How do I get started

[Coll]

Well, the aunt who never tells anyone anything passed away since I posted here last.
Her kids supposedly didnt find anything of interest for me amongst her things. I'd bet a good bit that they are keeping stuff from me. Honestly I don't care who my grandfather was, but it would be nice to know since it supposedly wasn't who my mother believed it to be.
There are so many medical issues that need to be shared, I can't understand why people are so cruel, especially if the father (or who ever) has passed on many years ago. Its 2011 so I'd bet a lot of people don't care what their ancestors did.

[Minny]

It's sad that some family members won't share any info. I found a couple cousins that I didn't know about by posting on the county where I knew my grandparents lived. They have both shared alot of info. My last uncle passed away last May, so there's no one else to ask other than my cousins. We share whatever we find.

This site has all the states & counties listed. Click on a state & then find the county you need. It helps if you know any other places your ancestors lived so you can check those states too. This is the main site

Free Genealogy and Family History Online - The USGenWeb Project

This one is for Pennsylvania

The PAGenWeb Project

Find the county you need & if they have a board, post a name on that board & any other county boards. Check to see if the last name you are searching for is listed.. that's how I found my cousins.. they were searching the same name as me.

[Pag36]

My older 2 daughters are checking our ancestors too. I wish when my grand dad (mom's side) and grand mom (dad's side) were still around that I had asked more questions. My maternal g~mom died when Mom was 2 weeks old and paternal g~dad died when I was 11 months old so of course never knew either one. Dad did not have any brothers and mom's brothers never married and her one sis died when Mom was 5 so no cousins there. They are having fun looking at old records and both keep calling or emailing me "do you know who this person is" some I have heard of some not. Glad I remembered what I do so has been a help to them.
Sorry your aunts are/were so secretive

[KSJEn6891]

I also got started w/Ancestry.com but my original membership was started from a program I paid for for "Family Tree" making years ago (floppy disc) - I haven't paid the $99 dollar membership yet, so I do have the limited information available. As for other ways of finding information.... Any news / funeral clippings you have from family obituaries. I know it sounds morbid, but there is usually allot of family information provided in those clippings. Other possibilities are new journals of cities you "know" the family has lived in at one time or another. An example of this is when my DH was browsing a NY Journal newspaper for 2010 that listed a good friend of ours as decease's distant nephew and his family (currently in Midwest area), and the decease's families original family roots in Italy (which we also knew of), but not that their is still family there, and the difference of the two spellings for the families last name - the only part that was similar was the "ich" at the end, where as the distant uncle last name started / ended with "vio_____ich", and our friends last name starts /ends with Don__ich".
My maiden (adopted) last name had also been changed slightly over the years, although there are no longer living relatives to say why it had changed or when exactly it had been changed - just that in certain news /funeral clippings both spellings are present throughout the family names.