How can I find my whole background ancesters online for free and where?

[wndrlys]

I recently had to prove that I'm Jewish, which required that I research my ancestors going back at least five generations. It took forever, and I was also determined to do it for free. It was almost impossible.

The first thing you need to do is interview family members and start building a family tree... begin with living relatives. I found all sorts of family I didn't know I had, and they didn't know about me either, but now we're all facebook friends.

Ask them questions about where your family comes from. With that information in hand, you will be better equipped to start searching online databases.

In some cases, you may reach dead ends before coming into any conclusive info, but don't give up.

If you are in the U.S. and your family emigrated here, then you can research the Ellis Island records for free, which might help.

Another great resource for me turned out to be the cemetery where many of my relatives are interred, because they maintain records of interment, which include information on origin, birth, survivors, etc.

Something else that was useful for me was just running web searches for my last name and looking for connections to the cities where I knew I had family. Some people had already dedicated websites to my geneology, and they had reached stopping points where my information began.

Another resource that I used was the Yad Vashem database. It's a free search for records pertaining to holocaust victims. It's tragic, but I found some of the records that proved most useful there.

Good luck finding out about your family.