Genealogy Free Resources

There are plenty of free resources for the genealogist. It is possible to find FREE charts, forms, templates, software, lessons, lookups, databases, form letters, graphics, translations, clip art, ancestry.com free trials.

Getting Started in Genealogy

• FREE Family Tree Online
  Record your family history by creating a FREE family tree online. Start by entering what you know about yourself and your family. Enjoy FREE access to Ancestry.com.
  
  You can invite your parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins and other family members to contribute what they know to add to your online tree. Your family can add names, tell stories and upload photos.
  
  
  
  
• Get Started Quick Step Guide
  Follow these free steps to begin your family history.
  
  
• Free Genealogy Lessons
  Step by step beginning instructions in genealogy research by Ancestry.com. Learn everything from starting with home sources to choosing the best federal and state sources to accomplish your research.
  
  
• Free Genealogy Lessons and Guides
  Free guide by RootsWeb. Where to Begin, sources, record types, country and ethnic groups and much more.
  
  
• Free Research Guidance
  The Mormon Church offers these free genealogy research guides to help you locate genealogy records. Includes an individualized search strategy by place.



• Free Research Helps
  The Mormon Church provides free genealogy blank forms, government publications, guides, maps, research guides, and word lists to help you with your research. Organized by place.



• Genealogy Lessons
  Genealogy.com offers over 80 lessons in nine sections, including beginning genealogy, tracing immigrant origins and Internet genealogy. All the lessons are written by genealogy experts



• Free Articles, Tips and More!
  Find your ancestors with this free genealogy collection of articles, tips, tutorials and other educational resources. Post comments or questions. New articles added every week.

Free Trial Offers to Genealogy Databases

• Ancestry.com FREE Trial ***
  
  
  • Ancestry.com US Deluxe FREE Trial
    Start your family tree online and receive a free trial the Ancestry.
    Complete U.S. census records, the largest collection of ship passenger lists & military records online, family trees and much more!
    
    
  • Ancestry.com WorldWide Deluxe FREE Trial
    Includes all of the US plus international databases. Great for ancestors from Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, and more.
    
    
  • Ancestry.co.uk
    Free trial to Ancestry.co.uk - for those who live in the UK.
  
  
  
• Footnote.com FREE Trial
  Original documents from the National Archives including Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII, Naturalizations, City Directories, Small Town Newspapers and more.
  
  
  
• Genealogy.com Gold Membership FREE Trial
  Gold Annual Membership includes Family Tree Maker software plus annual subscriptions to U.S. Census, International & Passenger Records, Genealogy Library. and World Family Tree.
  
  
  

Free Genealogy Forms and Charts

• Free Genealogy Charts
  Download from Ancestry.com the professional Free genealogy charts, forms and templates you need to document your family tree.
  
  
• Fan Chart
  Basic black and white fan chart by Martha Stewart.
  
  
• Census Spreadsheets
  Beautiful Census Excel Spreadsheets from Census Tools to record and analyze your census data.
  
  
• Free Genealogy Forms
  Free Genealogy charts including a cemetery tracking form
  
  
• Free Genealogy Charts and Forms
  An enormous amount of Free Genealogy charts, forms, and checklists in PDF format from Family Tree Magazine.
  
  
• Free Tree Templates
  The free versions are available in Acrobat (.PDF) format: just download one, open it in Acrobat (or another program that can display the .PDF file format,) and print.
  
  

Free Genealogy Software

• FamilyTreeMaker Starter Edition
  Free Family Tree Maker Starter Edition Genealogy Software. Use Family Tree Maker to record and organize all of the information you collect on your family – create tree charts, reports, calendars, scrapbooks, heirloom-quality books and more! . 



• Family Tree Legends
  Family Tree Legends is a powerful and sophisticated genealogy program designed to make it easy for you to collect, display, and organize information about your family history. Whether it’s notes, medical facts, pictures, or multimedia files, Family Tree Legends provides you with a single tool to capture every bit of information about the history of your family.



• Bygones
  A computerized genealogical note-keeping system. Create an "index" of the information in your research notes, keep track of genealogical correspondence and correspondents, create time lines for your families, create to do lists of pending research tasks, enter information on sources that are important for your family history research, enter information on the localities you do research in.
  
  
• Legacy
  Free Genealogy software. Download the free standard edition of this full-featured genealogy program.



• GenoPro
  GenoPro, also free, gives a pictorial representation of family relationships across several generations



• Personal Ancestral File
  PAF, is available as freeware from the Family Search website. A genealogical management program that helps you organize their family history records.



• GEDxlate
  GEDxlate quickly and easily translates genealogy data from standard GEDCOM format into MS Access dB (*.mdb), MS Excel Worksheet (*.xls), comma delimited (*.csv), and text file (*.txt) formats.

Free Software

• Google Toolbar
  Free software from Google includes
  • Google Earth - Use to find addresses of ancestors
  • Picasa Photo Organizer - Use to Organize genealogy photos
  • Google Desktop - Use to search computer desktop & e-mail
  • Anti-virus & anti-spyware
  • Much more!
  
  
  
• Google Picasa
  Picasa Photo Software by Google will find all the photos on your computer and organize them for you.
  
  
  
• Irfanview
  Freeware graphic viewer. Use to view and resize graphics, or convert image type to another. Will even convert Ancestry.com's census MrSid extension to jpg or jif file.
  
  
• TreePad
  Enjoy better access, organization and control over all your data, documents, addresses, letters, photos, research, collections, Web pages, links, bibliographic listings for good organization, easy access, and safe storage.
  
  
• PrintKey
  Capture a screen shot or the whole desktop with this small utility. Any image you capture can be saved as a bitmap file or edited in your favorite graphics editor such as Irfanview (see above). Great if having difficulty printing an image from a genealogy site.
• Transcribe
  A program designed to help you to transcribe the text on digital images of documents.

Free Genealogy Databases Online

• Ancestry.com Always-Free Databases
  Ancestry.com has hundreds of always free databases.
  
  
• Ancestry World Tree
  The Ancestry World Tree contains more than 160,000,000 names in family trees submitted by users. The Ancestry World Tree is the largest collection of its kind on the Internet and it's free.



• Ancestor Search
  Tons of free genealogy search engines. Your gateway to the largest and best free databases online.



• Family Search
  The genealogy site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has vast record collections online - all free.



• Footnote.com Indexes
  Millions of indexes on Footnote.com provide key information from each record including names, dates and places (pay for images).
  
  
• WorldVitalRecords.com Free Databases
  All new World Vital Records databases are free for 10 days.
  
  
• Rootsweb
  The oldest, largest free genealogy site.
  • RootsWeb General Search
  • RootsWeb Meta Search
  • RootsWeb Surname List
  • US GenWeb Archives Search
  • World Connect Project

Free Genealogy Social Network Sites

• Famillion
  Build your family tree and become part of a growing social network. The software differs from other genealogy websites because its patented technology can merge and connect different family trees based on the barest of information.



• Family Link
  Connect with genealogists that live in the cities of your ancestors for FREE! Partners with the Random Acts of Genealogy Kindness



• Footnote Pages
  A new social networking way to help you collect and share everything you know about someone or something. Users connect and share stories, photos, and information about the people that mean the most to them. These include:
• Pictures & Documents - Make a rich page with minimal effort.
• Maps - Instantly see where events take place.
• Relationships - Identify related pages or web links.
• Control - Edit a page by yourself or with everyone.
• Timeline - See events with perspective.
• Facts - Easily gather (or organize) lots of details.
• Stories - Tell what you know and include images.
• Comment - Offer ideas, encouragement or suggestions.



• Geni
  Create a profile and a family tree - including siblings, spouses, cousins, aunts and uncles, and their families. When you add a relative, there is an option to add their email address and have the tree sent to them as well. They can add their own data, extending the tree, and Geni will launch tools to merge overlapping trees..



• MyFamily.com 2.0
  A place to share photos and narrated photo stories with your family and friends.



• Online Family Tree
  Build your free family tree online that allows you and other family members to create a free multi-user, private family tree at Ancestry.com.

Free Biography Assistants

• Biography Assistant
  Biography Assistant by Genealogy.com helps you put together stories about your ancestors. It's divided into a series of questions about a person's ancestors, life experiences, medical history and military service.



• Interview Questions
  Interview family members to learn about the family history, culture, and the traditions of your ancestors. Exhaustive list of interview questions.

Free Genealogy Lookups

• Free LookUp Forums
  Post a lookup query



• Free LookUps (GeneaSearch)
  Free Genealogy Look Ups for Each State



• Free Lookups Central
  Free lookups in US states, Native American and Military books, surname books.



• Free Genealogy CD Lookups
  Free Lookups on Family Tree Maker (Genealogy.com) CDs.



• Free Obituary Lookups
  An all-volunteer web site and mailing list dedicated to providing obituary lookups all over the world.



• Random Acts of Genealogy Kindness
  Volunteers will videotape cemeteries or visit county courthouses or archives in their specified area.



• RootsWeb Books We Own
  A Look-Up Resource for International Genealogical Research

Free Genealogy Newsletters

• Free Family History Tips, News and Updates
  Timesaving advice from the most respected experts in the field. Help with starting your family history research. Links to the best free online and off-line resources
  
  
• Genealogy Newsletters
  Sign up for the latest family history news and techniques from Michael Neill, George C. Morgan and other genealogy columnists.

Free Genealogy Forums

• Rootsweb/Ancestry Message Boards
  Over 130,000 message boards. Surnames, Locality, and Research Topics



• GenForum Message Boards
  Surname, Regional and General Topics.

Free Genealogy Tools & Calculators

• Free Age Calculator
  Calculate present age or age at death.



• Free Tombstone Birthday Calculator
  Calculate birthdate online from date of death and age at death found on tombstones, death certificates or obituaries.



• Free Perpetual Calendar
  Enter any month and year to view calendar.



• Free Soundex Calculator
  Calculate soundex online. Learn how soundex works including its limitations and uses.



• Free Inflation Calculator
  Calculate today's monetary value for your ancestor's salary, amount left in wills, etc..
  
  
• Free Roman Numeral Convertor
  Convert Roman Numerals found on tombstones and documents to numbers.



• Free Easter Calculator
  Find the date for Easter for any year.



• Free Day of Week Calculator
  Calculate day of week from date online.



• Free Time Capsule
  Generate a page of headlines, consumer prices, US presidents, birthdays, songs, toys, and books for a selected date between 1800 to 2001



• Free Time Line
  Just enter the name of your ancestor with birth and death year to create a free timeline and see how your ancestor's life fits into history.



• Free Gedcom Reader
  Download UncleGed free. Gedcom Reader, GEDCOM to HTML Converter and GEDCOM Cataloging Tool .

Free Genealogy Relationship Charts

• Cousin Calculator
  A free online tool to calculation the family relationship between two people who share a common blood ancestor. Also contains a dictionary of cousin and relationship definitions.

Free Genealogy Form Letters

• Free Genealogy Form Letters
  Free genealogy form letters for requesting genealogical information from an institution or from family members in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

Free Genealogy Translation Services

• Free Translation Service
  Real People. 36 languages. Translations for genealogy..



• Free Translation Service
  Real people. Free genealogy translations in Czech, English, Dutch, French, German, or Polish



• Free Online Translator
  Online translator by Google.

Free Webhosting to build a Genealogy Webpage

• RootsWeb FreePages
  Unlimited space plus your site is entered into RootsWeb's search engine. Hint: the free genealogy software listed above will automatically create linked genealogy pages that you can upload to Rootsweb FreePages. These include Ancestry Family Tree (AFT), Legacy, GenoPro and Personal Ancestral File (PAF).