Sometimes a website can become so large, it’s hard to find your way around and know what is available. If you’ve been researching your Family History, Ancestry.com is one place you’ll not want to miss. Some think that you can only obtain information from Ancestry.com with a paid subscription; this just isn’t so. Ancestry.com offers many free tools and also lets you search for free to see if records exist.

Below are listed some of our favorite tools provided by Ancestry.

Family Tree – Ancestry offers a free family tree tool that is unique in many ways. You can upload your family tree information, and Ancestry will automatically search to see if records exist for each ancestor in your family tree. It truly is an incredible resource. You can upload pictures, stories, audio and even automatically create a family history book based on your family tree.

Start Your Family Tree

Search – Of course one of the greatest aspects of Ancestry is the ability to search through millions and millions and millions of records. You can search for free even if you don’t have a subscription. You’ll at least be able to discover if the possibility of records exist for your ancestors. Ancestry also offers a free trial so you can test it out.

RootsWeb & Genealogy.com RootsWeb is a great resource provided by Ancestry’s Generations Network where you can find mailing lists and message boards for free. For instance, you can post a message about a specific ancestor that you are looking for, and other genealogy enthusiasts visiting the site will offer their help as they are also searching for information and may have stumbled across information you haven’t seen yet.


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The Guide – So whether you’re an old-time visitor to Ancestry.com, or have never heard of it, there’s lots to see and do there that will help you with your family history work. You can also use the Official Guide to help you navigate and utilize the site.

Take advantage of the resources available to you and you’ll save a lot of time because many records have now been digitized and can be found on Ancestry.com.