Hi, it's me - Tricia. Great advice. I agree about the birthdate. Birthdays were not celebrated like we do today and many immigrants lived in countries where vital records were either not kept at all or were sketchy, at best. Church records are baptism dates - not usually birthdays. Result - many immigrants simply did not know when they were born. So, because it was required info they made a date up and, sometimes, didn't remember what they had put on each different form. Then, to further confuse the situation many immigrants were not literate or spoke dialects using just phonics and each person from the same village spelled the same word differently. Now, add in the problems on the other end in the US (lack of ability to understand foreign languages, poor literacy rates, equally poor spelling) and mistakes were more the rule than exception unless your immigrant came from an English speaking country. I agree to check other points of entry besides Ellis Island. Remember, to a non-English speaking person Ellis Island meant nothing. But, over the years it became the place most people associated with "immigrants" so they said that is where they were processed. T'aint always so. Even if they write Ellis Island on their official paperwork. My own grandfather is a good example. All of his official paperwork read Ellis Island. He told everybody Ellis Island, including me. I spent 10 years looking for him. Nadda. Hired the National Archives to search. Nadda. I'm a contact person for the German-Russian Historical Society for the village of Norka. Got an email one day - from a women searching for one of my aunts who immigrated with my grandfather. She said, "Ellis Island? Gee, that's funny. My aunt always said they arrived through Portland, Maine." With the correct point of entry - Grandpa was easy to find. Fifteen years old and towing behind 3 younger sisters. Sometimes, there no better genealogical research than dumb luck. :) I also think a membership with ancestry.com is a good investment if you're just getting started. But, I warn you - BE CAREFUL! People are idiots. They just copy what somebody else has written with no further research on their own. So, mistakes get passed on and on and on and on. LOTS of them. I use whatever I find on ancestry.com as a clue, nothing more, until I've confirmed the info by independent resources. Also, the Mormon church site is notorious for mistakes. So much so I could not with good conscience even recommend using their data bank. But, if you do - proceed with caution. My goal is always 3 separate confirming documents saying the same thing. And, I get copies if possible. I've got tens of thousands of hard copy records. I set an annual budget for vital records and such because it does get expensive. I had my second book, "Thunder on the Steppes, a genealogy of ______________", edited this past spring (while we were rebuilding from Sandy). I was especially nervous because I've written a novella inside the book to bring my German-Russian ancestors to life for my grandchildren. My first attempt at fiction. My editor loved it and said I should seek a publisher believing it has a broader audience than immediate family. I'm thrilled. First though I need to publish the entire genealogy and not get sidetracked. I'm so close to being finished - just got to sprint those last 200 meters and cross the line. It's taken over fifteen years. At that point, I'm going to call my genealogy project finished. Genealogy is never truly finished but after nearly 3 decades of research and two books each exceeding 800 pages and going back to the mid-1200s it's as complete as I'm going to take it. I'll leave it up to future generations to carry on. Have Fun! /tricia

Ancestory.com has a large data base which they collected. Several years ago, a signicicant portion of their web site was available to the public, and the public volunteered many pieces of data. Then, Ancestory.com shut off their site except to subscribers, and these days only allow the public at large a peek into small parts of their data base, and much of this data is available at other sites. Those who once contributed family tree data could no longer access their own data without a membership. They found the data was now used for profit. However, Ancestory.com does organize their data and has a good search engine within their data base. The LDS Family Search (Mormon) probably has the largest data base in the world. I have found accuracy problems with this site. Much of their data came from family members who volunteered information about their ancesstors, and often, this data is not verified. It may have come from family verbal or erroroneous imformation dredged from an aged memory. Dates and places can be in error. Information from family bibles, journals, and newspaper articles are the best of the undocumented data. Lately, the LDS staff has been making an effort to increase accuracy, but that is a daunting job considering the source and purpose of their data base. Mind you, this is merely a caution to check and verify your data. I have found the LDS site valuable. It is true that if you check the Social Security site that you won't find anything about yourself - And that's the way you'd want it - Think identity theft. However, the Social Security death index does contain late information. No more than 3 months had passed after my mother demise, when her death data with social security number appeared. (So much for using her name as a security box password.) Information found at this site is full name, date of birth, date of death, and place of death. If the name of the place of death seems strange, its because its not by city, but listed by "name of township" and "name of county". In some cases, the names of towns are the same as the townships of the towns.

I don't think that information about the "Library Edition" is available to the general public on Ancestry.com, so I'm not sure what you're "not allowed" to access via the Library. There are now only two "membership versions" available to the general public -- the U.S. Deluxe and the World Deluxe. (There used to be "Standard" versions of both the U.S. and World memberships, that didn't provide access to everything.) As the names imply, with the U.S. Deluxe membership you can only access records from the United States. The World Deluxe membership allows access to everything - e.g., Canadian records, England and Wales records, etc., etc. As Marie said, when you have ancestors who immigrated from other countries, it can be very important to have access to those other records. The box below shows the current pricing (yes, it says 2010, but I just took this screen shot today, and the pricing is the same). The cost of the World Deluxe membership works out to $0.82 per day. Well worth it if you are truly interested in finding out your family history.

caflowerluver, I don't know if your question was rhetorical or serious, but here's a partial list of free or nearly free places. I don’t know what you're looking for. Some of these links will be to the specific page I was looking at but you should be able to find the home page. Google is your friend. Sign up for any newsletters these sites offer. http://www.theancestorhunt.com/ https://news.google.com/newspapers?hl=en https://www.elephind.com/?a=q&r=1&results=1&txf=txINtxCO&e=-------en-10--1--txt-txINtxCO-walworth%2c+wisconsin--------- http://shs.umsystem.edu/newspaper/mdnp/mdnptable.shtml search for the historical society or the GENweb project for individual localities http://www.usgenweb.org/states/index.shtml http://crpubliclibrary.newspaperarchive.com/ http://www.newspaperlinks.com/where-to-find-and-access-records-of-old-newspapers/ https://eservices.archives.gov/orderonline/start.swe?SWECM=S&SWECmd=Login&SRN=&SWEHo=eservices.archives.gov&SWEFullRefresh=1&TglPrtclRfrsh=1 https://www.british-genealogy.com/forums/search.php?q=william+walker&showposts=0&s=&securitytoken=guest&do=process&contenttype=vBForum_Post&forumchoice%255B%255D=418&childforums=1&exactname=1 http://www.castlegarden.org/searcher.php http://www.censusrecords.us/ http://www.censusdiggins.com/#Our Free Database Menu http://ma-vitalrecords.org/ www.findagrave.com https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-32490-16331-90?cc=2074276&wc=M9MG-LGM:n1779387919#uri=https%3A%2F%2Ffamilysearch.org%2Frecords%2Fcollection%2F2074276%2Fwaypoints http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/freedata.shtml there is so much here you will get dizzy. http://www.germanroots.com/databases.html https://books.google.com/googlebooks/about/index.html http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx https://archive.org/ http://www.censusfinder.com/iowa-census-records5.htm http://www.genealogytoday.com/guide/railroad-employees.html http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.thefamilyhistorystore.com/ http://www.mta.ca/marshland/pages/links.htm http://www.americanancestors.org/index.aspx http://www.jillsgenealogy.com/links/misc-genealogy-research-links.html http://www.germangenealogygroup.com/records-search/deaths.php http://www.theshipslist.com/pictures/wardsis.shtml http://www.sos.mo.gov/categories.asp?id=4 http://www.genealogysearch.org/canada/novascotia.html http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx?accession=1122-430&docClass=MW&sid=1euautj3.out http://archive.org/stream/populationsc17900012unit#page/n107/mode/2up http://www.germangenealogygroup.com/ http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=29aug2012 http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/KeywordGenealogy http://catalog.loc.gov/ http://www.genealogyintime.com/NewsStories/2012/Q1/top%20100%20most%20popular%20genealogy%20websites%20page3.html http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wjmartin/wm-w_21.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/w2w.htm https://archive.org/stream/mayflowerherlogj00amesuoft#page/n35/mode/2up http://mayflowerhistory.com/Passengers/WilliamLatham.php https://books.google.com/books?id=F51pAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Manasseh+COOK%22+OR+%22Manasseh++COOK%22+OR+%22COOK,+Manasseh%22&dq=%22Manasseh+COOK%22+OR+%22Manasseh++COOK%22+OR+%22COOK,+Manasseh%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dnAOUoTYGIOT2gWuwIGIDw&ved=0CFYQ6AEwCA http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html http://www.davidrumsey.com/home My eyes have glazed just making this much of a list. If there is a specific location you are looking for Google it. Wikipedia might give you a hint of what else or where else to look. If you just blinked and thought to yourself, this is too much! post an inquiry at the kitchen table and we’ll all brainstorm.