The Free Side of Ancestry.com

First, lets get started with the free services provided by Ancestry.com.

Ancestry offers a membership through subscription to access much of it’s mult-billion ancestor database. However, the site provides some awesome tools for free (with hopes that you’ll sign up for the service later). You can use the free services at the site, and get a lot of the site.

The greatest free resource available through ancestry.com is the Online Family Tree Program. With the family tree portion of the Ancestry website, you can upload your family tree file or start from scratch entering your genealogy information.

Returning to the site later, you can pick up where you left off because it saves the information you’ve entered and protects it by having you create a password to access your family tree.

What’s neat about the family tree tool:

• Collaborate with other family members – Share family history information with only those whom you want to see it. Give accounts to your family members across the world, and they’ll be able to upload information that they have. No more losing information in the mail or having to send lots of email attachments with records. Now, you can share all your research with the whole family. Leave a legacy of research that won’t be lost in a box in the attic!
• Easy to use – Export a Gedcom file from your computer and upload it to populate your tree. You can also enter information by hand as you go.
• Looks great compared to other programs – The tree has a very professional look to it and the colors used are easy on the eyes (compared to others out there I’ve used).
• You can upload rich multi-media content – Don’t be satisfied with just looking at dates and names on your tree, upload pictures, records, and stories. You can add oral histories over the phone. It couldn’t be easier.
• Researches your genealogy for you while you sleep – The family tree makes record searches in the background for each individual. That means that you can take a break while the system researches if your ancestors are included in certain censuses in the US or England, if they’re included in war records or old newspapers. A little green leaf will appear next to the persons in your family tree for whom the site has found possible records matches (to view/download many of the records, you’ll need a subscription to the site).

The form below can get you started with the free Pedigree Chart portion of the Ancestry site:

Searching for records

If you’re ready to jump right in searching for records, then you’ll want to consider a trial membership of the Ancestry site.

The site generally offers two main memberships: US Deluxe and Worldwide Deluxe.

The US plan gives you access to US records while the Worldwide plan gives you access to US AND records from other countries such as the UK, Canada, Ireland and many other countries.

If you sign up for their annual plan, you’ll save $$ as opposed to going with the monthly plan.

The great thing about the site is that new information is added each week. Ancestry is obsessed with adding new databases to its collection on a weekly basis, so the chances of finding more matches to your family tree and ancestors increase each week.

Scope of records at Ancestry.com

Ancestry has over 5 billion records that you can search through (that’s a lot of records). You’ll find:

• Census records
• Newspaper articles
• Birth records
• Death records & obituaries
• Marriage records
• Immigration records
• Military records
• Criminal records
• Written histories

What’s great is that in most cases, you’ll be able to see a scan of the original record and download it for your own records. Information found in the censuses is extremely interesting. Depending on the census, you’ll see if your ancestors could read/write, what their occupation was, and the people living in their households.

Ancestry also offers services such as DNA testing to discover where your ancestral heritage hails from (different DNA experts may interpret the same results in different ways, but it is interesting stuff).

You can get a taste by searching some of their records by clicking the ad below:

Is Ancestry.com right for you?

I’ve personally found Ancestry helpful in finding valuable census records for family members, and the family tree program online has proved very valuable. You can always try it to see if it works for you or use it for a defined time.

For a specific ancestor search, fill in the information into the ad below and click the search button. You never know what might turn up!

You probably don’t have to imagine it, you’ve probably been there (and so have I). In fact, most people don’t get past just a few generations when researching their family.

If you want to find ancestors in your family tree (especially famous ancestors or relatives), you’ve got to research your family tree. It’s the number 1 problem that individuals come up against when trying to find famous relatives or simply finding their roots.

Fortunately, with the Internet, it’s now easier more than ever to find people in your family tree (even famous people).

OneGreatFamily is a genealogy site that helps build your family tree. What makes this resource different than others is that it can automatically link dozens of generations into your family tree (for some it adds thousands of ancestors and relatives).

Even celebrities like Donny Osmond have used it.

Site advertising states: See how Donny Osmond added 38 generations to his family tree using OneGreatFamily!

You can view the Success Stories link on the site to see testimonials of those that have used it:

“We have had fabulous experiences with OneGreatFamily.com. We went from a few hundred people in our PAF program to over 10,000 each in OneGreatFamily.com.”
—Mark & Betty Stilwell

How easy is it to make connections through the site?

How much you find will depend on the number of people in their database (which is millions) and how much information you can enter of your family tree into the site.

The site then starts making suggested matches and if it finds matches, you’ll start adding to your family tree almost immediately. You can add generation after generation with just a few clicks when matches are found.

What about the cost?

There is a subscription fee to use the site; however, the site does offer a Free Trial. So if you try the free trial and find it’s not for you or isn’t working out, just cancel within the trial period.

Check out the site for more details.

What are the pros and cons versus other genealogy sites?

Pros:

• It’s fast. You can start drastically expanding your family tree.
• You can try out the service first in the Free Trial.
• You have the option to include possible tree matches, so you’re not forced to accept connections that you want to look into a little further.
• You can use the site’s Relationship Calculator to find famous relatives
• You can expand your family tree by generations upon generations at a time if a match is made. You don’t have to manually import each and every family member it finds as a relation. Once you accept the connection, you can greatly expand what you know about your family tree.

Cons:

• The site’s specialty is in connecting family trees together, so it’s not a records site where you’ll find lots of census information, birth certificates, and so on.
• The information in the other trees are based on information they’ve collected as well as family tree submissions, so you’ll want to check and make sure when you do make a major connection that the information looks like a good fit and makes sense.
• The biggest drawback is that there is a subscription. OneGreatFamily is different from all the other genealogy websites in terms automating the process of finding people in your family tree as well as the scope of their database in doing so. The silver lining is the free trial they’re currently offering so you can test it out for yourself.

Here’s a video made by the site (note, there’s no sound to the video):

Check out OneGreatFamily for more details.

So, here’s what you could do first to get started:

1. Gather the information you know about your family tree (names, birthdates, etc.) for as far back as you and your family know.
2. Make a quick sketch on paper of your family tree info (you’ll enter the info later to OneGreatFamily)
3. Sign up for the trial with the above link and enter the information about your tree as far back as you can
4. Check the site for matches to your tree

It’s a great resource to use in conjuntion with other recording finding sites to help validate what you’ve learned and find famous ancestors to boot.

You can make use of the site’s relationship calculator to find famous connections once you log in, but the biggest advantage the site has is that it can help you expand your family tree research. Because once you expand your family tree by many generations, you’ll be able to plug that information into other resources to help you find famous connections.

So whether finding famous relatives or just looking to expand your family tree, OneGreatFamily can help save tons of time in the process and find connections you might have missed otherwise.

The site can be visited here: OneGreatFamily.com

President Barack Obama - usa.gov

Could the majority of white Americans be related to Barack Obama?

If not a majority, how about these notable white folk: Dick Cheney, Robert E. Lee, George W. Bush, Brad Pitt, and Sarah Palin.

Everyone has some claim to fame, Sarah Palin could claim that she’s related to someone famous I guess.

But this couldn’t be possible…right?

Many Caucasians in American trace their ancestry through European roots.

Barack Obama, being African American, would trace his roots to Africa.

So where do the family tie-ins come from?

Barack Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham was not African American, and that’s where these somewhat ironic family relations get their start.

Just imagine a big family reunion, with George W., Sarah Palin and Barack Obama! Hey lots of families talk about politics when they get together…

It turns out that Barack Obama and his notable cousins share a common ancestor. We’re not talking grandparents or great-grandparents however. We’re talking about an ancestor much further back in time.

Since the ancestor that these famous folks share goes way back, more and more people who are of European descent can claim “counsin-ness” or “cousin-ostiy” with some of the most influential and powerful people of our day.

But isn’t it hard to find out who you’re related to if the common ancestor is so far in the past?

Do you think these folks did their own searching and linking of their family tree? Probably not.

The searching work has been done and the foundation set because so many people share the common ancestor. It takes only a few to do the work. So be grateful to those sun-of-the-guns.

Many people can just start searching and hook in to the research that’s already been done. So instead of researching centuries, you just have to research back a few generations and tie into one of the major genealogy databases that can provide you with the answer.

To find out where you can find out where this juicy info came from, check out our book Are You Related to Someone Famous: The 7 Secrets to Discovering your Famous Relatives

Or sign up for our free mini e-course that teaches the basics of finding out if you could be related to someone famous. But watch out, the answers may shock you.

Back in the day, you might have hired an expensive private detective to find your missing relative. While those services are still around today, the Internet has made it so much easier to find missing relatives.

Let’s take a couple fictional cases that might hit close to home.

Secret #1 – Finding a Run Away Child or Relative

This is a sad story, David was a good kid; he did okay in school, but started to hang out with the wrong crowd. It seemed like one of the problems with hanging out with the wrong crowd was that his crowd was really small. He had only a couple of friends, but these friends were into some bad stuff.

They got involved with drugs and so did David. The situation just kept getting worse; David stopped caring about school; he stopped caring about his family. It was really tough for his family when he spent his first night in jail. The more David got in trouble, the more he seemed not to care. He went before the judge, was put on parole, but would miss his parole meetings. He started to steal from family even stealing his Dad’s car.

Then he decided to take off. What could his parents do? There are a few things:

1. Contact his friends and/or his friends parents
2. Contact family members where he might have gone to
3. Notify the police that he’s missing
4. Visit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which gives some great information on additional steps you can take
5. You can also visit http://www.focusas.com/Runaways.html which has some great resources.

Sadly, it’s difficult to search records in cases like this because generally, he’s not going to go get a house, register things in his name. He’s probably staying with someone he knows. That’s why friends and parents of friends can be a big help.

The main thing is to not lose hope. Just think back to the case with Elizabeth Smart. Miracles do happen.

Secret #2 – Finding an Established Missing Relative

Let’s talk about Bob. Bob is easier to locate because he’s older, established, probably has his own home or is renting, but has lost contact with his relatives and they with him over the years.

He’s not necessarily hiding, but just hasn’t thought all that much about staying in touch after his parents, the patriarchs of the family so to speak passed away.

In this case, he’s easier to find by his relatives that want to get the whole family together for example because there’s a record footprint. There are things that the family members can search to find him such as listed telephone numbers, etc.

There are two different types of sources to find this information, one is with paid sources and the other is free.

These resources change over time, so one of the best ways is to search for “find missing relatives for free” if you’re looking for the free sources.

1. One resource that you’ll want to check out is the good ol’ white pages online
2. http://findmissingpeople.com also has some great resources for you

There’s Hope

One important thing is to not give up hope. New records are placed online every day. New leads turn up each day, so keep searching.

Secret #3 – Finding a Missing Ancestor

Now if you’re trying to find info on a missing ancestor, you’re in luck. It’s never been easier to finding missing ancestors or older relatives. Census records, birth records, military records, and marriage records are becoming easier to search each day.

More and more information is being posted online that can help you find missing ancestors. Census, marriage, birth, and death records are an extremely valuable source for finding missing ancestor information because they often list children or parents on the records.

Now a days, you don’t have to search microfilm to find your records, you can search online and even use services that will search and provide you with potential matches.

One of the best places and services to do this is online at Ancestry.com. The subscription isn’t cheap, but they do offer a free trial. I’ve used it and have found tons of information that I’ve been searching for.

You can visit Ancestry.com with the link below:

Try a new Ancestry.com Membership!

But first off, who are you hoping to be related to?

Do you think a US president or European Royalty might be in your family tree? Or are you hoping that you might be related to a celebrity or movie star?

It’s kinda fun to relate to friends that you’re related to a celebrity, and it’s even more fun if you can get into a special event because of it! Or if you’re related to a famous historical figure, it makes it more fun to be a member of a related historical society or even join up with a “descendants of” association.

But how to you find out who you are related to?

There are easy ways, and there are hard ways for finding out who you are related to. Personally, I like the easy way. The 5 Secrets below will highlight some of the more easy ways to finding your famous relatives.

Secret #1 – Our Favorite Resources

Our favorite resources, shameless plug of course, are the ones that we’ve put together to give you a comprehensive guide to finding famous relatives. You can sign up for our FREE mini course that delivers a short training with steps by email or our full-blown, step-by-step guide to finding famous relatives.

Either one will get you on your way.

Secret #2 – Utilzing the Power of Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com has a tremendous resource for finding famous relatives. We enjoyed watching the show “Who do you think you are” and noted that the celebrities there used Ancestry.com to find out who they are related to.

With Ancestry, you can expand what you know about your family tree, find records for missing individuals in your tree and more.

Ancestry.com offers a free trial with the link below:

Free Trial – Ancestry.com US Deluxe Membership

Secret #3 – Find out if the work has already been done

You can use sites such as OneGreatFamily.com to search family trees, and hopefully, yours has already been researched and posted. With any luck, a lot of the work may already be done for you!

The reason why OneGreatFamily is such a great tool for finding famous relatives is because it helps you expand what you know about your family tree. For some people, they’ve been able to expand what they know of their family tree by 10 to 30 generations.

Visit the site and click the “success stories” link to see how people have benefited from using the site.

OneGreatFamily offers a free trial through the link below:

See how Donny Osmond added 38 generations to his family tree using OneGreatFamily!

Interested in More tips?

So that’s it! If you’d like to find out more tips, you can sign up for our FREE mini course on how to find famous relatives.

What many people don’t realize is that we’re all related someone how, it just depends on how far you go back in your family tree or pedigree chart.

Researching your own family tree is one of the most important steps you can take to finding out if you are related to someone famous. It might be Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, or Barack Obama that you are related to, but really the only way you’re going to find out is if you start building your knowledge of your family tree.

Your family tree starts with you and then branches out to include your parents, then their parents above them and so on.

The further you can research your own family tree, the better chance you’ll have at finding a connection to someone famous.

The reason that researching your family tree is so important is because of a little secret…

The secret is that it is thought that most of the western world can trace ancestry back to one person that lived only a few centuries ago. It is also believed that many Asians can trace their ancestry back to one person that lived not too long ago.

So, if you can trace your ancestry back just a couple hundred years, you’ll be able to link in to the family trees of many famous individuals because it’s likely that they’re related to that same individual.

There are many ways to research your own line. One is by hand and paper, and the other is by using tools that help automate the process helping you get started with your genealogy in no time.

One way to get started and to take advantage of many hidden or little-known tools is to enroll in our mini course that will reveal some of the secrets and shortcuts to finding your famous relatives.

You can sign up for the mini course for free by clicking here.

Until then, good luck with your searching!