SOME OF MY FAVORITE FAMILY HISTORY WEBSITES

©2014 by Donald R. Snow

Sections of the Class Notes This page was last updated 2014-03-01.
Go to the  Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page  or  Don's Class Listings Page .

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS

  1. Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu ) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
  2. These notes with the Internet links active are posted on  http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
  3. 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 in here in another tab, but keep your place in these notes, hold down the Control key while clicking the link.
  4. This class will discuss some of my favorite family history websites.  These are listed in categories and I could easily add this many more.  These are all free, except as noted by $$. 
  5. SEARCH SITES

  6. http://www.google.com -- search engine, plus pdf's of 1000's of FH books
  7. http://www.mocavo.com -- searches all the free FH sites at once; free and $$ version also
  8. http://www.myheritage.com -- searches for info on names in your database, free and $$ versions; has signed partnership agreement with FamilySearch  
  9. http://www.stevemorse.org -- many "one-step" search programs for censuses, immigration, and other databases
  10. FAMILY HISTORY DATABASE SITES

  11. https://www.familysearch.org -- FamilySearch Family Tree, plus Search Historical Records, Trees, the Wiki, and the Blog to keep you updated on changes
  12. http://www.lds.org -- includes Church history and Overland Trails database
  13. http://earlylds.com -- data on all early LDS members
  14. http://mormonmigration.lib.byu.edu/ -- LDS immigration data
  15. http://ancestry.com -- $$, but free in FHC's; has signed partnership agreement with FamilySearch; much FH data and some parts are free to everyone now 
  16. http://www.findagrave.com -- all states and countries with links to graves of relatives
  17. http://billiongraves.com/ -- has a smartphone app that you can take photos of gravestones and send them with GPS coordinates to website and FamilySearch indexes them
  18. http://digitalnewspapers.org -- Utah Digital Newspapers -- many small town and other Utah newspapers; completely every-word searchable
  19. http://mwdl.org -- Mountain West Digital Library -- links to many online university and other databases with FH info
  20. http://pioneer-library.org/ -- includes HeritageQuest Online (US censuses and many books), links to journals, newspapers, and more-- some databases require your public library card barcode to log in
  21. http://www.davidrumsey.com/ -- David Rumsey Historical Map Collection -- great collection of early maps
  22. http://www.fold3.com/ -- US military records; $$, but has free Memorial Pages where you can store records online and link to them; updated SSDI
  23. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ -- major collection of free databases, primarily US; sponsored by Ancestry, but is free 
  24. http://usgenweb.org/ -- US states, counties, databases
  25. http://www.genuki.com -- Genealogy of the UK and Ireland; hundreds of linke for British and Irish research
  26. http://www.linkpendium.com/ -- Mostly US states, counties, surnames, maps, newspapers
  27. http://www.loc.gov/index.html -- US Library of Congress - collections, journals, photos, maps
  28. http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ -- $$, but free in FHC's; many worldwide FH databases, not just vital records; is now searched by MyHeritage
  29. UTILITIES SITES

  30. http://www.evernote.com -- free and $$ versions to store your notes online and access them anywhere
  31. http://voidtools.com/ -- has the freeware program Everything that I use many times a day to find files on my computer
  32. https://www.dropbox.com/home -- free and $$ versions to store and transfer files online
  33. http://dottech.org -- reviews and downloads of free software
  34. http://recordseek.com -- free FamilySearch Affiliate utility to add websites and upload documents to attach to Family Tree
  35. http://www.printfriendly.com -- helps to make any website easier to read or copy to pdf by eliminating the ads, etc.
  36. MISCELLANEOUS SITES

  37. 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
  38. http://sites.lib.byu.edu/familyhistory/alphabetical-list/ -- Alphabetical listing of worldwide resources including the Research Outlines, censuses, etc.
  39. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page -- info on people, locations, explanations, databases
  40. http://uvtagg.org -- lots of good FH helps, including all of my FH class notes
  41. http://www.genealogynow.org -- St. George FamilySearch Library website -- lots of helpful news, links, and ideas
  42. http://www.genealogyintime.com/index.html -- claims to be the world's largest online genealogy magazine and website

Go to the  Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page  or  Don's Class Listings Page .