where can i find free online public records, such as birth death and marriage?
trying to find info about my father side of the family and all I have to work with is his name.
There isn’t a central site. Birth records are usually kept hidden for privacy’s sake.
RootsWeb has death records for California, Kentucky, Texas & Maine, plus an SSDI:
http://searches.rootsweb.com/
The Brits have
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
If you can see kangaroos nibbling your roses, or say "Eh" at the end of every third sentence, you are out of luck.
Your birth certificate will tell you your father’s birth state and age at the time. His SSN application will tell you his parents’ names and his exact birth date. You can get it, but
1) It costs $27
2) He has to be dead
3) He had to have had a SSN.
If your mother and he were married and you live near the town they were living in when they married, go to the library and look through the social pages for that week. You may get lucky; if they had an article there, it will be chock full of good stuff; "The groom is the son of . . .", "Best man was his brother . . .", the bride is the daughter of . . ." and so forth. It will be free, too. If they were living in Fresno but ran away to Las Vegas to get married, there still may be a snippet in the Fresno Bee.
The county clerk may let you look at the marriage record for free, if you go into the office and prove you are related. That isn’t on-line, but I thought I’d mention it.
The best way to start looking up your family tree is to contact the local Mormons. They have records on all that stuff. It’s free and they’re very helpful. They won’t try to recruit you.
References :
There isn’t a central site. Birth records are usually kept hidden for privacy’s sake.
RootsWeb has death records for California, Kentucky, Texas & Maine, plus an SSDI:
http://searches.rootsweb.com/
The Brits have
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
If you can see kangaroos nibbling your roses, or say "Eh" at the end of every third sentence, you are out of luck.
Your birth certificate will tell you your father’s birth state and age at the time. His SSN application will tell you his parents’ names and his exact birth date. You can get it, but
1) It costs $27
2) He has to be dead
3) He had to have had a SSN.
If your mother and he were married and you live near the town they were living in when they married, go to the library and look through the social pages for that week. You may get lucky; if they had an article there, it will be chock full of good stuff; "The groom is the son of . . .", "Best man was his brother . . .", the bride is the daughter of . . ." and so forth. It will be free, too. If they were living in Fresno but ran away to Las Vegas to get married, there still may be a snippet in the Fresno Bee.
The county clerk may let you look at the marriage record for free, if you go into the office and prove you are related. That isn’t on-line, but I thought I’d mention it.
References :
Teb pack had a super answer! I have used all those resorces myself. Occationally you will find a very helpful clerk who wont require you to have tons of proof of who you are. Local libraries keep mounts of info on microfish if you have good dates to work with. Obituaries are the best source of "FREE" family info when you can find them. They tell you who where and when for just about everybody related to the deseased that is mentioned. If your father is under the age of 60 or so, you can even try web sites like classmates.com. to see if he registered his name. This will give you the name of schools, town, states and possible siblings within the same school district. And of course graduation year.
Good Luck! It took me 8 months of searching 2 to 4 hours a day before I found my own Father. I almost gave up, sure glad I didn’t.
References :
personal experience