Searching for your Family

Web Sites for Genealogists - An Australian gateway site for tracing your family history by Cora Num

Mocavo.com bills itself as the world’s largest free genealogy search engine. It aims to provide genealogists with access to the best free genealogy content on the web including billions of names, dates and places worldwide.

Free Online Name Listings maintained by Graham Jaunay. These include surname lists for Australia, Canada, England, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, United States, Wales, Zimbabwe and world wide one-name studies.

GENUKI Surname Research Directories for various counties in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales plus the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. These are worth checking.

WikiTree is a free online family tree service designed for sharing and collaboration. Currently WikiTreers have created 2.9+ million profiles. These profiles can be searched by name and surname. Updated

Irish Heritage & Genealogy by John Grenham. This site's extensive list of Genealogy Links includes a Family sites category which is arranged alphabetically by surname with links to 100s of Irish personal family history homepages. There is also a Surname variants category - use the search box to enter a surname and a list of surname variants will be displayed.

FamilySearch is the family history site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It offers free access to the world’s largest collection of family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world. Currently there are 1000 Historical Record Collections available for online searching. These cover
• Africa (9)
• Asia and Middle East (15)
• Australia and New Zealand (13)
• Canada, USA and Mexico (595)
• Caribbean, Central and South America (110)
• Europe (259)
• Other (3) miscellaneous birth, death and marriage collections
• Pacific Islands (4)
Currently the 259 collections for Europe cover: Austria, Belgium, Channel Islands, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Wales. New material is being added at a rapid rate because of the worldwide efforts of the FamilySearch Indexing Project volunteers who are indexing the records. Updated

FamilySearch Community Trees includes lineage-linked genealogies from specific time periods and geographic localities around the world. Each Community Tree is a searchable database that includes sources. There are views of individuals, families, ancestors and descendants. The South Australia Community Trees project (ongoing) contains information from the South Australian births, marriages and death indexes, overseas sources and notes from the South Australian Biographical Indexes.

Persons Lost and Found 1838-1915. This index, by M Leadbeater is compiled from South Australian police gazettes, government gazettes and registers of ship deserters at the National Archives of Australia. It lists 28,400 deserters from wives, families, ships, military and other service. The deserted, those failing to support their families, missing persons, escaped prisoners, absconders, convict expirees arriving from other colonies and bigamists are also listed. This index can include persons from other states. New

Oz Gen Online's OZ Genlink Directory is designed to assist Australian researchers with their local and family history research. Resources are arranged by Search Engines (Australian, US and European); Surname Links (surname search and surname directories); Leading Sites ("must" visit sites); Australian Links (genealogy societies, local and/or family history centres; World Links (genealogy societies, local and/or family history centres) plus a reference library and links to mailing lists.

ThePeerage.com by Darryl Lundy. This site is a genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain and the royal families of Europe. This ongoing site currently lists the details of 522,400+ persons. There is a site search engine available. Updated

The Guild of One-Name Studies (GOONS). A one-name study is a project researching facts about a surname and all the people who have held it, as opposed to researching a particular family. This site offers an online search where you can check if a specific surname is registered with the Guild. This lists 7,850+ surnames registered and provides contact details.

GeneaBloggers has 2,000+ genealogy and family history blogs listed. You can use this site to search for family surnames or keywords across all the blogs listed. Updated

South Australian Family Tree Directory. This site by Barry Leadbeater lists family tree and history web sites that include South Australians.

GENUKI Search offers a surname search of all the GENUKI databases plus pages from the National Archives, the Society of Genealogists, Federation of Family History Societies, many family history societies and county surname interest sites.

Ancestry.com offers access to 30 thousand online databases. The records are fully indexed with a free surname search. Subscription options offer access to information or digitised images of the original records. Use the Search tab and choose Card Catalog from the drop down menu then choose Filter by Location to see what is available for each country.

Findmypast is a UK based family history and genealogy website offering an ever-growing collection of over 650 million family history records. Most records are free to search but fees apply to view images and transcripts.

Findmypast.com.au is a family history and genealogy website offering subscription access to a collection of over 35 million historical records covering Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Records include cemetery records, probate, land & court records, migration records, criminal reports, electoral rolls & censuses, directories, almanacs & government gazettes and military records.

WorldVitalRecords.com is another emerging commercial site. It aims to provide affordable access to genealogy databases and family history tools. There are billions of records worldwide. A variety of subscription options is available.

WorldConnect Project by Rootsweb allows users to upload, modify, link, and display their family trees as a means of sharing with other researchers. There is free access to 575+ million names.

The Lost Cousins website enables you to find other people who share the same ancestors. It does this by comparing the information you enter about your ancestors with the information that other members have entered.

Genes Reunited. This site offers a variety of services including free hosting for family trees and free access to the information contributed by others. Registration is required and fees apply for the contact details of a contributing researcher and for use of the online census and BDM databases.

GeneaNet: Genealogical Database Network. This site aims to set up a universal register of all the world's genealogical resources. To date 357+ million entries are available for searching.

Rootsweb Australian and New Zealand Records. This site allows you to surname search 702,900+ contributed records containing 71,600+ distinct surnames for selected states and towns.

RootsWeb Surname List contains 1.2 million+ fully searchable surname entries, plus contact details for the submitters. You can also add your surnames to this list.

GenForum lists genealogy forums for individual surnames alphabetically. Particular surname forum messages can be viewed from the site and messages posted if desired.

publicprofiler. This world family name mapping website uses the latest resources to tell you where in the world people with your family name are found. There are also lots of interesting facts and figures about the people who share your family name. There are world and Great Britain family names profilers available to search.

FamilySearch Standard Finder. Do a Name search using the Standard Finder and a list of surname variants will be returned. You can also do place name searches to find the correct way to record place names.

Leo's Genealogics Website. A name searchable site offering a wide range of material collected from many books and sources. Material ranges Roman Emperors to Australian Aborigines and anyone in between. This collection of data is a work in continuous progress.

Surname Suggestion List. This shareware windows program can be downloaded from this site for free. Once installed on your computer use it to enter a surname, click on the Search button and three lists of similar sounding surnames are created. They are categorised as excellent, close and longshot. If you click on a surname from the list you can then do a Google genealogy search using Google web search, book search, image search or blog search.

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Searching for your Family