Genealogical Research: How to Find a Goldmine of Information About Your Family History

There are many resources available for genealogical research, varying in degrees of difficulty and expense, but one of the most effective is ancestry.com. Whether you seek information for which you have little knowledge, or documented verification of that which you already know to make it even more "real," ancestry.com is definately a resource you cannot afford to miss.

Ancestry.com contains 24,538 databases of American and some European records and documents; ancestry.com is offering a three-day free membership, and if in the unlikely chance that you are unable to find everything you need, longer-term regular memberships are refreshingly affordable. You can find much here that is not available elsewhere, and is a very easy site to navigate, even for beginners.

One very interesting collection is that of census records; the records on ancestry.com span from 1790 to 1930. From my own experience with this site, it was a delightful experience to read the census information about parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and being able to view the actual census records themselves. A note to beginners, however: census records, as other records and documents in "the olden days" were prepared by officials with varying degrees of literacy; this meant the information was taken verbally, and accounts for numerous misspellings of family names. It is important to keep this in mind, as not being aware of this fact can slow or block your progress in finding the records you are looking for.

Relatively new to the ancestry.com site is the U.S. Military Collection, which covers 1600 to the 1970's. I, personally, appreciated being able to see the World War 2 Army Enlistment records of my father and three uncles.

Through ancestry.com, you can also locate the records of your ancestors who immigrated to the United States at various periods of time in the past. These brief records can provide you with information you did not have, or verify information you'd been told about but wish to see documented.

Depending on which states you and your family are from, ancestry.com also covers birth records from many states from the distant past to the present. If you lived in one of these states, you can even find your own birth record.

Ancestry.com also provides the Social Security Death Index records, and is kept current. Through this database you can order copies of the original social security card applications for your ancestors.

Ancestry.com also has links to other resources, such as Ellis Island immigration records, and newsreels of World War 2. It has a message board where anyone wishing to connect with others who are searching for the same information on their Family Trees can post messages in hope of trying to find each other.

While most resources for genealogical research are expensive, time-consuming, and extremely difficult for the novice, ancestry.com is none of these things-- I found more information, and the documents to correspond with it, in less than a day than I'd been able to find elsewhere in my many years of searching; and I found that the links and site layout were very easy to navigate. Whatever type of information you are looking for, ancestry.com is like stumbling upon a goldmine, and should be recommended to everyone interested in their genealogy.