Tracing your ancestry is a thriving hobby avidly pursued by thousands. This is not a recent phenomenon – genealogists have been about since there were people. Human beings seem fascinated by stories, especially if they relate to their ancestors in some way.

By hearing about our past, we can get an anchor on the present. Over the past twelve years, there has been a great rise of genealogy search engines on the Internet. The best news is that most of them are free…as long as you have a computer and internet access, that is.

The Family Bible

It used to be that all of the family’s major events were recorded in the family Bible – about the only source of paper in the home. The family Bibles of all humanity, in a sense, are now genealogy search engines. The “daddy” is considered to be Ancestor Hunt at www.ancestorhunt.com. This is a specialized search engine compiling just genealogy data. It is a great starting point for the modern techno-genealogist.

At genealogy search engines like Ancestor Hunt, you can choose many branches of the human family tree in order to narrow down your research. You can choose to go to public records by state or by nation. You can also search through public records like birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, any prison records, obituary archives and records of legal transactions.

One of the most exciting aspects of genealogy search engines is that, although looking for different names, all genealogists are in the same hunt together. A lot of information on genealogy search engines was made possible through volunteer work and hobbyists sharing hard-earned information. There is even a Family Bible database.

Not The Whole Search

You can only do so much research on genealogy search engines. There still will be a need to hoof it in the flesh to real world sites such as family reunions, cemeteries and libraries. But if you have a common last name, going first to genealogy search engines can save a lot of time and wasted journeys.

Part of the reason genealogy hunting has such an allure is that you play the part of a detective, but without any legal proceedings dangling over your head. There are about 24 million genealogy websites, but that still doesn’t scratch the surface of discovering all of the stories out there in our past waiting to come back to life in the mouths and ears of the present generation.