How to find a legitimate genealogy?

Chi Alfero: http://familytimeline.webs.com/recordsinyourownhom... you start at home and with you and get all the information you can for the foundation you need ( as this is not going to be on any website.Is ancestry.com any good...yes for people who know how to research and know what is good and bad information and how to tell the difference...it is only one tool in a huge tool box so it certainly is not the only viable website and websites are not the best place anyway...they are just convenient.Yes it would be cheaper than a pro genealogist and many who offer this service are internet only genealogists anyway...so don't check what they find back to records as any real pro would.Records offices, libraries, family records centres all free, all have records and after your living family and the records you already have at home these are your next best resourceSome records were destroyed in WW2 but certainly not everything...so not sure where that idea came from and it is s! till feasible to find your FH in Germany or anywhere else in Europe back to when records in enough detail for FH began....that could be parish records back to the 1500s...Show more

Dick Baumgarten: Ah bad news, the sites like anectry.com will most likely find nothing about you're family because you are from Europe which was a fairly closed country during WW2 meaning not many documents got out they can get their hands on. So you're chances are bad.

Mel Crapo: Ancestry.Com is a great site for original source records. However do not view their subscriber submitted family trees as records or family trees on any website as a matter of fact.Even when you see the absolute same information on the same people from many different subscribers that doesn't mean or one moment the information is correct. Too many people copy without verifying. As a matter of fact if you find wrong information on your family in any of their family trees, those that run the websites will tell! you that is between you and the other subscriber. You can co! ntact the subscriber and they may or may not reply. Ancestry.Com has 4 family tree programs. They have the old Ancestry World Tree which you can no longer update but can view the trees. They have One World Tree which is absolute trash. They have Public Member Trees and Private Member Trees.Whenever you see their ads and someone is pointing to a family tree it is very very misleading. I will say that the regulars on the genealogy board hate those ads.However, they have all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They have birth, marriage and death records from many U.S. states. They have immigration records. They have land, wills and other records. They have a lot of old U. S. newspapers online. However, genealogy websites are not a good place to find the living as that can be an invasion of privacy and can lead to identity theft. If you find it too pricey, many public libraries have a subscription to it you can use for f! ree. It might not hurt to use it for awhile at a public library and get use to it. When I go into their website after I click on Search then on the next page I click on Old Search which I find I can better get down to business and pick out specific records I want to check. Their New Search is prettier but I don't feel it is as functional. Another good website for record and eventually once they are through transcribing and uploading what they have might make all the other websites obsolete ishttps://www.familysearch.org/I use both as sometimes one might have records the other one doesn't....Show more

Hal Rouse: You have a lot of questions, I will attempt to answer them in the order you asked.1. Yes you can hire professional genealogists as well as hobbyist, The fees vary with professional based on the amount of time involved and how much information you are able to provide that is accurate. I have no idea how hobbyist set their prices.2. Ancestry.com, It is a su! bscription site, the historical documents are available on other sites.! 3. If you are willing to leave you home, you can use public libraries and Family History Centers to research online FREE.4. Is Ancestry any good? - that is an opinion and mine after using it and other sites is that it is not worth the cost as there are other sites available that are FREE. Ancestry is not the only viable site.5. There are many sites and Cindi's List is full of information about Genealogical resources and is an excellent site.6. If you do your own research and documentation it would be cheaper that having someone do the research for you, but I would suggest some classes in basic genealogical research (public libraries, Genealogical societies, cultural societies, Family History Centers, the research tab on the Familysearch.com site, there are many others, most offer the classes free.7 You can go to your local libraries or a Family History Center (they are all over the world) and research. At the FHC there are volunteers who will NOT to the research for y! ou, but will assist you.8. I have researcher and documented different lines of my family back as far as the 1500's, in both the US and Europe. The hardest part is documenting. I am sure some people hit a brick wall between WW-I and WW-II, but usually even brick walls can be overcome with patience and determination.9. Here is an answer to the question you didn't ask, yes you can and need to research the female lineages in your family, Have fun with the search, but document every thing you find and site where you found it....Show more

Roni Kurz: Genealogy in only legitimate if you have the records to connect one ancestor to another going back through the generations in order. There is no single website that will provide all the records in the world, and some people left behind more records than others. This means some websites will be more useful for some than others. Genealogy on the internet should be done the same way as genealogy before the internet was invente! d...the researcher needs to have some ideas of what exists and where it! is, or the skills to find out. And, since not everything is on the internet, the internet can be a great tool for locating those records that are in brick and mortar repositories. Keep in mind that German records will be in German. Old German records will be in script and in a dialect of German, usually classed as high German or low German. Often times a person that speaks low German will have a harder time translating a high German document for you. Be wary of translated and transcribed (typed) information on the internet without verifying. Some good places to start (after your initial interviewing and organizing):Ancestry.com is good because they have the largest collections of records from a variety of places on a single website. There is a fee.https://www.familysearch.org/ is similar to ancestry.com but is free. They have different and sometimes overlapping collections than ancestry.com. For sites like this, steer towards the records and away from the trees. These are! user-submitted and not verified. They may be helpful for hints, but they are not your tree until you do the work. Often, German BMD records can be ordered from the city by writing them a letter. It's ok to write in English, they have it translated. Request responses in German and English to avoid/confirm translation errors. There is sometimes a fee for research, copies and translation but there is no fee for asking. This works better with larger cities like Munich. This is for civil records and registries. Once you get back past civil records you'll need to find a resource for church records.In addition to the multitude of passenger list websites out there, check out NARA http://www.archives.gov/ for how to locate your ancestors' passenger lists and immigration/naturalization records. http://www.archives.gov/Also, for your ancestor in the U.S. check for a local genealogical society or GenWeb near where they lived. They will often have the most helpful links to dig deeper, ! like links to local newspaper archives and obituaries.Link list sites t! hat have great links for German Americans http://www.cyndislist.com/germany/http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/index.shtml See Palatines, Mennonites (not Germans, but sometimes connected)And while I gave you a bunch of German resources, try not to assume there's German in your ancestry until you can prove it. It's very easy to get off track looking for a German person when they were actually Dutch, for example....Show more

Roni Kurz: > How to find a legitimate genealogy?Here is one:http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op...WELL documented, and where there was a question, I gave arguments for both (or all 8) sides.> The sites i have browsed have been absolutely no help at all. You are either looking at the wrong sites or doing something wrong on the right sites. Almost all of the free genealogy data on the Internet is about white people in the USA or UK who were born before 1900.> Can you hire people to search your family history? Yes, but they get $50 per ho! ur and up, with a minimum of 8-20 hours.> Is the site ancestry.com any good.. It is if you are a white person whose ancestors were in the USA for a long time. You can usually get some lines if you are black, but it is harder and you almost always dead end with people alive in 1870.> Are there local places i can go?Yes. The Mormons have small rooms called Family History Centers in many of their churches. (They range in size; some are huge.) They have volunteers who will get you started. They don't try to convert you and they don't charge for their time. Your county genealogical society may give lessons to beginners too.There is lots of genealogy data about Germany, but it is on paper, in German, in Germany. It isn't on-line for free in English. One of the first things people in Europe did when war was declared was put their archives in salt mines, along with their stained glass windows....Show more

Hugo Pittari: so what youre saying is bascially anything before ww2 is ! ******? find that kind of hard to believe...