ROOTS - Search - Genealogy Information Sources

Try free, quick, direct genealogy searches; these are free searches that can be done easily from an online form that covers a large number of people for a specific purpose; these searches are useful for starting out in research or for repeated basic searching; for more detailed searching, see sites or links

• US Soc Sec: US Social Security Death index of over 79 million records; people in the United States who had a social security number (first ones were issued in November 1936) and are now dead; look up by name or social security number; provided through RootsWeb
• Ellis Island: US immigrant database of more than 22 million people; Ellis Island Foundation; American Family Immigration History Center (AFIHC); search the immigrant arrival records stored in the Ellis Island Archives; more than 22 million passengers and crew members passed through Ellis Island and the Port of New York between 1892 and 1924; passenger records (passenger name, date of arrival, ship of travel, age on arrival); original manifests (showing passenger names and other information); ship information (often with a picture)
• Obits: Obituary Daily Times index of over 12 million entries; index of published obituaries--not the actual obituaries; find a publication date, then you can request the obit from a volunteer or you can refer to newspaper archives
• Castle Garden: US immigrant database of over 10 million people; from 1830 through 1892; America's first official immigration center
• Cemeteries: Worldwide cemetery records of 3 million entries; transcriptions of cemetery records and tombstone inscriptions; USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries; free access; links to fee-based services; useful links to other resources
• Surnames: over 1 million surname queries; researchers register surnames on which they are working
• People: deep Web search for living people; locate living or recently-alive people who have some online records or information available; includes white pages directories as well as court records, social networking site memberships
• FamilySearch: search form for locating ancestors; free access to a large amount of information on people from ancestral files, census, international genealogical index, pedigree resource file, US Social Security death index, vital records index, and family history Web sites; navigation from page also for research guidance; provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• WorldConnect: over 480 million names in user-submitted family trees; user upload, modify, link, and display their family trees and share their genealogy with other researchers

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