Free Genealogy Resources

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

​With our topsy-turvy world, many genealogical sites are kindly offering free access to additional records and collections. Most are free to explore without registration while a few require you to register and provide a credit card if you choose to continue.  Let’s look.

My email box has been full of offers from various retail companies, but my favorite emails have been free access to collections and records from various genealogy sites.  Here are a few you can check out.
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I belong to Ontario Ancestors, The Ontario Genealogical Society and they provide a high-quality newsletter and are dedicated to Ontario genealogy.  If any of you have ancestors from Ontario, I would suggest joining them.  They compiled a list of free offers and I’m including some of those as well as others I’ve received recently.

FamilyTreeMagazine has made their digital March/April edition of their FamilyTree Magazine free.  FamilyTree Magazine is always full of great ideas and articles.

MyHeritage is offering a couple of items.  Through April 5th, you can search for free all US Census Records. And all users have been given “free and unlimited access to MyHeritage In Color™ for a month.” MyHeritage in Color is a quick way to colorize your black and white photos.  With these sites, they may require you to register so it is always a good idea to look at the terms of using these tools.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Ancestry has provided two items of interest.  There are free history lesson plans for students K-12 plus they are making records available online from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration on Ancestry.com.  And while you’re out there you can view free training videos at the Ancestry Academy.

Take a break from all the news and social postings and step back in time to do some family research.  It will be a good mind shift and you just might find an elusive ancestor in the process.  Happy searching!