Site-Seeing
During the pandemic, one of the things many people have missed the most is the ability to travel. Zoom meetings and Instacart or DoorDash orders can’t substitute for the pleasures of actually going places.
Even if you’re not ready to travel again yet, however, navigating places from your ancestors’ past can help prepare for nonvirtual visits. Whether you’re planning a long-postponed tour of your ancestors’ original stomping grounds or just imagining what their lives were like there, our annual installment of 101 Best Websites can be your guidebook.
As we have for two decades now, we’ve ventured to every corner of the internet to discover the best sites for genealogy research, near or far. From cutting-edge topics like DNA to the best places to view cemetery records, these 101 sites will help you “go places” in your family tree. Although our metaphorical theme this year is travel, we’ve actually skipped the state sites that have typically taken up a chunk of our 101 allocation. It’s not that these aren’t worth visiting; rather, another annual list—75 best state sites, in our November/December issue—rounds these up in greater detail <www.familytreemagazine.com/best-state-genealogy-websites>. That list has at least one entry for each US state, plus DC and Puerto Rico.
Given that, our 2021 list has a record 21 new sites compared to last year, indicated by an asterisk (*). As usual, these sites are substantially free unless noted otherwise. Sites marked with a dollar sign ($) require a subscription or other payment to fully take advantage of their content; otherwise free sites that have some sort of premium tier or paid add-on have this noted in their write-ups.
So consider this your ticket to time travel into your ancestors’ lives. Pack your bags, fire up your browser, buckle up and let’s go!
ALL-INCLUSIVE OPTIONS: The Big Websites
Ancestry.com $
Everything’s on the menu at this megasite, from censuses to vital records to AncestryDNA ($99). Recent additions include tens of millions of US draft cards from World War II (scanned in color), plus obituary names, relationships and other facts extracted from sister site and fellow honoree Newspapers.com <www.newspapers.com>. Full access runs $298 per year.
FamilySearch
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