Family People Search

Find a ton of family genealogy online using free international search resources and tools.

Free Family Tree Search History

Searching for family members, alive and, well, not?

Information about the family tree can often be found using the completely free search-finder services offered by search engines at no charge. If family info resides somewhere on a website and if the owner of the site hasn't blocked search-engine robots from indexing (accessing and recording) the data, it's likely that the people you seek can be found as easily and quickly as entering their (full) names in the search fields of search platforms like Yahoo, MSN (Bing) and Google.

In case you haven't thought about it, use one of those 'engines' to search your own name. If too many or no results come up, try using your middle initial or name with your first and last name. Still too broad, or nothing? Add additional search terms like your age, school attend, past address. Search with variations of your name in quotes. If you're still coming up dry, enter the name(s) of people you know (so as to verify correctness in search results).

Records for Genealogists and Family Historians

The worldwide web is rich with family-history details. The decade-long rush by archivists to commit their records to the searchable Internet is stronger than ever. Locating one thread of a family-history tree can lead to a whole work created by someone's family historian or genealogist. Quite often when a creator of a work shares it via email or on a website, it's 'out there' in the public purview susceptible to search-engine discovery. Such publications might be found by looking for a specific family name like "Ulysses S. Grant' in quotation marks.

The usual gaggle of 'family-search websites' will appear when looking into sites and services that might provide knowledge. They're often conspicuous in their use of the keywords in their domain names (family ancestry dot come, genealogy dot com, eg) but beyond the attempts to garner payment for information, several organizations have publicized their archives for free access, like churchofjesuschrist dot org, govt dot nz (New Zealand) and so forth.

It may go without saying that sites appearing at the top of the search results for 'family search' and destinations like Amazon dot com and ebay have something to sell. Sites ending in .gov are of course government sites and .org (for organization) are 'supposed to be' non-commercial websites (with nothing to sell) but there are exceptions like AARP dot org who of course is intent upon garnering income from annual membership revenues.

Search Family Court Records and Cases

Family court records can be stored at the local, state or federal level, depending upon where a case was adjudicated. Here again, if court records are public records and if those records have been committed to a computer not blocked from to the Internet. DNA information of course will not be available.

Family court records can include divorces and settlements, custody decisions, arrests, convictions and parole status, civil restitutions and any other matter brought before the judiciary system.

Free Family Crest Search

Search for a family crest by surname by using the search services at a popular search service. Enter the family name followed by 'family crest' and peruse the results. If there are too many results, try appending a name of a country to the search phrase, or 'coat of arms'.

In Google for example, sites appearing first in the search results should be flagged with 'Ad'. Any data offered is often limited in scope and does not return useful results.

A unique way of finding an existing family crest is to use an image search. Some search engines now make it possible to upload a picture of a coat of arms or 'point' to an online heraldic symbol and view several possible matches. Why do this if an image of the crest is already in hand? This method is also used to determine if a family's crest is in use, either from previous findable works or without permission as a copyright violation.

Spaniards were big on family crests. Tracing back through Spanish history will discover several crests of families from Spain.

Locate Family Ancestry Tree Members

How to find members of family-tree ancestry and research ancestors' genealogical history is much easier today online than it was pre Internet, especially with the advent of searching by DNA.

Participants can provide a saliva sample to Ancestry DNA which is analyzed for seven hundred DNA 'markers' and added to a database which allegedly currently has sixteen million enrollees.

The objective is to trace male and female family members using autosomal (any gender) results. It appears that searches are available for $99 and involves Amazon.

Free resource for tracing relatives and locating public records are growing as well so DNA search may not be the first option with only .2% of the world's population participating.

Find Family History Without Paying

The best free searches for family history are the large search engines and websites that are devoted to recording genealogy and making that data available for public search without paying.

Be aware that when searching for 'free family History search' online, the results that appear at the very top of search results have been placed there as advertisements by site owners who are attempting to sell information. This placements should be flagged with an icon denoting 'paid advertisement'.

By now most surfers are well aware that people who own sites that sell family genealogy manipulate representations of the offerings in search results by targeting the word 'free' and might even provide some limited data 'for free'. The webpage where the 'free information' displayed is often dotted if not crowded with click bait to advertisements and/or links to paid services.

Family Search Death Records

Certificates of death are to be field with local health departments within seventy-two hours. Of course they won't always be available and of those that have been field, many won't be accessible searching online but for those that are, lookup the record of a deceased ancestor by searching the vital-statistics office at the state or county level.

Most records in developed countries will be in electronic form and for those that are, one or more of the major search engines will likely have found and recorded them, making them available for search, which is an easier way to search all areas as opposed to having to know in which municipality the certificate may have been field.

In poorer and uncivilized countries there may be no death records - only burial plots with unmarked graves.

Family Search Historical Records

There's a ton of historical research recorded by the larger search engines. Search for family ancestry in genealogy records by accessing the engines' libraries of available resources which can includes collections of webpages, documents and images of past family members.

Open a favorite browser (Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc.).
Go to a large search engine like bing.com.
In the search space enter the family's or person's last name.
After the name place other search parameters to help focus the search results onto pertinent content.
When searching for a specific family member try as much of the name as is available and append years of birth and/or death if available.
When looking for genealogical works that may already exist, use the family name and words like 'ancestry', 'archives' and 'records', also 'family tree'.
Other words that might find relevant results are names of towns or countries of origin, relatives and 'obituary'.

Search for Family Veterans

If the family member served in the armed forces there a few databases specializing in records of ex-military personnel (veterans):

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall includes fifty-seven thousand nine hundred thirty-nine soldiers who were either killed in action, prisoners of ware or reported missing. The website vvmf.com.commf.org has a simple search function for searching for a vet by name. Searching 'William Wallace' for example provides several possible matches with a link to the serviceman's webpage and a brief tribute like "Warrant Officer William Thomas Wallace Jr., Served with A Troop, 3rd Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Aviation Brigade, United States Army Vietnam."

Veterans of World War II are listed on National Archives pages at archives.gov. To view names it is necessary to drill down through a directory. Many servicemen and veterans are from Puerto Rico and other Caribbean countries.

The pages are in picture form (.gif) making the name unsearchable:

There is a search function on site but searching for a name on one of the image pages isn't found.

Casualties of most countries in World War I are searchable at theworldremembers dot org by entering first and last name, country and year of death. Searching for 'Elmer Smith 1920' reveals that data is provided by the 'NWWIM&M' which appears to be a work in progress. A 'video' is offered which appears to be a (slow) slide show of names.

The National Archives and Records Administration at USA dot gov provides Genealogy Research in Military Records, a compilation of information acquired from 'muster rolls' (official lists of officers and men in a military unit or ship's company), pay vouchers, returns and other records. Data includes rank, unit, dates in and out of service, basic biographical, medical and military information.