Free Genealogy Resources

This week I had great success with two free resources, public libraries and facebook. Once you identify where a family member died, you can contact that local public library. Some of them have genealogy departments or reference librarians that will pull an old obituary for you free of charge. It worked for me! You have to love your tax paying dollars and hard working local librarians working so hard for you, it is heartwarming, isn't it? And it is as easy to do as sending an email to that particular library. I have had a librarian find a source for me that identified my great great grandfather's murderer after I spent years looking through records unsuccessfully. Librarians are wonderful resource people

Secondly, facebook. This social networking media is not as easy to use at was once for genealogy. Now that they don''t list where a person is from it is harder to determine if some person is the said person you are looking to contact. Scrolling through their list of friends for other family surnames and maiden names can help you to determine if this is the contact for whom you are looking. When "friend requesting" that person be sure to identify yourself and your purpose for contacting them if they will not recognize your own surname.