Genealogical Research in the North Carolina Collection: Online Resources

This free-to-access blog post lists an array of common genealogical purposes including validating family legends, determining who owns land, proving lineage to join a lineage society, reconnecting with long-lost family, and more.

This free-to-access blog post, provided by Ancestry.com, offers free advice on finding and researching immigrant origins.

This free-access posting, provided by FamilySearch, is a more extensive guide for beginner genealogists. The posting includes steps for beginners, answers to FAQ's, and advice.

This free-access blog post, provided by Legacy Tree Genealogists, discusses immigration patterns to America throughout history and provides four simple rules to follow when conducting genealogical research of immigrant ancestors.

This free-access blog post, provided by The USGenWeb Project, is an excellent jumping off point for new genealogists. The blog post lays out four important steps for new genealogists to take as well as a list of common mistakes made in genealogy research. Check out this resource to save yourself plenty of time and energy down the line.

Cyndi's List is a fantastic free resource for those just starting their genealogical research. The site provides an index to genealogical resources available on the internet.

This guide from the National Archives is a wonderful resource for beginning genealogists. Provided resources include information on how to start your family research, popular genealogy topics, events, tools for genealogists, genealogy-related articles, and more.

Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources is a reference book dedicated tp helping "family historians learn where to find information about their ancestors by taking an approach focused on localities" (Rootsweb, 2017). The content of the book is organized by state and includes guidance on vital, census, land, probate, court, tax, cemetery, church, and military records as well as internet resources, county resources, background sources, periodicals, newspapers, manuscript collections, archives, libraries, and historical societies.

The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy is a reference book often referred to as 'The Genealogist's Bible'. The guidebook functions as a guide to finding, selecting, and using genealogical resources including (but not limited to) business, institution and organization records, church records, directories, newspapers, African American Research, Hispanic Research, and Urban Research.

This free resource allows users to search through a great number online historical newspapers - all in one place! Elephind likens itself to Google and Bing but is different in two key ways. For one, Elephind is solely dedicated to historical, digitized newspapers. Secondly, this resource is particularly helpful when searching for smaller or local newspaper sites that may be difficult to find through a more general search engine.

Newspapers are primary sources of the day-to-day lives of our ancestors and provide insights into the culture of the community they report on. Chronicling America, a free service provided by the Library of Congress, "is a website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages" (Library of Congress, n.d.). Users can search through historical newspapers from 1690-present.

This free resource totes the largest collection of free (United States specific) genealogy resources. The resources provide sources for birth, marriage, tax, death, census, church, military, court, cemetery, and ethnic records as well as sources for historical newspapers. Users can search by category (i.e., cemetery record or census records) or they can search by locality. This is a particularly helpful source for Native American genealogy research.

This free website is dedicated to the rediscovery of records that document the names and lives of slaves, freedpersons, and their descendants. The Africana Heritage Project carries the goal to "reclaim African American heritage one family at a time by gathering and preserving records of African American genealogy and history" (USF Africana Heritage Project, 2005). The search feature allows users to choose from an array of document categories (i.e., bible, deed/bill of sale, plantation journal, voter registration) to search through using keywords to filter the results. Further, the site includes advice, research, and discussions on the genealogical research of slaves, freedpersons, and their descendants.

Ancestry.com totes itself as the leading source for online genealogical research. This resource is home to over a billion records, family tress, and DNA samples. Although many features on the site are blocked by pay walls, Ancestry.com does provide a handful of helpful, free services (i.e., their Free Index Collections). The site, perhaps most helpfully in terms of free services, can also be used as a starting off point for genealogical research - look for hints in the records the site provides in their database (but does not offer free access to) and try to find them elsewhere.

This database is free to users and is home to an array of genealogical records, including online images of original documents (i.e., photographs, stories, documents). The search feature is very user friendly while still allowing for specified searches. This database pulls from a huge body of indexes, from the Australian Convict Index to the North Carolina Native American Selected Tribes Census Index, and many more. Please note: Although this resource is entirely free, you may be asked to sign up for a free account - you do not need to sign up for the Ancestry.com free trial to view these records.

This free resource presents the locations of over 1,400 archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies found across the United States which users can visit in-person. Users can search by state or use the interactive map feature (fun fact: North Carolina has over 30 pinned locations!). The site also has collection descriptions that sometimes include links to digital content (i.e., images and sound records). For the most part, this resource is best used to find locations of archives, rather than digital documents.

A free searchable database, DeadFred provides thousands of photographs for genealogical research. These photographs are sometimes identified, but most often are mystery photos. Users can search by surname, detailed search, keyword search, or just browsing through the mystery photographs. A particularly interesting feature of the site is that "anyone who finds a photo of a direct ancestor that is owned by the archive will receive the photo for free" (DeadFred, 2021).

This is a wonderful free service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All are welcome to use the many resources to discover their ancestry. The site allows users to search for ancestors by name, build their own family tree, connect with other users, and organize and share their own memories.

This genealogical guide, provided by FamilySearch, is a wealth of knowledge for beginner genealogists and advanced genealogists alike. The guide is home to genealogy databases, websites, research strategies, advice, and other resources. Users can search by locality (i.e., United States) or topic (i.e., census records). For example, by clicking on 'North America' then 'United States' then 'North Carolina', users will by presented with a page that includes general information about North Carolina, information about getting started with North Carolina research and North Carolina research tools, a list of all counties in the state (which when selected presents the user with all possible record types and databases available for that county), North Carolina migration routes and more resources.

Find A Grave is a free online database of burials (and other final disposition information) found across the nation. Although often limited in information, graves often include vital information for genealogical research, such as birth dates, death dates, pictures, biographies, and family information. Users can search by name as well as birth year, death year, and cemetery location if this information is known by the user.

Although mostly a paid service, Find My Past offers millions of free documents such as newspaper pages, census records, parish registers, and military records. This resource focuses heavily on documents from the United Kingdoms but does include records from other areas of the world such as the United States and Canada.

"A One-Name Study (ONS) is a project researching all occurrences of a surname, as opposed to a particular pedigree (ancestors of one person) or descendancy (descendants of one person or couple)" (Guild of One-Name Studies, n.d.). Although this is not traditional genealogical work, the guild does provide a list of free resources that are very helpful for genealogical research. For example, the guide supplies a search feature, a list of surnames registered with the guild, a global marriage index, a memorial index, and more.

The Immigrant Ancestor Project "uses emigration registers to locate information about the birthplaces of immigrants in their native countries, which is not found in the port registers and naturalization documents in the destination countries". Users can search via search terms, language, archive, or use the advanced search tool.

"Among the billions of historical records housed at the National Archives throughout the country, researcher can find information relative to immigrants from the late 1700s through the early 2000s" (National Archives, 2021). These records include immigration records, naturalizations records, visa records, a-files, enemy alien records, passport records, and records on other immigrant topics and ethnic heritage. The National Archives not only present the available records freely to users but also include background on the records themselves.

This resource presents an extensive list of Native American genealogy databases and other resources.

WikiTree bolsters a mission to grow a world-wide family tree that connects us all and is freely accessible. This is a collaborative source that allows anyone to add their own family tree information and is edited by genealogists from around the world using DNA and traditional genealogical sources.

This resource "is the definitive handbook of North American denominations" and is dedicated to "catalog[ing], analy[zing], and distribut[ing] census information for religious bodies and organizations" (Association of Statisticians of American Relgious Bodies, 2021). Users can explore individual religious bodies, compare individual religious bodies and groups, and find denomination headquarters of an array of religions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and more.