There are a lot of online genealogy resources that one can choose from. Some of them require you to pay a fee before you can access the archives of information that the site has. This can be frustrating if you don’t happen to have the extra money to allocate to that particular website. Instead, many genealogists look for free resources. Sometimes, you can find what you need in unexpected places. The Internet Archive is not, specifically, a genealogy website, but it does have plenty of free resources that genealogists can use.
Personally, I prefer using genealogy websites that are free. I don’t have the extra money right now to spend on a membership for a website, and am hesitant to pay for a service that may, or may not, actually have the information that I am seeking. I find it extremely frustrating when genealogy websites let me access their search engine and enter information, only to have a screen pop up that prevents me from going further with my research until I send them some money. It feels as though they are taunting me with information that they know I want, which they will not let me see. Wasting my time is not the way to make me want to become a member of that particular genealogy website.
Instead, I look for free resources. They will either have what I am seeking, or they won’t, but either way, it’s not going to cost me anything to find out. Today, I learned that the Internet Archives website has a lot of resources that are useful for genealogists. To start, go to the Additional Collections page. This will bring up a long list of links to several different collections.
The links that you will find to be the most useful depend mostly on where your genealogy research has taken you. There are quite a few passenger lists to browse, including: Passenger and Crew Vessel Lists for New York, NY, 1897 – 1957, Passenger Lists of Vessels for Baltimore and Philadelphia, and a list of Passengers arriving in the St. Albans, VT District. They have a link to a collection to Passport Applications from 1795 – 1905. There is a Register of Births that doesn’t include information from the United States census, and another link that does contain the United States census from 1790 to 1930.
If you are looking for military records, you might want to click the link called “War Records”, which is a collection of lists of soldiers and participants in American wars. Or, browse through the links that takes you to records relating to War of 1812, or the compiled records of military units in volunteer Confederate organizations, or the link for Compiled records of military units in volunteer Union organizations.
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