Genealogy Information Portals

Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates

http://genealogy.az.gov
This Arizona Dept. of Health Services' site has searchable records as well as actual images of Arizona birth and death certificates which have become public records after 75 years in the case of a birth certificate and 50 years in the case of a death. For information about more recent Arizona birth and death certificates, please contact the Arizona Office of Vital Records.

Burial Listings - Military

http://www.abmc.gov/search-abmc-burials-and-memorializations
This American Battle Monuments Commission site has databases listing those interred at the American World War I and World War II cemeteries overseas and those killed worldwide during the Korean War. There are also listings of War Dead and veterans of the Mexican War, Civil War and Spanish-American War who are buried at the ABMC cemeteries in Corozal, Panama, and Mexico City as well as the Missing in Action from World War I and World War II who are memorialized on Tablets of the Missing within the cemeteries and on three memorials in the United States.

Castle Garden: America's First Immigration Center

http://www.castlegarden.org/
This site offers free access to information on 10 million immigrants from 1830 through 1892, the year Ellis Island opened. Over 73 million Americans can trace their ancestors to this early immigration period.

Charts and Records

http://www.byubroadcasting.org/ancestors/charts/
Ancestors was a series produced by Brigham Young University's KBYU Television about doing family history. The series aired in 1997 on PBS stations around the country. This Ancestors site has blank family history forms which are helpful to genealogists, for example:

• Pedigree Chart (PDF)
• Family Group Record (PDF)

Also, the FamilySearch site has blank forms.

Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System

http://www.nps.gov/
This system is hosted by the National Park Service and is a database of basic facts about servicemen who served on both sides during the Civil War. The information comes from 6.3 million soldier records in the National Archives.

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet

http://www.cyndislist.com/
This is an alphabetical listing of more than 150 genealogical categories with over 188,000 links to web sites. This is an excellent starting point for any genealogical research on the web.

Ellis Island Records (American Family Immigration History Center)

http://www.ellisisland.org/
This site offers access to the millions of records about people who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. Information you might find includes: passenger names, dates of arrival, ships of travel, age on arrival, and more. See also: Selected Images of Ellis Island and Immigration ca. 1880-1920 from the Collections of the Library of Congress

FamilySearch

http://www.familysearch.org
This is the site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It contains hundreds of thousands of genealogical records from all over the world from their Ancestral File and the International Genealogical Index which includes an every name index to the 1880 U.S. Census and the 1881 censuses for Canada and Britain. This site also has dozens of excellent source guides written by experts that can be printed out. The catalog of material in the LDS Library in Salt Lake City, UT is also available. Much of the material in the library has been microfilmed and can be borrowed from your local Family History Center.

General Land Office Records

http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx?searchTabIndex=0&searchByTypeIndex=0

Geographic Names Search Form - U.S. and Territories

http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/
This U.S. Geological Survey database was developed in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (USBGN) and contains contains records on almost 2 million geographic names in the United States—from populated places, schools, reservoirs, and parks to streams, valleys, springs, ridges, and every feature type except roads and highways. Entries include information such as the federally recognized name and variant spellings for the feature; former names; the status of the name as determined by the USBGN; the county or counties in which each named feature is located; the geographic coordinates and the name of the cell of the USGS topographic map or maps on which the feature may appear.

National Archives and Records Administration

http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/index.html
Genealogists are the most numerous users of the Washington, DC research rooms and the thirteen regional facilities of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). This web site provides information about many of the finding aids, guides and research tools that can prepare you for a visit to one of their facilities or for requesting records from NARA. The site contains information about federal census, court records, military records, naturalization records, visa, alien registrations, and some passport records, African-American and Native American materials. You can find catalogs of record series that have been microfilmed by NARA. There is also a searchable index of microfilmed record groups. These films can sometimes be borrowed from your Family History Center or purchased from the National Archives.

Nationwide Gravesite Locator

http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/j2ee/servlet/NGL_v1
This U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs database includes the burial locations of veterans and their family members in VA National Cemeteries, state veterans cemeteries, various other military and Department of Interior cemeteries, and for veterans buried in private cemeteries when the grave is marked with a government grave marker.

Pimeria Alta Mission Records

http://home.nps.gov/applications/tuma/search.cfm
The National Park Service Mission 2000 database contains records of baptisms, marriages and burials from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century for the Pimería Alta missions of southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico.

RootsWeb

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
This is the Internet's oldest and largest free genealogical web site. RootsWeb includes Social Security Death Index Interactive Search. It hosts the WorldConnect Project, a database of family trees submitted by thousands of RootsWeb researchers, includes the names of nearly 240 million ancestors and the RootsWeb Surname List (RSL), a registry of more than a million surname entries submitted by genealogists. RootsWeb also processes e-mail messages for more than 26,000 mailing lists and hosts more than 132,000 message boards. RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees, an online tutorial, is written and compiled by Julia M. Case, Rhonda McClure and Myra Vanderpool Gormley.

The USGenWeb Project

http://www.usgenweb.org/
This is a massive web site run by volunteers. There is a web site for each county in the United States. These county web pages contain county histories, biographies, census, cemetery, marriage, birth, Bible records and lists of local newspapers, among other things. What appears on the site depends on what the local volunteers have put there. Some counties have volunteers to do look-ups in local collections. The project also includes a digital library (archives) of actual transcriptions of public domain records.

Vital Records Information

http://www.vitalrec.com
This directory contains information about how to request birth and death certificates from each of the 50 states. See also: The National Center for Health Statistics' Where to Write for Vital Records.

WorldGenWeb

http://www.worldgenweb.org/
This project is divided into fifteen world regions arranged by country and usually run by someone living in that country. Each country is divided into individual provinces, states, or counties (terms vary depending on locale). You can search these sites to find maps, how-to information, history, translation help, vital records, passenger ship lists, property records, other useful information, and to make contacts with people living in the country you are searching.