.

The first of my talks is an "Internet Genealogy Survey." My plan is to list the "best" web sites for each type of genealogy or family history record - e.g., locality books, surname books, census, military, cemetery, immigration, naturalization, vital, land, probate, Bible, etc. records. I also have lists for data portals, search engines, societies, online databases, and the like. I am limiting this to US research for now.

I am not the sharpest knife in the genealogy drawer, and I'm absolutely sure that I haven't visited every great genealogy web site available, so I would appreciate your suggestions. I am looking for that "great" site that not many researchers know about.

I am covering Ancestry, Footnote, WorldVitalRecords, GenealogyBank, Rootsweb, USGenWeb, FamilySearch, National Archives, CyndisList, HeritageQuestOnline and other sites in some detail, so please don't recommend those.

Please write a comment to me by clicking "Comments" below or email me at rjseaver(at)cox.net. Thanks!!!

5 comments:

Tex said...

I love Joe Beine's Death Indexes--http://www.deathindexes.com/--it's probably not a totally unknown site, but it so nicely puts all the sites that have indexes and records online. Here's the one for births and marriages and some divorces http://www.deathindexes.com/ AND he keeps them updated. One of my faves and most used!

There's also www.accessgenealogy.com for the Dawes Rolls--the indexing is not perfect, but it's easier to use than the NARA site.

Findagrave is another fave.
Just my 2 cents.

Janice said...

I love GoogleBooks to be honest.... or even just plain Google. When I being research on anything, genealogy or not I start there.

Also, the New York Times newspaper site now allows you to search their archives for free.

AND, anyone researching in New England.. NEHGS has several amazing online databases, and two different antique newspaper databases that let you cover from the 1700s through the 1800s in old newspapers. Massachusetts births, deaths and marriages from the 1600s to 1910 are covered, and much much much more.

Janice

Breeze said...

The civil war soldiers and sailor system for all Union soldiers
http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/

Linkpendium
http://www.linkpendium.com/

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

Both of the MOA sites have been valuable to be. They do have a focus on NY and MI but there are also many listings of national interest.

Cornell

Univ. of Michigan

I use my Newspaper Archive subscription almost daily but I'm often frustrated with the way the site works. That could be a software issue on my end.

Terry Thornton said...

Randy, Google Full-view Books is a "must" site to recommend. Although I see Janice has already mentioned it, I'd like to add more. To do a search for full-view books on genealogy, for instance, type in "Google Book Search" and when the window opens, type in "Genealogy." THEN SELECT FULL VIEW! Bingo --- 5,320 books on genealogy are waiting to be read or downloaded and read later. The beauty is this is FREE and each book can be searched before downloading or after.

While I was at the page just now, I refined my Google Book Search Full View Books to "Genealogy + Thornton" and got 743 books just for the asking without leaving home and all for no investment. BTY, "Genealogy + Seaver" produces 542 hits and "Genealogy + Seavers" brings up 19.

I think Google Full View Books is one of the best starting points for most any Internet genealogy/history research.
Terry Thornton
Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi