Almost everyone knows about Ancestry when it comes to Genealogy but did you know you can find your ancestors without having to pay?
Are there really free Genealogy sites?
This is a question I’ve seen asked by people new to Genealogy all the time, if you are one of these people I’m going to give you the answer to this question you’ve been searching for.
Yes, there are free Genealogy websites!
The biggest free Genealogy website is FamilySearch, the site is available in 30 languages, and is completely free. All you have to do is sign up for a free account and you will be on your way.
I’ve written about using FamilySearch before in my Finding my Roots In The Caribbean and Who are you? Joseph Boldt posts and this site is really essential, not only can you find records that are also available on Ancestry but you can find records that are not on Ancestry. When I’m working on a tree for someone I will usually go to Familysearch and look for the free records before I move over to Ancestry to find the paid sources. If you haven’t created an account on Familysearch I highly suggest you do so today.
Because I mainly focus on genealogy for two specific Islands I’ll share with you the sites I use the most. For Saint-Barthélemy and pretty much all the Islands in the French Antilles I suggest using the Archives nationales d’outre-mer or Anom for short. If you are looking for someone born between 1724 and 1905 chances are very good that you find them on here. I will not lie to you but the earlier records are very difficult to read so I’d suggest you be more advanced in genealogy before attempting to look at those records. I do have to mention that for Gustavia the records only go up to 1904, for Lorient it goes to 1905. I keep hoping that they will add more records; the 1910s for instance but one can only hope.
For the Danish West Indies, I use Virgin Islands History, there are so many records here that it should be one of your first stops when looking for family members from the Danish West Indies, most of it is not indexed but some are, so all you have to do is type in your surname and see what shows up.
If you are looking for more recent family then visit FamilySearch or Ancestry sometimes you will have to use both as FamilySearch has Church and Census records that Ancestry just doesn’t seem to have.
I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment or visit my Instagram page and send a message there. You can find me on Instagram here :
Crucianize 