Searching for your Family

Web Sites for Genealogists - An Australian gateway site for tracing your family history by Cora Num

Free Online Name Listings maintained by Graham Jaunay. These include surname lists for Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, United States of America, Wales and Zimbabwe.

GENUKI Surname Research Directories for various counties in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales plus the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. These are worth checking.

FamilySearch.org is a non-profit service sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This web site offers access to the largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world.

FamilySearch Pilot. This free site allows you to test drive the new version of RecordSearch which contains thousands of indexed records, many of them linked to digital images of the original historical documents. Currently 450 world wide collections are available for online searching. New material is being added at a rapid rate because of the worldwide efforts of the FamilySearch Indexing Project volunteers who are indexing the records. A must to visit. Updated

The Guild of One-Name Studies (GOONS). A one-name study is a project researching facts about a surname and all the people who have held it, as opposed to researching a particular family. This site offers an online search where you can check if a specific surname is registered with the Guild. This lists 7,850+ surnames registered and provides contact details.

GENUKI Search offers a surname search of all the GENUKI databases plus pages from the National Archives, the Society of Genealogists, Federation of Family History Societies, many family history societies and county surname interest sites.

Ancestry.com offers access to 30 thousand online databases. The records are fully indexed with a free surname search. Subscription options offer access to information or digitised images of the original records. Use the Search tab and choose Card Catalog from the drop down menu then choose Filter by Location to see what is available for each country. Updated

Findmypast is a UK based family history and genealogy website offering an ever-growing collection of over 650 million family history records. Most records are free to search but fees apply to view images and transcripts. New

Findmypast.com.au is a family history and genealogy website offering subscription access to a collection of over 35 million historical records covering Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Records include cemetery records, probate, land & court records, migration records, criminal reports, electoral rolls & censuses, directories, almanacs & government gazettes and military records. New

WorldVitalRecords.com is another emerging commercial site. It aims to provide affordable access to genealogy databases and family history tools. There are billions of records worldwide. A variety of subscription options is available. Updated

WorldConnect Project by Rootsweb allows users to upload, modify, link, and display their family trees as a means of sharing with other researchers. There is free access to 575+ million names.

The Lost Cousins website enables you to find other people who share the same ancestors. It does this by comparing the information you enter about your ancestors with the information that other members have entered.

Genes Reunited. This site offers a variety of services including free hosting for family trees and free access to the information contributed by others. Registration is required and fees apply for the contact details of a contributing researcher and for use of the online census and BDM databases.

GeneaNet: Genealogical Database Network. This site aims to set up a universal register of all the world's genealogical resources. To date 357+ million entries are available for searching.

Rootsweb Australian and New Zealand Records. This site allows you to surname search 702,900+ contributed records containing 71,600+ distinct surnames for selected states and towns.

RootsWeb Surname List contains 1.2 million+ fully searchable surname entries, plus contact details for the submitters. You can also add your surnames to this list.

GenForum lists genealogy forums for individual surnames alphabetically. Particular surname forum messages can be viewed from the site and messages posted if desired.

Surname Profiler allows you to to trace the geography and history of family names in Great Britain. A surname search returns a map for the specified time period, displaying in colour the relative concentrations where the name occurs. Other interesting distribution and statistical information is also available. A world surname profiler is coming soon.

Leo's Genealogics Website. A name searchable site offering a wide range of material collected from many books and sources. Material ranges Roman Emperors to Australian Aborigines and anyone in between. This collection of data is a work in continuous progress. New

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Searching for your Family