Back in 1983 I started from an A4 page with family information on it, given to me by my uncle Allan; a bit early for the internet and any family information was passed down or gathered from other relatives and written onto the sheet.. I was able to add a little to the page myself some more material was added passed down by mail not e-mail as they call it snail mail.

In later years when the net was up and running little by little family information was becoming more available. and today we are flooded with everything Genealogy can throw at us, most of the commercial Genealogy web sites, offer so much but are sites there to make money. These are to be avoided at all cost an invaluable thing that’s sprung up are the genealogy message boards these can produce many good results of information and missing links from other people with the same interest and these are all free. recently I have collected information on various other research projects from them on the following: The surnames Steiro, Blackmore, McMaster,Wilson, White, Clancy, Crichton and Kearney. I have been researching these projects and collecting data for them, most came from free sources and e-mail.

If you really need to source something through a pay site there are some good sites to choose from eg: the General Register Office for Scotland, for marriage births deaths and census reports from 1841 to 1911, they sell credits to view various pages and are very resonable. I would suggest you search the net first before paying for anything.Try different search options and look for sites from a particular area that you are interested in, or subject.

Research can be done without great expense. Sites like Ancestry.com do have lots of information but at a cost, the Church of the Latter-day Saints has a huge web site and is free, it is great for the older church records. One of the best site for research for Scotland is Scotlandpeople.gov.uk the charges are very resonable and have the census searches from 1841 to 1911, and birth, death and marriages Divorce,and valuation rolls.Any information collected has to be saved in an orderly way for future reference, this is something I failed to do properly and cost me a lot of time to redo the research again. Record everthing neatly and precice never change the information you find in the record as presented to you.

If you are researching Ireland the 1901 and 1911 Census is free from the National Archives of Ireland and a great source to explore Irish family information.

New information is coming onto the internet frequently, with new additions to message boards all the time, carry out different search critea and on various search engines on what you are looking for, it may come easier and cheaper than you think....good luck.