Genealogy can be costly to pursue, but recently, thank goodness, the price has gone down, in that several years ago, even as recently as 1990, pursuinmg genealogy as a hobby, or a career meant that if you didn’t travel, or spend some sums of money sending out letters and requsts nationally and internationally, you weren’t going to get far in your search for your family, particularly if they were immigrants and came from abroad.

Sending out letters, requesting assistance and paying for it, or traveling to international destinations to search for ourselves,  all cost a reasonable amount to accomplish and some of us weren’t able to actively track down people using those methods.

The internet with its plethora of information, allows us the luxury of viewing a passenger list, a slave ship manifest or a birth and death certificate, a marriage certificate or property lists on line, but many of those have their price as well.

There are however, several really good repositories of infofrmation that you can avail yourself of, without a cost, and get started, or even completed, in your quest for your ancestors or someone elses.

The best of the best, so far as free internet sites which house important genealogy information, those sites which did it for the joy of it instead of the profit are listed below for your convenience:

USGenWeb Project: Housing not only databases of information, such as birth and marriage certificates, Social security information and other projects, but also a forum to interact with others who are seeking the same people you are.Gen Web

Great Britain and Ireland Emigration Passenger Lists–those passengers who traveled to Australia as free citizens.Passenger Lists

Passenger Ship Transcribers GuildMore than 9000 free passenger lists to help you pinpoint your ancestors, all in ten volumes. Also special projects all of which are free to the genealogical community.Ships Lists/Transcribers Guild

Ancestor search–Offering multiple free services, including passenger ships to Pennsylvania.Ancestor search

Rootsweb--Free bio’s, searchable by county or state, and much more information to help you find your ancestors.Roots web

The list will be ongoing, edited to remove dead links and filling up more and more as we find more and more good sites to offer you. If you find a dead link on our list or know of a great resource that is completely and totally free, give us a heads up please…