Best Free Online Genealogy Website Databases
This list is for the best sites you can find for actually searching for ancestors and primary documents. These are specific sites that you can enter the last name and get actual instant results. I love these choices because they have large amounts of information, yet don’t require an email or login to participate.
1. Find a Grave.com – Search through millions of records, updated daily, that provide cemetery, birth, death dates, relatives, and if you are lucky – pictures of your relative.
2. Familysearch.org – This is the free site from the Church of Latter Day Saints. They have one of the largest databases available in the world. Their religion guides their strong stance on free records for all.
3. Billion Graves.com. This site does require an email subscription to get access to the records, but once you are in, there is no cost.
4. Chronicling America at the Library of Congress.
5. Hathitrust. This searchable database is a large database of digitized books.
6. USGenWeb Project. Use this directory based website to search for content by geographical location, specifically by county.
7. Ellisisland Passenger Search. Lots of immigration records for passengers to and from the US.
8. Google Books. This searchable database from Google includes Full-text books and indexes. A related search is Google Scholar.
9. WorldCat. This website is a guide to library materials across the United States.
10. Archives.gov. This website is managed by the US government and includes many individual databases to search.
