Quote:
Originally Posted by eujaynia
I've started this post 3 times! I'm trying not to get lengthy.
With that said, is there a reasonably priced genealogy software out there one can purchase? Seems I can't find squat in public records, everything leads to, "BUY THIS to find your ancestors!" kind of advertising.
I don't know the names of my paternal or maternal grandparents parents. My mother was born (I think) in Alabama. At least that's where we went to visit her brothers and sisters all my life, up into my teen years. Once I had my own family, I never saw them again. Now, that both my parents are gone, this is proving to be extremely difficult.
Any thoughts welcomed!
Rebekah (aka eujaynia)
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I have been doing my genealogy for 15 years, and did not have any information other than the names of my Grandparents. I now have over 12 generations on my family tree, going all the way back to Jamestown, VA and then back to England. I would suggest starting with the website
http://www.Familysearch.org
Put the name that you are searching in the search box. You can start with your parents name, then your Grandparent's names. It will give you a list of people with the same names, their birth dates, where they were born, when they died, when & where they were married, etc. You need to look at each of those names and determine which one is your relative. The census information is particularily valuable in that it tells you a wealth of information; such as the year and address of where they lived, other family members that were also lliving in the house, their sex, ages, occupation, where they were born, where their parents were born, etc. etc. Once you get some information, you can work backwards by searching the other family members that our on the census. You will gather more and more information and eventually connect all the dots.
You can also search:
http://www.rootsweb.com
http://www.genealogy.com
http://www.ancestry.com
A lot of these websites are paid websites, which can get pretty expensive, but they also give you a lot of free information. . I started my research by going to these websites and going to their "Message Center" which is free. In the "Message Center" they have a search box usually called "Forum Finder". You then enter the surname that you want to search; such as " Spahn". It will bring up the "Spahn Message Board". You can then search within that board to find information about your family.
Another great source of information is:
http://www.heritagequest.org
A lot of libraries are members of this website and you can check wtih your local library and see if they have free access to this website. It will give you lots of information.
Once you have some information, you can buy a program called "FamilyTreeMaker" which is a really valuable tool and it is a place to keep all the information that you have gathered.