Genealogy Websites

Here are the list of sites I've discovered and found to be helpful. There is a LOT of stuff online now. This is just my suggestions.

Here you go:
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/default.asp The LDS site. The best!
http://dir.genealogytoday.com/index.html Free general site good.
http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/ Olivetree is good for other things beside ship lists, but that’s the link I saved
http://www.cyndislist.com/census.htm I’m sure you already know about Cyndi’s List. Tons of information. The site for lists of other sites.
http://www.immigrantships.net/ Great source for passenger lists
http://www.idreamof.com/newdata.html okay, but not the best site
http://www.us-census.org/inventory/ Need to know what specific state and county you are looking for to really use this one.

One tip too is to put information in the search site www.Dogpile.com. You can write in things like “Samuel Locker 1736 Virginia” and you will get information that way too. You will need to do a lot more stiffing though. Best of luck.
I traced a friends mother’s side of the family back to England as far as 1302 by just using the FamilySearch.org site. What was even more amazing it that it only took about three minutes. That isn’t normal. Like I said in the other blog, I’ve been working on Locker for years and still haven’t gotten them off the East coast to England.

I'm thinking about putting together easy search steps to follow. Maybe in the near future.

Where Are You From?

When I lived in Southern California I had the opportunity to have a young teacher as a roommate. She decided that during her summer break from teaching she wanted to travel to the homeland of her parents. She was just about as Irish as one can be. Her name is Kelly Ann Hoolihan, a name which kind of rolls off your tongue with an Irish accent without even trying. Before she left she wanted to do a wee bit of research to discover what part of Ireland her family was from. I thought it might be a hoot to look into my family roots, too, so she and I visited the Mormon Temple in Los Angeles to utilize their Family History Library.

It took her about ten minutes to figure out where her family had originated. Well, maybe a little longer than that, but very quickly. I found myself traveling back again and again, spending many long hours in the dark microfiche room, scrolling through page after page of old United States census records. While I did discover some information, it was only satisfying in spits and spurts.

After I moved back to Northern California, it wasn’t until a friend here became interested in tracing her genealogy that I again pulled out my binders (yes, binders) and started searching again. My friend Pam and I took a trip over the Northern California Mormon Temple in Oakland to their Family History Library and, of course, Pam had great luck and even found photos, stories, and more. I even found one more link in the chain of my family history.

In 2000 I stumbled onto Ancesty.com and thought I had hit the Mother load. I didn’t need to travel to a Family History Library; I could spend endless hours online searching. I’m happy to report I did locate my mother’s father’s connection to their homeland. Not too hard to figure out they are from Ireland. Next I discovered my 3 times great grandfather was from Antrim, Ireland, just north of Belfast. The photo at the top is from there. But then the path grew cold; it had been just a wee moment of glee.


Fast forward eight years and I happened on a new genealogy website and was overwhelmed at what can be found online now; photos of gravestones, ship passenger records, history of little known people, maps, and tons more. This time I knew I would reach my goal of tracing all my grandparents back to their homeland. After two weeks of intensive searching I have located my mother’s mom's family back to about 1208 in Tideswell, Derbyshire, England. The last name was changed in about 1635.

On my father’s mother’s side, I was able to trace the family back to 1674 to Saint Ninians, Stirling, Scotland. You remember the movie Brave Heart about William Wallace? He lived a few miles from Saint Ninians, Stirling. This is a photo of the Wallace Monument in his honor.



My father’s father was the hardest of all. I just can’t get the family out of the colonies. The line is stuck in Mississippi in 1849. I’m still searching, but that is for another time.

If you are interested in starting your own search, I have a list of great websites I’ve found extremely helpful. (Becasue of the overwhelming amount of interest I have posted the websites on this blog for all to enjoy and benefit from.)

I guess in a way if you’re a Christian you already have the source book to know exactly where you are from. We just need to return to a very familiar verse in John 6:9, Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Yes, our heritage is much greater than Ireland, South American, Africa, New Zealand, etc. Our homeland is heaven and our Father lives there.

Let me end with a passage from Galatians 4:4-7 that explains our ultimate heritage much better than I ever could. But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, "Papa! Father!" Doesn't that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you're also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.