Hi Suzie, > I've just started to trace our family tree, and are collating all the > various names and dates I have. > > I notice there are many, many websites that you must pay for to use. > > Is there a current opinion on which one, if any, is the best to pay for? > Ancestry.com seems to be alright but it's a hefty amount if it's all out > there for free. Where to best find your data depends on what countries are involved. Ancestry may not even be the best place for you, and some of the data they have is also available on other pay sites. We'd need more information about your family to be more specific. Genes Reunited (http://www.genesreunited.com/) and Lost Cousins (http://www.lostcousins.com/) are good places for finding distant cousins, who can collaborate with your research. You'll find that sites that charge a fee also have a certain amount of their services that you can access for free. Take a good look around, register (which should be free), and sign up for their newsletter if they have one. That's a good way to get to know what resources they have, and how others make use of them. Some pay sites also offer free periods. Ancestry gives you a few days for free when you first sign up, others sometimes have free weekends or similar. Get yourself registered and on their newsletter list, take time to learn about their site, then if you're not prepared to pay their fee at the moment just sit back and wait - when they have a free period you'll be ready to make the best use of it. Rootsweb, where you found this mailing list, is an excellent place to start. Rootsweb is owned by Ancestry, so there is some cross-over, but everything on Rootsweb is free. It is focussed more on peer support, rather than databases that have been purchased. Go to their mailing lists and/or message boards for the areas you're researching, or for the surnames that interest you. Don't expect instant results, sometimes it takes time for someone with the same interests as you to come along and find your posts, and make contact with you. Hope this helps. :-) Kind Regards, Wendy Howard *** Please reply to the list/newsgroup *** -- Kaiwaka, Northland, New Zealand http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wendyh65/ <http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/%7Ewendyh65/>