Genealogy guide
Where to find your ancestors
Nearly every country keeps birth, marriage, and death records — the challenge is knowing where to look. This guide collects the archives and websites we keep coming back to in our own family research, so you can spend your evenings finding ancestors instead of searching for websites.
Download on theApp StoreBefore you dive in
Five habits that make family research go a lot smoother.
Start with what you know
Write down your own data first: parents, grandparents, dates, places. Every record you find later has to connect to this foundation.
Talk to the eldest first
Names, villages, family stories, old photos — your oldest relatives carry archives that exist nowhere else. Record those conversations while you can.
Work backwards, one generation at a time
Don't jump straight to a famous ancestor in 1700. Prove each parent-child link with a record before moving a generation further back.
Verify every fact with a record
Family stories bend over time. A birth, marriage, or death certificate settles what really happened — and often adds new names to chase.
Note where you found it
Future you will want to know which archive, which register, which page. A short source note with each fact saves hours of re-searching later.
Works almost everywhere
Global platforms worth checking for nearly any country.
FamilySearch
The world's largest free collection of records and trees, run by a non-profit.
Ancestry
The biggest commercial records collection, strong for the US and UK.
MyHeritage
Commercial platform with strong European records and DNA matching.
Geneanet
Community trees and records, especially strong for France and Western Europe.
Find a Grave
Millions of photographed graves and memorials, searchable for free.
WikiTree
One shared, sourced world tree built by volunteers — free.
Geni
A collaborative world tree connecting profiles across families.
The best sources, country by country
Almost every country keeps genealogical records, but how much is online — and searchable — differs enormously. These are the strongest starting points.
Belgium
State Archives Belgium · Familiekunde Vlaanderen
Good civil registration and parish registers.
France
Every region has its own departmental archive site — this portal searches across them.
United Kingdom
FreeBMD · FreeCEN · FreeREG · GRO
Very extensive civil registration, indexed by volunteers.
United States
FamilySearch · Find a Grave · National Archives
Rich immigration and census records, plus state archives.
Australia
National Archives of Australia
Good immigration and convict records; each state also keeps its own archives.
Researching Asian roots
Online sources are often more limited in Asia — but there are good places to start.
Indonesia
There is little nationwide genealogy online, but the Dutch colonial administration left a deep paper trail: civil registration, VOC and KNIL records, newspapers, and war archives — much of it searchable through Dutch archives.
ANRI · Open Archieven · Nationaal Archief · FamilySearch · Delpher · Oorlogsbronnen
Japan
Family registers (koseki) go back generations, but they are not public — only family members can request them.
South Korea
Family record books (jokbo) are usually kept within the family rather than in public archives.
China
Clan books (zupu/jiapu) hold generations of lineage, but they are not centrally available online.
Philippines
National Archives · FamilySearch
Church and civil records via the National Archives and FamilySearch.
From our own research
Tracing Moluccan and Indische families
Gramps2 was born from our own family research into Moluccan and Indische families from the former Dutch East Indies. The trail crosses two continents: some records sit in Indonesian archives, but much of the paper trail — civil registration, KNIL service records, passenger lists, newspapers — lives in Dutch collections. These are the sources that have taught us the most:
With this combination, a surprising amount can be found about Indische, KNIL, and Moluccan families from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
- 1
FamilySearch
Free scans and indexes of Dutch East Indies civil registration.
- 2
Open Archieven
Searches dozens of Dutch archives at once, including colonial records.
- 3
Nationaal Archief
VOC and KNIL service records, and civil registration of the Dutch East Indies.
- 4
Delpher
Millions of newspaper pages — birth, marriage, and death announcements from the Indies press.
- 5
Netwerk Oorlogsbronnen
War sources network: camps, persecution, and the fate of families in 1940–1949.
- 6
CBG — Centre for Family History
The Dutch centre for family history, with Indische collections and family dossiers.
- 7
Indische genealogical societies
Societies like the IGV publish family trees, name indexes, and journals on Indische genealogy.
- 8
Moluccan family books
Many Moluccan families keep their own family books and trees — ask relatives before archives.
Turn what you find into a living tree
Capture every ancestor you uncover in Gramps2 — free on iPhone and iPad, with the whole family along through iCloud.