Free genealogy records and where to find them

Most of the records you need are free if you know where to look. These are the sources worth learning first, grouped by what they hold.

Start with these

• FamilySearch. The largest free genealogy collection in the world. Every U.S. census, plus vital, church, probate and land records. A free account is required.
• National Archives genealogy pages. Census, military, immigration and naturalization records held by the federal government, with guides to each.
• USGenWeb. Volunteer pages for every U.S. county with local transcriptions and lookups.
• Cyndi's List. A categorized index of genealogy websites for every place and topic.

Newspapers and books

• Chronicling America. Millions of searchable historic newspaper pages from the Library of Congress. Search for obituaries, marriages and court notices.
• Internet Archive. County histories, city directories and published family histories, readable in full.
• Digital Public Library of America. One search across the digitized collections of libraries and museums nationwide.

Cemeteries

• Find a Grave. Headstone photographs and burial locations. Family members are often linked to each other.
• BillionGraves. Headstone photographs tagged with GPS location.

Land and military

• Bureau of Land Management land records. Images of federal land patents, including homesteads.
• Civil War Soldiers and Sailors database. Service index for Union and Confederate soldiers, including the United States Colored Troops.

Immigration

• Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation. Passenger lists for arrivals at the Port of New York.
• FamilySearch and the National Archives hold passenger lists for other ports and naturalization records for most states.

African American research

• Freedmen's Bureau records from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Labor contracts, marriages, rations and letters from 1865 to 1872.
• Enslaved.org. Records of named enslaved people gathered from many research projects.
• SlaveVoyages. Databases of transatlantic and domestic slave-trade voyages.

See the full method in getting past the 1870 brick wall.

DNA tools

• Shared cM tool. Shows which relationships fit a given amount of shared DNA.
• GEDmatch. Compare DNA results across testing companies.
• ISOGG Wiki. Plain reference articles on every genetic genealogy term.

Records that are not online

A large share of useful records has never been digitized. When the websites run out, write to or visit:

• The county courthouse, for deeds, wills, probate files, marriage books and court cases
• The state archive, for state censuses, prison, hospital and tax records
• The local historical or genealogical society, for cemetery surveys and family files
• The church or its regional archive, for baptism, marriage and burial registers