Free ancestry sites

stingray_316

Does anyone know if there is any Free Ancestry sites for searching records of my past / Family. There is a few payed Ancertry sites out there but someone has told me they are limited on information they give out on past records.
Has anyone used these sites and would recommend or not, and as l mentioned in the title is there any Free ancestry sites.

Grumpelstiltskin

Nothing as comprehensive as Ancestry or Find My Past, you can access Ancestry free in many libraries, check your local one.

What I will say is don't believe the TV adverts where you just put your name into a site and hundreds of years of your family history just pops up - it doesn't work like that.

What these adverts don't say is the information you find on Family Trees has been submitted by other members and hasn't been checked, you can go seriously wrong by believing what you see on some of these trees if they haven't been properly researched.

Another problem you can come across is the country of research eg. Scotland and Ireland are different to England and Wales in respect to what and when was recorded.

Mojisola

stingray_316 wrote: »

There is a few payed Ancertry sites out there but someone has told me they are limited on information they give out on past records.

Whoever told you this is wrong about Ancestry and FindMyPast - enough records to keep you researching for years.

See if your library has free access to Ancestry to try it out.

https://www.familysearch.org and https://www.freebmd.org.uk are free to use.

sheramber

Ancestry have regular free weekends. ( they have just had one) or you can have a 14 day free trial. Just remember to cancel it.

Ancestry uses official records . it does not cover Scotland.

There are sits like Genes Reunited which are populated with information from other searchers and sometimes that information can be misleading.

Beware, researching your family tree becomes addictive.

Mojisola

https://www.rootschat.com is a friendly free site that has lots of people willing to help whether you're an experienced researcher stuck on a problem or a newbie wanting to know where to start with their family.

Glad

familysearch.org
FreeBMD
genuki.com
GRO.gov.uk
dustydocs.com
freereg.org.uk
FreeCen.org
UK National Archives

most of the paid sites will have a free trial, Find my Past often have an offer of 1 month for £1, Ancestry is free in libraries and history centres

Redlady.....

I was quite lucky in as much as once I got past a few generations my background became Irish. The Irish government, a few years ago, put all of their official records online free. It was fantastic for me. So many names and addresses to be gained from birth and marriage certificates.

Took a few hours to become au fait with the site because there is so much on it, but so good once I did. Unfortunately, due to various civil unrest's and fires, many records were lost, but I manged to go back to early 1800s. Fascinating stuff, you feel that you know the people.

Anyway, here's the site, pity the UK government haven't done the same.

https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/