Fun, Free Genealogy Searches

Ok, lest everyone think I spend all my time hanging around graveyards, I'll show you some of the research I do to find out about people, when they were living their lives, and what kind of mark they've left behind. [That's what all this about anyway, isn't it?]

And while I'm at it I'll dispel the myth that the only way a person can do online genealogy is to pay for subscription search sites. Not true! These sites are defiantly more direct and make it easier to collect paperwork on the person, but they're not the only route to finding out about our ancestors.

Since I started searching for information about my family I have been a part of
www.usgenweb.com
www.rootsweb.com
and
www.genforum.com

I have contributed transcribed wills and court documents for the Washington County, Tenn GenWeb site. I've contributed photos and transcribed letters to the Nebraska GenWeb county sites. And I've gleaned much information about my own family from others contributions to the various US GenWeb sites.

A good example is my six-times great Grandparents, Fredrick Avery and Susan T. Knowles Brown [seen above]. They were the children of Ohio Reserve Settlers and part of the group that grew up and made their way west to settle in Kellerton, Iowa in 1868.
How did I learn that? I wrote to the Mt Ayr Public Library about Kellerton, Athens and Ringgold County. They sent me back all kinds of good stuff including the section of Arthur Lesan's 1931 book "History of Athens Township." Which just happened to list Kellerton's pioneers and have the above picture of my Brown ancestors! That very same information can now be found under Ringgold County on the Iowa GenWeb site.
http://iagenweb.org/ringgold/history/hist-kellertonroots.html
Someone volunteered the information and the Ringgold site manager [who is also a volunteer] put it up for everyone to see.

This is a good way to find out about the places our family lived and what part they played in the area's history.

And sometime a searcher my find that the county they are searching has nothing about their family members. Well, if they have some info they have saved, they might think about making that information available to the county volunteer maintaining the pages where their ancestors lived. Then those coming along behind can be delighted by the discovery of that contribution!