Family history can be an expensive pastime. The costs can mount up with annual subscriptions and with buying documents. However, the good news is that there are a lot of free genealogy websites out there that can help you with your research. This is a round-up of 120 of them from around the world. Also included are free genealogy courses and some tools. Hopefully you will find some of them useful.

120 Free genealogy websites. Bespoke Genealogy

Contents

Global free genealogy websites

Family Search

Of course, almost all family historians will know the marvelous and free Family Search website, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The site contains a huge amount of genealogy resources from around the world. But, apart from the core databases, don’t forget the other resources on the site such as:

Find A Grave

Find-A-Grave records the graves of people around the World. It relies on volunteer contributors to photograph and record inscriptions. It’s fully searchable and free to access.

Interment

Interment has been around for many years and contains transcriptions of gravestones and death records from cemeteries and graveyards from around the globe.

Everafter

Everafter is a free site with records of deceased people in several cemeteries in the UK, Ireland and the US. Details include plot references and some pictures of headstones.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive has thousands of out of copyright genealogy books (as well as other books and media) that can be downloaded for free.

Google

Google is often an underused resource in genealogy. Highlights include:

  • Google Books; around 30 billion books and journals can be searched using Google Books. Many can be downloaded for free as pdfs. Many of these are of interest to family historians
  • Google Newspaper Archive; Google has hundreds of old newspaper titles that have been scanned and can be accessed for free.

For more on Google see: Are You Making the Most of Google For Genealogy?

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg has over 57,000 free eBooks which can be downloaded in Kindle or epub format.

The Universal Digital Library

The Universal Digital Library has one million digitized books which can be searched or browsed on this website.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks are open content textbooks that anyone can edit. There is a genealogy section.

Just Free Books

Just Free Books is a free eBooks search engine. It searches the content of more than 700 websites that offer free eBooks.

JewishGen

JewishGen features global databases and other resources helping people with Jewish ancestry research their roots.

David Rumsey Map Collection

A really interesting privately-owned historical map collection. There are more than 65,000 maps and images from around the world which can be downloaded for free. The collection contains maps from the 16th to the 21st century.

Rail Map Online

Rail Maps Online has links to historical and current interactive railway maps of the UK and the US.

Free sites covering the UK in general

The Gazette

The London Gazette is the official organ of public record in Britain and the free online archives go back to 1665. If your British ancestors changed their names, were in the military, involved in legal proceedings, became bankrupt or owned a company, you should find something in this database.

For more on this resource, see An Amazing Free British Genealogy Resource: The Gazette.

The Ships List

The Ships List contains transcribed passenger lists of people bound for Canada, USA, Australia and South Africa. The earliest list dates from 1803, with further lists covering much of the 19th century. Other useful information on the site includes an account of emigration in 1847; the worst year of the Irish famine, as well as details of ship wrecks, fleet lists and pictures.

British History Online

British History Online contains digitized printed primary and secondary sources on the history of Britain and Ireland, focusing on the period between 1300 and 1800.

British Navy Lists

British Navy Lists (hosted on archive.org), is the digitized collection of Navy Lists from the National Library of Scotland. These lists were published regularly from 1814 and contain details of officers in the service.

Naval History

Naval History is a collection of transcriptions of British naval records dating back to 1815 with recent records that include the Falklands War.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website contains details of the graves of British and Commonwealth servicemen killed in action from the First World War onward.

War Memorials Register

The War Memorials Register (compiled by the Imperial War Museum), holds records of around 80,000 memorials in the UK, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Memorials often list the names of the individuals they commemorate.

Railways Archive

The Railways Archive contains over 5000 historical railway documents and 9000 accident reports.

Pioneering Nurses

Pioneering Nurses (from King’s College, London), contains a database of the first nurses to sign up to the Royal British Nurses’ Association professional register in 1890.

Royal College of Nursing, Historical Nursing Journals

The RCN Nursing Journals website has scanned copies of The Nursing Record and British Journal of Nursing from 1888 until 1956. These are useful for genealogy as they contain details of nursing appointments, marriages, retirements and deaths.

For more on Nursing see: How to find your Nursing Ancestors

University of Leicester Historical Directories

The University of Leicester’s Special Collections website has an extensive collection of English and Welsh historical directories; covering virtually all counties from the 1760s to the 1910s.

Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History

Grace’s Guide contains a wealth of material about the history of Britain’s industries including details of companies and individuals.

For more about this collection see: Free British Industrial History for Genealogy Research.

The Long, Long Trail – The British Army in the Great War of 1914-18

The Long, Long Trail contains information about the soldiers, regiments and battles of the British Army in the First World War

National Army Museum

The National Army Museum has information about the history of the British Army.

Anglo Boer War

Anglo Boer War includes a database containing records of over 500,000 soldiers who fought in the Boer War (1899-1902) as well as other South African conflicts between 1779 and 1906.

Chartist Ancestors

Chartist Ancestors has information on this 19th century protest movement as well as a database containing 14,000 associated names.

Mills Archive

The Mills Archive, run by the Mills Archive Trust, has information on mills (wind and water) and the people associated with them. If your ancestor was involved in milling, then you should definitely visit this website.

Historic Hospital Admission Records Project

The HHARP site contains a database of over 140,000 admission records of four children’s hospitals in London and Glasgow covering a period from 1852 to 1921. It requires registration to see complete records but this is free.

Legacies of British Slave-ownership

Legacies of British Slave-ownership is a project, led by University College London, focusing on how colonial slavery shaped modern Britain. The database has information on colonial slave ownership from 1763 to 1833.

Crew List Index Project

The Crew List Index Project has several databases containing transcriptions from various sources of ships crew lists and registered shipping. Records cover the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s.

The Blacksmiths Index

The Blacksmiths Index contains information on Blacksmiths compiled from census returns as well as from information supplied by other researchers.

Electoral Registers

Electoral Registers is a site containing information on British electoral registers, rolls and poll books from 1700 up to the present day. The site contains links to free online poll books. These books contained details of eligible voters and were in use until 1872.

FreeCEN

FreeCEN is a volunteer project transcribing the 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1891 censuses so that they can be made available for free online

General Register Office (GRO)

The GRO is where you go to buy English and Welsh civil birth, marriage and death records (from 1837). The site is included here as you can access, for free, the indexes of births (1837-1917) and deaths (1837-1957).

For more on the GRO and these indexes see How to find English and Welsh Vital Records

FreeBMD

FreeBMD is a sister site to FreeCEN and is transcribing all indexes of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales from 1837 (the start of civil registration) to 1984.

FreeReg

FreeReg is a sister site to FreeBMD and FreeCEN. It is transcribing all church and non conformist records in England and Wales. You will need to check individual parishes to see how much has been transcribed to date.

The Workhouse

The Workhouse has information about this institution including locations, records and resources.

National Library of Scotland Maps

NLS Maps is a free collection of digitized historical maps of the whole of Great Britain, including large scale Ordnance Survey maps.

For more on this resource, see How to find free historical UK maps online.

Britain from Above

Britain from Above contains historic aerial photographs that can be cross referenced to recent maps.

British Surnames

British Surnames is a searchable database of British surnames. It details the origins of names and their distribution.

Marriage Locator

Marriage Locator is a tool to determine the parish church your ancestors got married in from the GRO index.

Free genealogy sites for England

Old Bailey Online

This site contains free access to the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. These are contemporary printed accounts of trials that took place at the Old Bailey; the Central Criminal Court in London.

London Lives

London Lives is a free resource focusing on the poor and working classes in the Capital. These primary sources from 18th century London are fully searchable and include criminal court and coroner records.

British Library Maps

The British Library Map site has some great maps of London that can be viewed online.

Charles Booth’s London

The Charles Booth’s London website (from the London School of Economics) contains the results of Booth’s survey called “London Life and Labour” (1886 to 1903). He is most famous for the “poverty maps” which are on this site along with his detailed notebooks.

Locating London’s Past

Locating London’s Past uses John Rocque’s 1746 map of London (as well as other maps and satellite images). It then allows you to map a wide range of digital resources.

Collage: the London Picture archive

Collage contains over 250,000 photographs, prints and drawings as well as more than 1000 maps relating to Greater London and the surrounding counties. They come from the collections of the
London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Art Gallery.

London Screen Archives

The London Screen Archives preserves the capitals history on film. You can view many short films on this site.

Bomb Sight

Bomb Sight has mapped Second World War bomb sites in London using data from the bomb census of 1940-41. If you have ancestors living in London during the war, you can see if their area was bombed.

Wellcome Library

The Wellcome Library is an important center for the study of medical history. There are some online collections which are of interest to genealogists including:

  • London’s Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972; These reports give a snapshot of the state of health in a London district as they report on birth and death rates, infant mortality, occurrences of infectious and other diseases, and a general statement on the health of the local population.
  • Royal Army Medical Corps; this collection contains over 130,000 pages of correspondence, reports, personal field diaries, memoirs, photographs and memorabilia belonging to the Army Medical Services Museum Trust.

Ideal Homes: A history of South-East London Suburbs

Ideal Homes is a fascinating look at the history of suburban life in south-east London. It contains maps, images and features relating to six London boroughs.

London Transport Museum

The London Transport Museum’s Online Collections site contains a large amount of material to view such as photographs, films, artwork, sound recordings etc.

Protestation Returns

The Protestation Returns was a list of the names of adult men in England who were obliged to swear an oath of allegiance to the Protestant religion in 1642. This was by order of the House of Commons. About a third of the returns survive and these are on this site.

Clergy of the Church of England Database

CCED is a free online database containing details of the clergy in the Church of England between 1540 and 1835.

Lane’s Masonic Records

Lane’s Masonic Records is a listing of lodges in England between 1717 and 1894.

Historic England Archive

The Historic England Archive has over 1 million photographs, plans and drawings of England’s historic sites and buildings. You’ll find domestic and industrial buildings from the earliest days of photography to the present day.

England’s Places

England’s Places is another Historic England site. The collection consists of scanned architectural photographs mounted on cards (often annotated) from the 1850s up to the early 1990s. Pictures depict historic buildings, street scenes etc., from all over England.

Free genealogy sites in Wales

The National Library of Wales

The NLW, based in Aberystwyth is the legal deposit library of Wales. They have some very useful free online collections which should be of interest to anyone with Welsh roots:

  • Tithe Maps; if you had rural ancestors in Wales in the early 19thcentury, you may find their property on a tithe map and their details on the accompanying apportionment documents.
  • Welsh Newspapers Online; this is another great free resource from NLW; access 15 million articles from a range of Welsh newspapers dating from the 1800s to the 1910s.
  • Welsh Journals; this site gives free access to a wide range of Welsh journals dating from 1735 to 2007. The titles range from academic to literary and popular magazines in English and Welsh.
  • The Crime and Punishment database has information about crimes, criminals and punishments from the gaol files of the Court of Great Sessions in Wales from 1730 until 1830.

Dictionary of Welsh Biography

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography contains over 5000 biographies of people who contributed to Welsh life and culture.

Welsh Mariners

Welsh Mariners is a database containing names of nearly 24,000 Welsh merchant seamen who held certificates of competency or service from 1845 onward as well as from some other sources like census returns. Also here is a smaller database of over 3300 Welshmen who served in the Royal Navy during the time of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Cymru 1914

Cymru 1914 is a “mass digitization of primary sources relating to the First World War from the Libraries, Special Collections and Archives of Wales.”

Welsh Coal Mines

Welsh Coal Mines documents more than 200 mines, list disasters and includes stories and poems about them.

Peoples Collection Wales

The Peoples Collection Wales contains stories, photographs and documents donated by the people of Wales.

Free genealogy sites in Scotland

The Scottish Emigration Database

The Scottish Emigration Database contains records of over 21,000 passengers who embarked at Scottish ports headed for non-European destinations between 1890 and 1960.

The Highland Clearances

The Clearances website has names of Scottish emigrants who headed to destinations around the world, especially North America. It tells the stories of these people and has a database containing the names of many individuals.

Scotland’s Places

Scotland’s Places has many free to access early Scottish tax records, including Carriage tax rolls (1785-1798), Cart tax rolls (1785-1798), Clock and watch tax rolls (1797-1798), Dog tax rolls (1797-1798) and many more.

For more on this great resource see: Free Scottish Genealogy on ScotlandsPlaces

The Glasgow Story

The Glasgow Story has lots of historical information about Scotland’s largest city. Of most interest to genealogists are the Valuation Rolls for Glasgow between 1913 and 1914. These records can only be searched by street or area, not by name.

National Library of Scotland Internet Archive Page

The National Library of Scotland page on the Internet Archive is a collection of books, manuscripts, maps, directories, military lists, family histories etc.

National Library of Scotland; Scottish Post Office Directories

The National Library of Scotland Directories collection contains over 700 digitized post office directories from 1773 to 1911.

The Word on the Street

The Word on the Street is an online collection of almost 1800 Scottish broadsides (an early tabloid) from the National Library of Scotland. The collection spans 1650 to 1910.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland

The Statistical Accounts of Scotland were surveys undertaken by parish ministers from the Church of Scotland between 1791 and 1799 and 1834-1845. They provide a wealth of information about local communities in Scotland, covering population, industry, transport, geography and culture.

Scottish Mining

Scottish Mining has information on the history of coal, iron ore and shale mining in Scotland with a database of over 22,000 names. It has data on housing, health and strikes as well as the employment of children in the industry.

Virtual Mitchell

Virtual Mitchell is the online digitized images collection of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. These historic photographs feature Glasgow’s buildings and streets as well as ordinary Glaswegians going about their daily lives.

Free genealogy sites in Ireland

The National Archives of Ireland

The NAI site has all the surviving Irish census returns up to 1911. Other records include Soldiers Wills (1914-1918), Catholic Qualification Rolls (1700 – 1845) and Will Registers (1858-1900).

For more on the surviving Irish census records see: How to find Irish Censuses

IrishGenealogy.ie

IrishGenealogy.ie is run by the Irish Ministry of Culture. You can download free images of civil birth marriage and death records. There are also some Church records on this site.

For more on civil registration in Ireland see: How to Find Free Irish Vital Records

National Library of Ireland Roman Catholic Registers

The NLI site contains scanned microfilm images of surviving Roman Catholic baptism and marriage registers up to 1880. The images are browse-only. However, you can access Findmypast’s index of these images for free. You will have to set up an account though.

PRONI

PRONI is the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and is the official archive for the province. You can find some online records here including freeholder records, street directories and Will calendars.

Military Archives (Ireland)

Military Archives is an Irish Government site. Resources here include pension records, witness statements from the war of independence, the 1922 Army census and accounts of the 1916 uprising.

Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People and Migration

DIPPAM is a virtual archive of documents and sources relating to the migration experience of the Irish people from the 18th century onward.

From-Ireland

From-Ireland has over 70,000 Irish gravestone records with coverage of all 32 counties. There are also other records including some directories.

Fáilte Romhat

Fáilte Romhat; useful Irish genealogical information can be found here including cemetery transcriptions, directories and maps.

SWilson.info

The SWilson site has a number of scans and extracts of directories in Ireland as well as links to other (free and subscription) sites with Irish directories.

Eddie’s Extracts

Eddie’s Extracts contains birth, marriage and death extracts transcribed from historical Irish newspapers.

Ask About Ireland

Ask About Ireland has transcriptions of the Griffith’s Valuation, a survey of property in Ireland published between 1847 and 1864.

For more see: 125 Free Irish Genealogy Online Resources

Free genealogy sites in Canada

Libraries and Archives Canada

Libraries and Archives Canada is the nation’s repository. The website has several collections of interest to family historians with Canadian connections including immigration, census, military and land records.

British Home Children

British Home Children is a database of over 80,000 children who were sent to Canada from Britain by organizations like the Salvation Army and Dr. Barnardo’s Children’s Homes between 1869 and 1948.

Canadiana

Canadiana is a collection of databases containing more than 40 million pages of books, newspapers, periodicals, images and other culturally significant items. Collections date from the years of settlement to the beginning of the 20th century.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography contains biographical information of thousands of influential people from Canada’s past.

Ancestor Hunt

The Ancestor Hunt Blog has links to several free online historical newspaper archives in Canada and the US.

Canadian Virtual War Memorial

The Canadian Virtual War Memorial is a registry of more than 118,000 Canadians who gave their lives in the service of their country.

Canadian Headstones

Canadian Headstones is a website run by the Ontario Genealogical Society and contains a database of nearly 2 million gravestone photographic records across Canada.

Free genealogy sites in the USA

Ellis Island

The Ellis Island site is the database of immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island, New York and contains 65 million passenger records.

Measuring America

Measuring America is a detailed look at the US Decennial Census from 1790 to 2000.

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has some useful resources for genealogy, including:

Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America is a portal that gives access to the digital collections America’s libraries, archives, and museums.

Free sites in Australia and New Zealand

Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial is a Government website containing information relating to the conflicts involving the country.

Archives New Zealand

The New Zealand Archives has First World War soldier service records available to access on their website

Trove

Trove, from the National Library of Australia gives access to over 460 million books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music and archive collections.

Convict Transportation Registers Database

The Convict Database, from the State Library of Queensland, contains details of 123,000 convicts. It was compiled from British Home Office records.

Free sites in Europe

Europeana

Europeana is an online portal offering quick and easy access to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European research libraries. Free access to more than 58 million digitized items and also to many library catalogs.

Free genealogy courses and tutorials

Improve your genealogy skills with a free course or tutorial.

Free genealogy tools

Genscriber

Genscriber is a free transcription editor for your PC or Mac which can make transcribing old genealogy documents like census returns and wills easier to manage. It saves you having to use two screens or printing out a document.

Online OCR

Online OCR is free optical character recognition software to help you transcribe old documents

For more on transcribing tools see: Free Tools to Help with Transcribing Documents

Gramps

Gramps is free, open source, family tree software to download onto your computer to organize your research.

Measuring Worth

Measuring Worth is a useful tool for measuring worth of currencies from 1270 to present. This comes in handy, especially when you are looking at Wills.

Family Tree Analyzer

Family Tree Analyzer allows you to check for errors and omissions in your family tree.

WeRelate.

WeRelate is a variant names database. Enter a given name or surname and find all the variants.

Happy researching!

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