With age often comes the desire to not only learn about where you came from but also the desire to start persevering the memories of your family history for future generations to come. And in this day of computers, digital cameras, video recorders, and most important of all the Internet, saving your family’s history is as easy as doing a quick search, filling out some forms, and writing it all down.
Now, the Internet is chocked-full of websites that offer free, or for a small charge, services for you to not only digitally store your family ancestry, but where you can upload photos, videos, and even join together with other family members to reach back as far as you can to digitally preserve your family history for generations.
But with all these online family history websites, it can be a bit of a daunting task to try and figure out which one(s) would best suit your needs, which is why we have come up with this list of ancestry sites that can help you to digitally preserve your family’s legacy with as much ease as possible. Here are six online family history sites that offer their users a variety of options for taking their family’s history and converting it into a centralized digital representation for future generations to enjoy and learn from for years to come.
Where You Can Learn About Your Family History
With over 5 billion records online, Ancesty.com is one of the largest online genealogy research website to date. Ancestry.com combines the power of census, military, and vital records with advanced Family Tree Maker software, developed and marketed by the company, to help individuals not only create their family trees, but to also search through, find, and alert users of family connections.
Ancestry.com also has a complete index of all of the United States Federal Census records from 1790 through 1930 as well as:
- Immigration Records
- Directories & Member Lists
- Family & Local Histories
- Newspapers & Periodicals
- Court / Land / Probate Records
- Reference & Finding Aids
- African American Records
SaveYourFamilyHistory.com offers you a variety of services for preserving your family history, but most importantly they are able to bring your cherished family photographs back to life. Every family has them, those boxes, albums, or even totes full of old family photos that are just sitting there slowly decaying, but what else is there to do with them, right? That is where SaveYourFamilyHistory.com comes in. They provide a number of services that can help you take those old family photos and have them digitally restored. This way you are able to preserve your photographs as well as share them with other members of your family without having to worry about them being damaged.
Also, they will not only restore your photographs, but SaveYourFamilyHistoy.com can also help you to remember the dates and names of the people in the images by adding that information at the bottom of any picture. And what about those random negatives that are usually hiding at the bottom of any photo box? SaveYourFamilyHistoy.com can also digitize your family’s 35mm slides and your 35mm color negatives, placing them on an easy to access CD or digital photo album.
So, save those precious old photographs and keep your family from fighting over them by creating your own digital photo album that everyone can enjoy.
One of the most popular family networking sites on the the web, MyHeritage.com host millions of families from across the globe, and provides them with a place to enjoy private and secure services that will guide them in their exploration of their family’s legacy.
Offering services that range from photo sharing to face recognition, maps to chats services, MyHeritage.com is an excellent platform for celebrating those special family moments as well as helping you to stay in touch. MyHeritage.com provides users with “38 languages options, 800 million profiles and 19 million family trees,” making it an excellent service for digitally preserving your diverse family’s history.
Geni.com is an online service that is working to simplify the complex field of genealogy by creating one website that is inviting and offers an easy to use platform for building a definitive online family tree. Offering both free and paid versions, Geni.com focuses on aiding users in inviting and adding their relatives to join their family tree project. The free service offers unlimited upload of photos, videos, and documents, while Geni Pro, the paid version, provides its user with a service that will help them to match other trees and merge them into one single world family history.
While ideal for the recreational genealogist, Geni.com is also a great choice for those experienced genealogist who are looking to discover new relatives and stay in touch with their families. And as a side note, Geni.com also offers a number of paid services, such as enhanced research tools and keepsake products, which can be created using your family’s information.
Alright, so FamilySearch.org is not exactly a site for recording your family’s history, but it is an excellent resource for finding your family’s history. As the largest genealogy organizations in the world, FamilySearch.org offers a variety of records, resources, and services that can be utilized in helping a family learn more about their history.
With over 100 years of actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide, FamilySearch.com, which is provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is committed to helping people connect with their ancestors. It is their belief that family history should not be restricted to any one culture, ethnicity, or religious affiliation, but that is should be available to anyone who wishes to learn about their family’s heritage.