Finding Relatives - Can you do it for free?

[G.W.K]

I am trying to find relatives (living and dead) but I can't seem to be able to do it at all for free! I've tried the Electoral Register (is there a free, online one?) and other searching sites. Any suggestions on how do this successfully and free?

[Rebekah P]

Try Ancestry.com They're for free, but you can get birth records and stuff if you pay an ammount of money a month.

[Anthony R]

Genes reunited are now free you just pay to look up any records but they have chat pages and if your polite someone will usually check details for you. Good luck.

[dom_bench]

Hi, you can leave a message for living relatives and friends that you are missing on http://www.missing-you.net and you can get partial information on 192.com.

You can also check http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk and social networking sites such as Bebo, My Space and Facebook. Just put in the name you wish to find and check the possibilities of correct age, location and photographs etc.

Good luck!

[Mental Mickey]

Genealogy is like scientology. The only way to get anywhere successfully is to be able to pay and keep on paying. It is not a hobby that can be done on the cheap. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying.

There is a limit to what you can do on genesreunited for free. Other people can contact you for sure (and you can reply) but you can't initiate any contact unless you pay. In my experience the site is mostly full of clueless muppets now in any case. Ancestry offers the free trial, but then you have to cancel fast or they'll take out the hefty membership fee. You don't get nothing for free in this hobby. I wouldn't even waste your time on the electoral roll sites, even if you do decide to pay, as the electoral roll is far from complete. Not everybody is on it. Far from it. The online edition is the "commercial" roll. When you get junk mail in the post from random companies, it is this roll that they are often using to send stuff out to. Since about 2000, households have been able to "opt out" of this "commercial" roll every October when the new years register is compiled. Thus a lot of people simply won't show up in a search and you'll have wasted your money. What the actual odds are of finding someone is and what percentage of households have actually "opted out" is not a figure I have to hand, but you need to consider the fact that not everyone wants to be found so easily, and finding details of the living is not that easy. It's called the Data Protection Act and it can be quite a headache, especially post-1901.

Social networking sites like myspace can be useful if people have registered under their real names. I found a former schoolfriend on there easily enough, so there are options. Googling an individual person doesn't usually work, especially common names, but sometimes, just sometimes, googling an unusual name can produce a hit or two, especially if they have internet access and have left a paper trail all over the web. Again though, not many internet users are daft enough to use their own names, but people in certain professions like doctors, solicitors or local councillors are usually easy to find online, so random searches can sometimes yield results. In the end though to get anywhere really successfully in the field of genealogy, you have to pay. That's just how it is. If you try to search adult xxx websites you can get some good free sites, but most of the better ones have paid membership. It's exactly the same in the world of family tree research. Most of the better sites are huge commerical enterprises and want membership fees.

Some people might be lucky enough to find that someone else has been doing their tree and already put it up online where it is searchable. Rootsweb's worldconnect tree is one huge database. Other people host their tree at Tribalpages. More still are at genesreunited. Mine is at all three places. Anyone lucky enough to be on the fringes of my tree will find that a lot of the work has been done for them already with only a few clicks of a mouse required. For most people though, it's not as simple as that. It requires work - time, effort and money. Most people who ask this kind of question on Yahoo just don't bother. I can't blame them for that. It's not something to be entered into lightly. It's easy enough once you get the hang of it, but you've got to be prepared to flash the cash at some point. To paraphrase the movie Casablanca, "maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and then for the rest of your life..."

[thunderingcreature360]

For dead people, try:
Oh, yes! I want it, and I want it now, and it must be free. Does that about sum it up? (I hope so, because that is what I always want...)
You should start by asking all your living relatives about family history. Then, armed with that information, you can go to your public library and check to see if it has a genealogy department. Most do nowadays; also, don't forget to check at community colleges, universities, etc. Our public library has both http://www.heritagequest.com free for anyone to use (no library card required).
Another place to check out is any of the Mormon's Family History Centers. They allow people to search for their family history (and, NO, they don't try to convert you).
A third option is one of the following websites:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

http://www.geni.com/

Cyndi's has the most links to genealogy websites, whether ship's passenger lists, ancestors from Africa, ancestors from the Philippines, where ever and whatever.

Of course, you may be successful by googling: "john doe, born 1620, plimouth, massachusetts" as an example.

Good luck and have fun!

Check out this article on five great free genealogy websites:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...

Then there is the DNA test; if you decide you want to REALLY know where your ancestors came from opt for the DNA test. Besides all the mistakes that officials commonly make, from 10% to 20% of birth certificates list the father wrong; that is, mama was doing the hanky-panky and someone else was the REAL father. That won't show up on the internet or in books; it WILL show up in DNA.
I used http://www.familytreedna.com which works with the National Geographics Genotype Program.