ASK KELLY – Be Frugal

Q. Do you have to spend a lot of money researching your ancestors’ history?

A. Despite the fact that genealogy is a billion-dollar industry, I am going to make a very bold statement. YOU CAN RESEARCH YOUR GENEALOGY FOR FREE. You read that right. Free.

It’s true that there are many ways to buy genealogy-related products. You can spend money on subscription websites, DNA tests, forms, books, plus all the primary certifications from the local courthouse. You could spend lots of money on genealogy, but you really don’t have to.

A really common expense for family history researchers is a subscription to Ancestry.com. To avoid this expense, you can find many documents on the comparable website: Familysearch.org. They have billions of records.

You can also pop on over to your local library and use their in-house Ancestry.com subscription for free. For this, you just need a library card. If your small local library doesn’t have a subscription, head over to a city with a larger library. Many libraries will give you a library card and allow you to use their services as long as you live in the state. Once you have a library card, some of these services can be accessed from your home computer via the internet and your library card number and assigned password.

Here are my favorite websites for genealogy research on the cheap:

Familysearch.org https://www.familysearch.org

Google.com https://www.google.com

Google Books https://books.google.com/

Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/

WorldCat https://www.worldcat.org/ & HathiTrust https://www.hathitrust.org/