Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Top 10 Free Genealogy Sites

I'm not really a fan of "Top 10" and similar posts, but at least I can come up a list fairly easily for the subject Randy Seaver has chosen for today's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Last week we defined our top 5 or 10 fee-based genealogy websites.  This week, let's define our top 10 free genealogy websites!

(2) List your Top 10 (or 20 if you want!) FREE genealogy sites and a short reason for listing each of them.

(3) Share your list on your own blog, in a comment on this post, or on Facebook.  Please leave a link to your list wherever it is.

Drum roll, please:

1.  FamilySearch.org, absolutely.  Not only does it have a massive collection of records, it also has a wonderful wiki with great information on so many research topics.  Plus there are the FHL catalog, online digitized books, learning center, and the FamilyTree, if you want to have your tree online.  And all totally FREE!!

2.  Chronicling America.  Since I love newspaper research so much, this one is a natural, plus it's our tax dollars at work for us.  Chronicling America is the online collection that grew out of the mandate for all states to catalog and digitize their historic newspapers.  One day, all fifty states will finally be posted . . . .

3.  SteveMorse.org.  You can also find this site by going to StephenMorse.org and StephenMorse.com, but not SteveMorse.com.  Just remember, that guy is the imposter; the genealogy Steve Morse is the real deal.  Steve started working on his genealogy shortly before the Ellis Island database went online; when he discovered how badly designed the search engine was, he created his own, and it has only grown from there.  Not only does he have better search pages for Ellis Island, he also has pages for most of the major immigration databases and a huge list of BMD search sites, plus all sorts of cool tools, such as transliterating Cyrillic and Hebrew to the Latin alphabet and figuring out the dates for Easter and Passover every year.  And a whole bunch more besides those!  Oh, just go check out the site and bookmark it!

4.  DeathIndexes.com.  This is actually just one section of a cool site created by Joe Beine.  There are also links to sites for German research, immigration databases, Black research, county histories, and more.  Plus you can sign up for e-mail notifications of when new links are added.

5.  CyndisList.com.  This is still the granddaddy (or should I say grandmomma?) of genealogy portals.  It includes links to hundreds (thousands?) of categories of genealogy sites covering all sorts of topics, and more are added regularly.

6.  FindAGrave.com and BillionGraves.com.  These are two different sites owned by different companies (Ancestry owns FindAGrave; BilliomGraves is independent), but they're essentialy the same thing:  collections of data collated from tombstones in cemeteries and contributed by volunteers.  There's overlap between them, and each has information the other doesn't.  If you're looking for a death, check 'em both out.

7.  Family Tree Webinars.  This used to be an independent site, part of the company that created Legacy Family Tree software, until the parent company was gobbled up by MyHeritage.  The site itself isn't totally "free", but most of the Webinars offered are free to watch when they air and for up to a week afterward.  Lots of genealogy topics are covered, sometimes multiple speakers covering the same subject at different times.

8.  Wikipedia.  At first I thought of one specific page on Wikipedia, the List of Online Newspaper Archives, which I contribute to regularly.  Then I decided I should broaden the listing to include the entire site, as a free online encyclopedia is useful for research in so many ways.  But my favorite page is sitll the List of Online Newspaper Archives.

9.  U.S. GenWeb.  This is a volunteer contribution site for the United States.  It's broken down by states and counties.  You never know ahead of time what you're going to find for a given location, because you don't know what someone might have contributed.  So it's always good to check and see what is there.  And if you feel like contributing, or maybe vounteering to be the coordinator for a county that doesn't have one, so much the better.  Oh, and there is an archive of older U.S. GenWeb info, too.  (There is also a World GenWeb which works similarly, so check that out too.)

10.  Google.  Yes, I know, Google isn't actually a genealogy site per se, but you can use the tools to help you with your research, and it is free.  And as Randy pointed out in his top 10 list, in addition to Search (which I admit keeps getting worse and worse as Google continues to dumb it down for mobile users, but I still like it better than the alternatives), Google also has Blogger (the platform I use for this blog), Translate, Images, Books, News Archive, Maps, and more.

So there they are, my top 10 free sites that I use for genealogy.

Randy Seaver's Genea-musings Saturday Genealogy Poll

Today Randy Seaver posted a genealogy poll on his Genea-Musings blog.  I don't often answer online polls like this, but I found his questions interesting.  The Mission Impossible music isn't playing in the background here, but these are my answers:

a)  Which genealogy software programs for your computer do you use (e.g., Family Tree Maker, Reunion, GRAMPS, etc.)?
The program I use regularly is Family Tree Maker, PC version 16.  I also have installed and use to varying degrees PAF 5.0, Legacy Family Tree, Reunion, and Mac Family Tree (yes, I'm "computer bilingual").  I even used to use the old Mac version of Family Tree Maker!

b)  Which online family trees have information submitted by you - in either a separate online tree (e.g., Ancestry Member Tree) or a universal (collaborative) online tree (e.g., WikiTree)?
I have no family trees posted online anywhere, and I advise others to do the same.  I don't want my family tree information appropriated, inappropriately linked, and/or mangled by people who don't do good research.  (A good genealogy friend of mine had her entire tree copied with no attribution by a Ph.D. student, of all people!)  I do, however, have a family research page on my own Web site with the names and locations I am researching, and family members have found me that way, which shows you don't need to put a tree online to collaborate with family.

c)  For which subscription genealogy record providers (e.g., Ancestry) do you have a subscription?
The only site for which I have a paid subscription is FindMyPast.com, because the paid version shows the newspaper images, which the FHL Portal version does not.

d)  Which FREE genealogy record providers (e.g., FamilySearch) do you use regularly?
At home I use FamilySearch extensively, along with FindAGrave, Google, JewishGen.org, Library and Archives Canada, RootsWeb, USGenWeb, many newspaper and genealogical society sites, and any site that includes information I am looking for.  I also regularly visit my local LDS FamilySearch Center (which in my case happens to be the Oakland FamilySearch Library) and use the databases available through the FHL Portal, which include 19th Century British Newspapers (a Gale database), Ancestry.com World Edition, Fold3, Godfrey Library, Newspaper Archive, and more, and which are free to use in the library.  The Oakland FSL also has individual subscriptions to GenealogyBank, VitalSearch, and Newspapers.com, each available on only one computer.  I also use Steve Morse's One-Step Webpages, but it isn't actually a records site, just a better way to search on other sites that do have records.

e)  How much time do you spend each week doing actual genealogy research online?  [Note:  not reading, or social networking, but actual searching in a record provider].  Estimate an average number of hours per week.
I probably do a minimum of about 20–30 hours of online research every week.

f)  How much time do you spend each week doing actual genealogy research in a repository (e.g., library, archive, courthouse, etc.)?  Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period. 
The amount of time I spend doing on-site research varies from week to week, but it probably averages out to about 5–10 hours per week.

g) How much time do you spend each week adding information to your genealogy software program (either on your computer or online)?  Estimate an average number of hours per week over, say, a one month period.
I have no online trees so spend no time adding information to them.  (That's one way to save time!)
 
h) How much time do you spend each month at a genealogical society meeting, program or event (not a seminar or conference)?  Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period.
I attend several meetings and programs from different organizations.  It's probably about 9 hours per month, assuming about six programs per month at one and a half hours each.

i) How much time do you spend each month on genealogy education (e.g., reading books and periodicals, attending seminars, conferences, workshops, webinars, etc.)?   Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period.
This is another hard one, because of the number of hours spent at conferences.  Maybe about 20 hours per month on average.

j)  How much time do you spend each week reading, writing and commenting on genealogy blogs, websites, and social media?   Estimate an average number of hours per week over, say, a one-month period.
This is probably about 13 hours per week.  A good chunk of that is writing for my own blog, of course!

I noticed that one question Randy didn't ask is how much time we spend just talking to other people about genealogy!

World War I Memorial Discovered in Clearwater, Florida

While renovating a theater built in 1924 in Clearwater, workers discovered a memorial to local World War I soldiers hand-painted on an interior wall.  An article about the discovery doesn't mention that any damage was done to the wall, so it seems that everything has been saved so far.  When the article was published on April 10 only the names from J–Z had been exposed.  The only name mentioned in the article is McMullen, but I can see Carroll, Grover, and Lee in one of the photos.  What to do with the wall is still being discussed.  Though preserving and displaying it seem to be desired, a later article suggests that prospects are not looking good due to the deteriorated condition of the brick wall.  This second article also explains that the wall was formerly an exterior wall for the Clearwater Evening Sun and would have been prominently visible in town.  I hope that at a minimum a list of the names is created and posted online, like maybe on the USGenWeb site for Pinellas County?