25 OF MY FAVORITE FAMILY HISTORY
WEBSITES
©2013 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class Notes
- Welcome and Introduction to Class
- Search Sites
- Family History Database Sites
- Utilities Sites
- Miscellaneous Sites
This page was last updated 2013-08-09.
Go to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group
Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes with
the Internet links active are
posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips:
(1) Easy to put an icon on
your desktop for the URL for
these notes; just drag the icon
in front of the address in your
browser to your desktop.
(2) To open a link from
here in another window, so you
keep your place here, hold
down the Control key while
clicking the link.
- Today i'll discuss
25 of my favorite websites for
family history. I could
easily add another 25. All
of these are free, except as
noted. Setting a limit on
the number is like having to live
within a budget; if you find
another one to include, you have
to decide which to leave out.
SEARCH SITES
- http://www.google.com
-- search engine, plus pdf's of 1000's
of FH books
- http://www.mocavo.com
-- searches all the free FH sites at
once
- http://www.myheritage.com
-- searches for info on names in your
database, free and commercial versions
- http://www.stevemorse.org
-- many "one-step" search programs for
censuses, immigration, and other
databases
FAMILY HISTORY DATABASE SITES
- https://www.familysearch.org
-- lots of data and helps, plus
FamilySearch Family Tree of your
ancestral lines
- http://www.lds.org
-- includes Church history and
Overland Trails database
- http://earlylds.com
-- data on all early LDS members
- http://mormonmigration.lib.byu.edu/
-- LDS immigration data
- http://ancestry.com
-- commercial, but free in FHC's; much
FH data and some parts are free to
everyone
- http://www.findagrave.com
-- all states and countries with links
to graves of relatives
- http://billiongraves.com/
-- has a smartphone app that you can
take photos of gravestones and send
them with GPS coordinates to website
and FamilySearch indexes them
- http://pioneer-library.org/
-- includes HeritageQuest Online (US
censuses and many books), links to
journals, newspapers, Mountain West
Digital Library, plus lots more-- some
databases require your library barcode
to log in
- http://www.davidrumsey.com/
-- David Rumsey Historical Map
Collection, great collection of early
maps
- http://www.fold3.com/
-- US military records, updated SSDI,
free "Memorial Pages" where you can
store records online and link to them
- http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
-- major collection of databases,
primarily US
- http://usgenweb.org/
-- US states, counties, databases
- http://www.linkpendium.com/
-- Mostly US states, counties,
surnames, maps, newspapers
- http://www.loc.gov/index.html
-- US Library of Congress -
collections, journals, photos, maps
- http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/
-- commercial, but free in FHC's; many
worldwide FH databases, not just vital
records
UTILITIES SITES
- http://www.evernote.com
-- free program and website to store
your notes and access them anywhere
- http://voidtools.com/
-- has the freeware program Everything
that I use several times a day to find
files on my computer
- https://www.dropbox.com/home
-- free program and website that
allows you to store and transfer
elsewhere any files you want
MISCELLANEOUS SITES
- http://archive.org/index.php
-- Internet Archive and the
WayBackMachine which is
"snapshots" of the Internet since
the 1990's, lots of old books,
music, websites that are gone now
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
-- info on people, locations,
explanations, databases
- http://uvtagg.org
-- lots of good FH helps,
including all of Don's notes
Go to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group
Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .