www.familytreemagazine.com
Family Tree Magazine's own site is the single best starting point on the Web for genealogy how-to information and searches. You'll find our essential toolkit of downloadable genealogy resources; free e-mail service (yourname@familytreemail.com); links to all the sites listed here; and our powerful SuperSearch, which lets you find your living relatives, search the most useful how-to sites and search—with a single click!—most of the database sites listed here, more than a billion entries in all.

www.familytreemaker.com/mainmenu.html
The genealogy how-to guide here is among the best, even if you're not using Family Tree Maker software. Learn about collecting information, organizing what you've got and starting to look for the missing pieces. There's also a dictionary of genealogy terms and a helpful research directory. Genealogy.com, which owns Family Tree Maker, presents similar information in a different format at www.genealogy.com/familyexplorer/.

www.firstct.com/fv/tmapmenu.html
The list of five steps to starting genealogical research is very helpful, and the deciphering old handwriting section should speed you on your way through aged wills, letters and other documents.

The Big Picture

www.familysearch.org
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shares access to its Ancestral File (35 million-plus names), the International Genealogical Index for nearly 20 regions (more than 600 million names) and Web site links, along with a center for collaborating with others working your names and more than 150 church publications.

www.rootsweb.com
Claims to be the Internet's oldest and largest genealogy community. The site is home to the RootsWeb surname list of more than 700,000 entries and offers two e-newsletters and online genealogical courses. Links extend to interests beyond genealogy, such as folklore, crafts and dancing. RootsWeb will host your Web site if you contribute $50 per year or more.

www.usgenweb.com
The goal of this volunteer project is to create Web sites for genealogical research in every US state and county. The information's free, but the quality and quantity varies widely from site to site. Still, once you know what you're looking for, it's worth a shot. Many of the sites have local histories, original county boundaries, query boards and more.

www.ancestry.com
Ancestry.com offers access to more than 1,800 databases and 500 million names to subscribers ($59.95 per year or $19.95 per quarter) and significantly less access for free. These are the folks who publish Ancestry and Genealogical Computing magazines. The for-pay database includes the Periodical Source Index, or PERSI, the most widely used index of genealogical and historical articles.

www.heritagequest.com
In addition to Heritage Quest magazine, members of the Heritage Quest Research Club get discounted books, software, magazines, CD-ROMs and more for $29.95 a year. Heritage Quest's products include what it says is the US' largest private collection of family-history data on microfilm, more than 250,000 titles.

www.genealogylibrary.com
It's Genealogy.com again, this time offering access to 2,147 databases, including more than 200,000 census images, if you're willing to pay $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year.

genforum.genealogy.com
Includes forums for 16,000 surnames, with more than 2.5 million messages archived. You can set up your own list of surname forums to follow (the display isn't great). You can post to the forum, or get the e-mail address of the person whose post interests you. Part of the Genealogy.com site.

www.gendex.com/gendex
The GENDEX server indexes nearly 4,000 online databases (including 390,000 surnames and nearly 16 million people) and lets you locate and view the data of interest. While the information is free, faster access and the ability to filter surname requests requires a rather novel payment plan: You send the owner at least $10, and for each $10, you get 1,000 information credits. When you run out of credits, your account reverts from registered to unregistered mode until you send more money.

www.gentree.com/gentree.html
Lots of databases here, but you must know the author of the database to make the most efficient use of the site.

www.surnamesearch.com
Just what it sounds like: loads of links to surname databases and more. The bad news is that the home page takes forever to load.

www.familyhistory.com
This Ancestry.com spinoff hosts more than 65,000 message boards for surnames and other genealogy-related topics, plus offers a free newsletter and family site hosting.

www.bearhaven.com/family/growth.html
With all these databases, where do you start? This site seeks to help you sort just how big each is, how much use costs and how fast the number of names present is growing.

vitalrec.com
Where to obtain vital records (such as birth, death and marriage certificates and divorce decrees) from each US state, territory and county. A great source of information, including the charge for records, the years they are available and the address to write. There also are links to non-US vital records sites.

eclectic.ss.uci.edu/linkages/linkages.html
The University of California-Irvine is working to assemble a database of kinship records, genealogies and ethnographic data. Among the 150-plus cases currently available is a partial genealogy of US presidents.

Portals and Link Indexes

www.cyndislist.com
They don't come better than Cyndi Howells' site. More than 50,000 categorized genealogy sites.

www.genealogy.com/links/
This site started out as Helm's Genealogy Toolbox in 1995 and is part of a partnership with Genealogy.com. As of fall 1999, there were nearly 72,000 links. It's a good site, but it feels more corporate than Cyndi's List, and many of the links aren't specific to genealogy (for example, PBS stations in each state).

www-personal.umich.edu/~cgaunt/gen_int1.html
John Fuller and Chris Gaunt provide the requisite volume of Web links, but go beyond many of the other portal sites with locals of Gopher, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Usenet newsgroup and Telnet connections.

www.census-online.com
One-stop shopping for places to find a wide variety of census data online.

www.genealogylinks.net
The 4,300 links here are primarily for ships' passenger lists, but there also are some nice links to church and cemetery records for the US, Canada, UK and elsewhere.

www.genealogypages.com
A bit more manageable than some of the larger portals, broken into 14 areas from adoption to software.

www.genhomepage.com
This portal is updated relatively regularly and contains some good links to general research and to individual histories.

Special Interest

www.catholic.org/uschs
The US Catholic Historical Society doesn't share any diocesan records, but there's good information for those looking to learn about the history of Catholicism, which in turn could be helpful in checking local church archives.

www.terraworld.net/mlwinton
A significant number of Americans who had ancestors in the New World by 1800 will find Quakers in their past. The National Society of Descendants of Early Quakers promotes preservation and appreciation of early Society of Friends family records. There are links to good database searches for Quaker meetings and other information.

www.aal.org/LutheransOnline/Gene_Ex
The Lutheran Roots Genealogy Exchange provides a place for those with Lutheran ancestors to register their families and share general genealogy research tips.

shamash.org/trb/judaism.html
The Judaism and Jewish Resources site provides links to Jewish genealogy and history as well as information about today's political and religious issues facing the nation of Israel and Jews elsewhere.

istg.rootsweb.com
These folks are dedicated. If you've ever looked through the books of immigrant passenger ships, your eyes probably gave out before you exhausted the volumes and the spellings of your ancestors' names. This volunteer group is patiently inputting ships' passenger lists into a form that can be read online.

www.ccharity.com
Christine Charity's site is an especially helpful one for researching African-American ancestors. She's got good links and information about the post-Civil War Freedmen's Bureau records, African genealogy and related articles and databases.

www.prairiebluff.com/aacemetery
Several African-American researchers and organizations have teamed up to form the Millennium Project Coalition, which is working to expand this online database of African-American resources.

www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata
Finding data on African-Americans prior to the 1870 census ("The Wall," as researchers call it) can be difficult, but this site proves it's not impossible. Information within tax records, diaries, plantation records and data on runaway slaves that may be helpful is indexed by last name, state and year.

hometown.aol.com/bbbenge/front.html
Native American genealogy is made somewhat easier by this site, which already features histories of the Cherokee, Lakota and Choctaw tribes. Besides tribal information and personal genealogies, there's information about Native Americans in more recent times.

www.bawue.de/%7Ehanacek/info/edatbase.htm
One of the most common US ancestries is German, and this site offers an exhaustive list of links, from databases to maps of Germany through the ages to antiquarian booksellers.

www.rootsweb.com/~irlwgw/
The 1840s potato famine fueled the migration of thousands of Irish to the US. The Ireland GenWeb Project shares the usual surname and map links along with links to tips specific to Irish research.

members.xoom.com/agadadm/
Don't let this site about Poland's Central Archives of Historical Records fool you: While the Polish titles appear first, there are English translations of nearly everything, including an explanation of what civil and church records are available in Poland and how to go about getting them. Forms help you prepare your requests.

nordicnotes.com
From Finland to Iceland (and let's not forget Sweden, Denmark and Norway), this attractive site provides plenty of history about the Nordic region as well as emigration patterns, places to visit in the US and surname searches.

www.islandnet.com/~jveinot/cghl/cghl.html
Complete links for Canada, including listings for each province as well as sites with cemetery and military information.

www.rootsweb.com/~ote
Lorine McGinnis Schulze's Olive Tree Genealogy site is particularly strong on information and links for the Dutch, both in the Netherlands and the US, but it's also worth checking for information on Mennonites, Germany's Palatines, ship lists and more.

www.genuki.org.uk/ab
The site's focus is UK and Irish genealogy, with plenty of tips and links on those topics. There's also good information on getting started on regional research from abroad and links to databases for Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

www.mtu-net.ru/rrr
If you've got Russian roots to research, this is the place to start. There's a good rundown of records available in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and helpful suggestions on how to start researching information from this part of the world.

www.worldgenweb.org
The goal of the WorldGenWeb Project is to have every country represented by a Web site hosted by researchers based in that country or familiar with its resources. To date, there are 15 geographic regions that are then divided into individual countries. The not-for-profit group shares all data collected free of charge.

www.cimorelli.com/pie/piehome.htm
A good place to start if your roots go back to Italy. The FAQ for searching for Italian roots is great, plus there's plenty of information on Italian heroes, the country's history and more. PIE stands for POINTers In E-mail, named for the owner's mailing list for those interested in Italian genealogy; POINT stands for Pursuing Our Italian Names Together.

Today's Families

www.yourfamily.com
This site has a genealogy bulletin board almost as an afterthought. The focus is much more on the here and now of family life (including a long-lost-family bulletin board), and does a nice job in that regard. Home page hosting is available.

www.myfamily.com
Consider this an online version of a family reunion. This Ancestry.com site will host your family's page for free, and you can give access to anyone you want. You can put up photos, set up private message boards, keep track of birthdays and all sorts of other things to stay in touch.

family-reunion.com
Now that you've found all those third and fourth cousins, don't you want to get together with them? This site shares great tips on how to round up all your long-lost relatives for a reunion, and what to do once you get together.

www.hattiesclothesline.com
A great place to find supplies for your family reunion or genealogy group: T-shirts, coffee mugs and sweatshirts (e.g., "Genealogists don't die, they just lose their census" and "So many ancestors, so little time").

www.storypreservation.com
The Center for Life Stories Preservation shares free tips on how to get started keeping family and other stories and offers a sampling of others' tales.

www.almanet.com
Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association's site offers a national registry for adoptees and birth parents. Registrants place in a databank the sex, date of birth and place of birth for the child, which is the extent of common information known by the adoptee and natural parents.

www.city-gallery.com
Steve Knoblock's site is chock-full of helpful hints for the visual side of your family history. There are tips for building a family album online, including advice on using a scanner, identifying old photos and restoring photos.

www.loc.gov
The Library of Congress site has a wonderful American Memory page, with links to more than 60 collections, searchable by keyword or time period in a variety of media.

www.thehistorynet.com
This site from Cowles History Group provides a nice assortment of articles about famous people and events in history.

moa.cit.cornell.edu/MOA/moa-mission.html
Cornell University and the University of Michigan established the Making of America Project to provide online access to important 19th century US journals and books.

www.nara.gov/genealogy
The National Archives and Records Administration doesn't have a lot of actual records online, but does provide great explanations of what you'll find at regional offices, how to get data, what you're likely to find (including the burned 1890 census), and how to order microfilm of military records. Don't miss the handy page that helps you figure the Soundex number for surnames you're searching

www.nara.gov/genealogy/soundex/soundex.html
Soundex assigns numbers to various vowels and vowel combinations, which means the resulting code should cover all likely surname spelling variations (Chatterton, Chadderton, Chatterdon and Chadderton all have the same code, for example) in more recent US Census indexes.

www.ellisisland.org
More than 40 percent of Americans can trace their roots to an ancestor who came through Ellis Island. All told, 12 million immigrants entered the US here between 1892 and 1954, the largest migration in modern history. No records to search here, but if you have an ancestor among the 12 million, it's worth a look.

www.ushistory.org/march
The non-profit Independence Hall Association offers a feel for life during the time of the American Revolution. The idea is to give students, teachers, libraries and other interested people an easy way to learn about the era's people, ideas, places and events.

www.history-magazine.com
History Magazine, from the publishers of Family Chronicle, made its debut in late 1999. The magazine's goal is to help researchers link social history with the lives of their ancestors.

www.blm.gov
The US Bureau of Land Management's site includes access to more than 2 million federal land titles issued in the eastern US between 1820 and 1908. There's also general current and historical information about land ownership and use.

www.angelisland.org/immigr02.html
This National Historic Landmark near San Francisco is known as the "Ellis Island of the West." When Angel Island opened in 1910, it was expected to handle European immigrants headed for California via the Panama Canal. Instead, the facility handled about 250,000 immigrants from Asia, 70 percent of them Chinese. While records aren't searchable here, you'll get a good feeling for what those detained at Angel Island had to go through to enter the US.

www.ushistory.org/
The Independence Hall Association's site is heavy on the Philadelphia area and its importance during the American Revolution, with links to learn more about that period of history.

pda.republic.net/othsa/
Between 1853 and 1930, as many as 200,000 American children rode the Orphan Train. Often, they were immigrants recently arrived in New York whose parents died or were neglectful. The children were shipped to the West where many were in essence miniature indentured servants. Learn their stories from the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, and see if your ancestors were among the riders.

www.nps.gov/cacl/
If your ancestors arrived in the US before Ellis Island opened in 1892, there's a good chance they were among the 8 million-plus immigrants who entered at Castle Garden just off Manhattan Island (today, it's Castle Clinton National Monument). The location began life as a military fort in 1811, then was an entertainment center before becoming an immigrant landing depot in 1855. It closed in 1890, reopened as the New York City Aquarium six years later and was closed in 1941. The Web site doesn't provide databases for immigrants, but there's a good deal of information about the monument's history.