by Jennifer Geitenbeek

Created on: November 07, 2010

With the great information superhighway, also known as the Internet, it has never been easier to trace your ancestry. Gone are the days of sitting down behind a weird projection screen looking through microfiche after microfiche hoping that the feeling of seasickness will go away and wondering how you are going to decipher the handwriting on sometimes very old documents.

It is not difficult to start searching for your ancestors, all you need to begin are some names and dates of birth or death. Of course, the more information you have to start with, the easier it will be to get your tree going. A great place to start is usually with your grandparents. Most people know or knew their grandparents and will be able to get further information either off them or by questioning their parents, aunts and uncles. Often, it only takes two names to go from a tiny little seed to a tree that looks like it got into a steroid box.

One of the first things you should try is to type the name of one of your grandparents into a Google search window. You'd be amazed how many results you will find, often including pages from other people that are also tracing their family tree and have overlapped with yours.

There are dozens of sites out there dedicated to helping you trace your family tree and most of them are free. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, is www.ancestry.com  . most sections of this site are free, and they have a great database set-up so that you can easily keep track of your own information. Once you begin, and start adding people to your own tree, Ancestry will do searches and let you know if there is more information out there on that particular person.

As you enter each person into your tree, when Ancestry resets the page (which it does after each and every new entry) it will do a search for 'Hints'. These are possible matches found to the person you have just entered. Unfortunately, viewing these hints is not free, but you can buy credits to view them. You will also find information on your family members using the 'Member Connect' section, which is free, although often not quite as accurate.

If you are looking for sites that are one hundred percent free to browse and pull information off, all you need to do is to type Family Tree in a Google search window. There will be literally dozens of results. Another site that ha very good information are: www.familysearch.org .

Tracing your ancestry is a great adventure. You will find out things you never knew, and possibly did not want to know (people have found law breakers back in their ancestors, which can come as quite a shock!), relatives you never knew you had, and if you are lucky, photo's and information of where you really began, possibly three or four hundred years ago, at least.

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