Sites & Services >> May 2006 (Issue 96)

Best genealogy Web sites

The Society of Australian Genealogists reveals the sites most family historians can’t live without and why you’ll find reasons to return to them time and time again.

The top 10

www.coraweb.com.au
Cora Num’s gateway site is designed for Australian family historians — a great place to go if you are just starting out and feeling a bit overwhelmed, or when you think you’ve explored everything there is to see on the Internet!

www.records.nsw.gov.au
The most useful Australian archive site for family historians with a wide range of online indexes. From the home page, type your ancestor’s name straight into the keyword search box in the top right-hand corner of the page and select ‘indexes’ for a shortcut through to indexes for convict records, shipping, bankruptcy and much more.

www.ww2roll.gov.au
With more than 1 million Australians involved in WWII, there is a good chance you’ll find family members when you search this site, which is offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Search results include date and place of birth, together with next of kin and service details — a great way to find some of those missing twigs on the family tree!

www.rootsweb.com/~nswsdps/
The Ryerson Index — over 1 million death notices from the NSW-based Sydney Morning Herald 1972 to 2006 and 105 other papers makes this a great way to catch up with ‘contemporary’ deaths.

www.genuki.org.uk
If you are undertaking English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish research, you can’t go past this one. A gateway site that allows you to locate sites of interest by country, county or parish/place. You’ll return time and time again as your research progresses.

www.freebmd.org.uk
This site just gets better and better — covering the BDM (births, deaths and marriages) indexes for England and Wales from 1837 to 1919, it now has almost 100% coverage for marriages and deaths 1866 to 1910 and births 1890 to 1909 with many other years well covered, too. This is a really useful alternative to the many ‘pay to view’ sites that offer access to the same records. But it isn’t complete and you should use the statistics page to check progress to date so you know how likely it is that the record you are looking for is going to be there.

www.familysearch.org
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) is about to do a major overhaul of its site, so keep your eye on this one. They are promising digital images of actual records — fully indexed and downloadable for free. While much of the focus is on US material, English parish registers are also promised. You can use their International Genealogical Index to search records of baptism and marriage from around the world, together with their Family History Library catalogue to see what records they have filmed. Transcripts of the 1881 English and Canadian census and the USA 1880 census are also available for free on this site.

www.ancestry.com & www.ancestry.co.uk
For those with British heritage, the ancestry .co.uk databases are great — online indexes and images of the 1851-1901 English and Welsh census, with 1841 due soon, as well as many other databases and digitised books. The indexes are free, but to get the most out of this site, you really need to subscribe. There are various options available, ranging from around $12 for 14 days (limit of 10 downloads), $25 per month or $170 per year for the English databases — a worldwide subscription that includes all the US databases will set you back about $480 per annum. Don’t forget membership of some Australian societies such as the Society of Australian Genealogists in Sydney will get you free ‘in house’ use of all these databases (see www.sag.org.au for more details).

www.rootsweb.com
RootsWeb is well worth exploring — the home of many volunteer projects and helpful sites. You can join one of the nearly 30,000 genealogy mailing lists from here, or check out the family trees listed in the WorldConnect Project to see who else is researching the same family line as you.

www.familyhistoryonline.net
A pay-to-view site (PTV), but this one is run by family historians for family historians. It has to be the best value PTV site around — your £5 subscription lasts for 6 months and will give you good value for money. It includes census, parish records, monumental inscriptions, stray indexes and much more, and now over half a million Australian records — convict indents and Victorian Government Gazette entries. If you don’t want to use your credit card online, you can buy a voucher from the Society of Australian Genealogists ((02) 9247 3953 or www.sag.org.au) and some other resellers.

Births, deaths & marriages info
These are the state registries offering online indexes. For other states, visit www.coraweb.com.au to find the relevant link.

www.bdm.nsw.gov.au
The NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages — free online indexes of births 1788 to 1905, marriages 1788 to 1955 and deaths 1788 to 1975.

www.dvc.vic.gov.au/bdm.htm
Search the indexes to births 1853 to 1924, deaths 1853 to 1985 and marriages 1853 to 1942 along, with some church registers. It costs 99c per screen result (20 hits) to search the indexes and $17.50 to get a copy of a certificate.

www.rgo.act.gov.au
Includes a listing of death registrations 1930 to 1973 for the ACT.

Family history societies & professional organisations
These sites will help you get assistance with research or find the right society or professional researcher to contact.

www.sag.org.au
Offers guidance to beginners with research outlines on a variety of topics, and databases of convict records, Sydney street names, British regiments in Australia and more. You can also subscribe to SAG-E — a free monthly electronic newsletter to keep you up to date with what is happening in the family history world.

www.affho.org
The Australasian Federation of Family History Societies Inc links to all member societies, searchable by region or society name.

www.ffhs.org.uk
Includes an online directory of all member societies, especially good for tracking down English groups.

www.feefhs.org
The Federation of East European Family History Societies includes links to all member societies as well as a wide variety of databases searchable by surname.

www.one-name.org
Search the online database of registered surnames to discover if there is a society based on the surname you are researching.

www.aagra.asn.au
An online directory of professional genealogists who are members of the Australasian Association of Genealogists and Record Agents.

Shipping
The following states have online indexes to shipping records.

www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/indexes_online_3357.asp
Includes online indexes to assisted immigrants arriving Sydney 1844 to 1896, Port Phillip (Melbourne) 1839 to 1851 and Moreton Bay (Brisbane) 1848 to 1859 and also unassisted (free) passengers to NSW 1842 to 1855.

mariners.records.nsw.gov.au
Hosted by State Records NSW and run by volunteers, this site contains indexes and images of selected passenger arrivals into NSW from 1854 to 1878. Not complete, but if you find an index entry of interest, a scanned copy of the shipping list is also freely available to download.

www.prov.vic.gov.au
Indexes to unassisted passengers arriving into Victoria 1852 to 1923 and assisted immigrants 1839 to 1871, as well as outward passengers for 1852 to 1861. From the home page follow the link to ‘access the collections’ and choose ‘digitised records and online indexes’.

www.archives.qld.gov.au/research/index/immigration.asp
Assisted immigrants into Queensland 1848 to 1884 are available as a PDF download.

www.archives.tas.gov.au/nameindexes
An index to departures from Tasmania 1817 to 1867.

Archives & libraries
Australian libraries and archives have excellent Web sites with many geared to help family historians. Here are a few worth investigating.

www.nla.gov.au
The National Library of Australia has a useful gateway link to all public libraries, which will
help you find local history collections of interest.

www.naa.gov.au
The National Archives of Australia is a terrific site, especially for 20th-century research, including WWI and immigration records. Lots of useful research guides online, too, for family historians.

www.archives.qld.gov.au/research/indexes.asp
Queensland State Archives offers online PDF indexes for immigration, inquests, teachers, divorce and probates.

www.archives.tas.gov.au
Tasmanian Archives has online indexes to convict records, divorces, naturalisations and census records.

www.prov.vic.gov.au
This site has had a great makeover, and now offers digitised images and indexes for many topics including immigration, education, divorce, gaol and asylum records.

www.sro.wa.gov.au
West Australian state records office.

www.archives.sa.gov.au
State Records of South Australia — online research guides are listed by topic under Family History.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
The Web site of The National Archives of the UK (formerly the Public Record Office) is home to the official government records of England and Wales. Their DocumentsOnline section allows you to search indexes to records such as wills and service personnel for free — charges apply to download images of the records. Also links to online census services 1851 to 1901.

Photographs, maps & plans

www.pictureaustralia.org
Over 1 million images from many contributing organisations. Great for both people and places, you can download a viewable image and order a print copy online.

www.lands.nsw.gov.au/OnlineServices/ParishMaps/default.htm
Thirty-five thousand historic parish, town, county, pastoral and municipal maps for NSW.

www.old-maps.co.uk
Historic maps as well as modern ordinance survey maps and aerial images for the UK.

Cemeteries

www.ozgenonline.com/aust_cemeteries
Want to know if an Australian cemetery has its records online or if someone has transcribed it? This alphabetical list gives links to online databases and volunteer look-up services as well as the home pages of many of the larger cemeteries.

www.hawkesbury.net.au/cemetery/index.html
A terrific example of the work of local historians to put their historic cemetery records online. This one for the Hawkesbury district of NSW has transcriptions, photographs and maps online.

www.cwgc.org
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission Web site lists burial details for 1.7 million service personnel in 150 countries.

Linking up with other researchers

www.genesreunited.co.uk
This site now boasts 4 million members. It is free to register, but it costs $19.95 per year if you want to be able to make contact with others you find listed who share a common ancestry. A feature of this site is that your own email address is not given out to anyone unless you agree to it every time.

www.curiousfox.com
Great for finding others interested in the same village or town as you are in the UK and Ireland. Put in a place name and the site shows you queries others have posted for the same place. Then you can share your research and local knowledge!

Other overseas sites

www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
A one-stop shop for Scottish research. Yes you pay £6 to get 30 credits, which last seven days, but you can make that go a long way — and it is still cheaper than getting someone in Scotland to do the work for you! Indexes to the 1851 to 1901 Scottish census, civil registration births 1855 to 1905, marriages 1855 to 1930 and deaths 1855 to 1955, church registrations for baptisms and marriages 1553 to 1854 and a free wills index 1513 to 1901. Plus some useful ‘add on’ help, like personalised timelines. The neat thing about this site is that it saves every image and search you do, so you can go back time and time again and recap what you’ve already done.

www.nationalarchives.ie
This site provides useful fact sheets and background information on Irish research. A growing list of useful links is also worth exploring.

www.cyndislist.com
Finally, when you’ve exhausted all the above or run out of ideas, visit Cyndi’s List for new ideas and inspiration. Over 250,000 Web sites listed here to choose from!