February 2 Genealogy Club

Last night Steve Packer, one of our annual speakers, provided a very useful group of free websites for family research. He suggested that we initially use a "survey phase" to find out what is actually available for searching and then the "research phase" where we use the sites to locate information. This should always be followed by analysis to decide whether the data is accurate and verification if possible.

He mentioned several sites to locate living people, such as www.switchboard.com, www.411info.com and www.theultimates.com.

Steve also suggested sites that have links that would be useful for searching, such as www.surnames.com, www.genealogy.about.com, linkpendium, cyndi's list, etc. He briefly mentioned message boards like those on rootsweb; however, many of the queries are outdated and archived. 

One site Steve recommended looked particularly interesting: www.deathindexes.com, which is a link to those online indexes by state. He strongly suggests the usgenweb site, and don't forget there is a canadagenweb and a worldgenweb!

The final part of Steve's talk was a case study where he located information for a friend using familysearch, findagrave and google.

It certainly seemed as if there was something for everyone to try from Steve's presentation. 

Note that I did not create a link if we already have one on our blog menu.