Free Online Genealogy Tools - Abundant Genealogy Week 3

I keep a list of useful free sites on this blog's sidebar. Some help me find ancestors. Others help understand the environment in which my ancestors lived, the language they used, the books and newspapers they might have read, and the things they might have seen.

One of my absolute favorite free sites is Linkpendium. I like it because it is locality specific. As you can see from the image above, you can choose a state in the U.S., choose the U.K. and Ireland, or choose surnames. I usually use the U.S. localities. If you choose a state, you'll arrive at a screen where you can choose a county in that state, which takes you to lists of online links of source. The Jefferson County, Ohio, page is pictured below.

You'll find the links arranged in categories. Not every county has the same links, of course, but most categories are the same. After the categories, there is either a list of links or, if there are too many links to have them all in a list, there is a number (in parentheses) which tells how many links there are for that category. Click on the title to see the list of links.

Often a source is named, such as "Genealogy Trails History Group," "USGenWeb," or "Explore Ancestry for Free." After any link that isn't free, there's a green $.

The category headings for Jefferson County, Ohio, are

• Projects
  
• Adjacent Counties - this lists all the counties surrounding the county of interest
• Bible Records
• Biographies, Oral Histories, Diaries, Memoirs, Genealogies, Correspondence
• Cemeteries (27)
• Census Records and Indexes (29)
• Church Records (30)
• Court and Legal Records
• Directories
• Estate Records
• Ethnic
• History (77)
• Immigration and Naturalization
• Introductions and Guides (12)
• Land Records
• Libraries, Museums, Archives
• Look-ups
• Mailing Lists
• Maps and Gazetteers (31)
• Military Records and Histories (these are sub-divided by war)
• Miscellaneous Data (11)
• Newspaper Records (15)
• Obituaries and Funeral Home Records (10)
• Photographs, Postcards, Historical Images (12)
• School Records and Histories (34)
• Societies
• Surnames Web sites, obituaries, biographies, and other material specific to a surname (319)
• Tax Lists
• Transportation and Industry (13)
• Vital Records (25)
  

Linkpendium has added some new features since I was last there and it continually adds new links as people recommend them. If you haven't used Linkpendium to search for your family, I highly recommend it.

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This post was written to participate in Amy Coffin's 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy which is hosted on Geneabloggers. The theme will change weekly and may be posted any day of the week. This week's theme was free online genealogy tools. I invite you to join in if you'd like.