One of the first stops along the way to finding out of country family should be www.ellisisland.org. Ellis Island for millions of new immigrants to this country was the first glimpse of America. The island situated in harbor near New York City holds 12 million records and they are searchable on the internet free. The home page has a search engine for finding people by name; this can be expanded to country of origin and immigration date. To see the results of a search you need to register an account, but do not worry it is free. Search results come back as a list of names, which can be further refined by country. They even have pictures of the ships family members came in which are downloadable and be added to the family tree as an interesting part of history.

If you have the time, Ellis Island has opened a family research center on the island. In addition to searching on there computers for family members, they have professional assistance for visitors to help with genealogical research in the facility.

At times there is nothing to do but go to the place of family origin, which is fine if you have several thousands of dollars, most people don't, so let's use the internet instead of taking a nice vacation overseas. There are several great search engines for finding family in Great Britain but they are not free. Say someone is looking for family in Scotland, there is a website called scotlandspeople.com which 80 million records dating back to the 1500's. They have searchable records for birth, death, marriages they are broken down into several categories like: Statutory records, old parish records, Catholic Registry, census records, and wills and testaments.

Statutory records are from January 1, 1855, that was when it was compulsory to register birth, death and marriages. These records will be very detailed giving parents name, father's occupation, name of informant, which might even be a family member, as well as the town and county where they lived.

The census records are also helpful for this time period because they cover the years from 1841 until 1881. They might include names of family members, occupation and the place where they are living.

Bringing the family tree back even further means the search must continue in the old parish records. These records have limited amounts of information about the mother, sometimes only a father's name is mentioned, and the date of birth/death. Parish records take a bit of deciphering because many times the limited information is just not enough.

To cross-reference findings it is helpful to do a will and testament search. This can be an invaluable tool in locating family members including wives, children, siblings and even parents. The wills or testaments might also include such things as occupation of the deceased, which can be helpful in researching further back because many occupations were guild related and handed down from father to son for generations.

One very helpful thing this site does is save searches for future reference. Account users can go back years later and look again through previous searches perhaps finding that pearl of information missed the first time.

Parish records can be viewed for a price along with wills and testaments; I would recommend copying the results to your computer the wills and testaments mostly are difficult to read without lots of time to go over them.

Another free source of information for Scotland is the Scottish Records Society Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses and Guild-Brethren 1406-1841. This is a downloadable file, which lists the names of almost all guild members including names of the father's, place they lived, who they apprenticed under and when they were included in the guild and which guild they joined. Guilds were a huge part of Scottish society and whom you knew meant work, and place to live since most guild members would end up living in the same area. Members sometimes married within the guilds and this is a way to find not only the possible wife of the member but also her father's name. Another possible step to bringing the family tree a generation back.

Origins.net is a subscription website that helps researchers looking for family in Ireland and England. These records go back as far as the 13th century. It includes helpful documentation on migration, peerage, local history and local records. They have an extensive selection of wills, court records and probate records. Not everyone could afford to draw up a will, sometimes just have a small piece of land or business was enough for a person to make a will. Many times, it was to make sure family members get items that the deceased felt was important.

The WorldGenWeb Project has volunteers from a across the world uploading links to websites worldwide. Searches begin at the regional level and then go to country websites. Family trees are searchable and they include the posters information, this can be a great way to expand the family tree and met family members without leaving the country.

FamilySearch.org is a free websites on the internet for genealogist. It is a great tool for finding family members from all over the world. They also include old parish records, marriages, and deaths from the United Kingdom, but they are not viewable in there original form as they are on the previously mentioned websites. FamilySearch is a steppingstone to the past, with family trees that can be downloaded as gedcoms and many additional research tools for users.

Another site is Cyndi's List, which is a free giant search engine of anything genealogy related. The home page has an alphabetical list of direct links to websites on all facets of family searches. Researchers can type in a family name, country, or even a website and search for the results, which will come up in alphabetically. This site has great reference material and should be bookmarked for future searches.

Ancestry.com is a fee based genealogy website which allows subscribers to search a huge archive of records including birth, death, marriages, military, census records, voter records, immigration, travel/passport, and international records. Users can also upload gedcom files to the website and continue to add records and family trees without actually having to manual type the information. The international records include immigration information for ships, which didn't go through Ellis Island as well as cross-reference material to books and publications about specific families.

On the internet, there are many great sources for finding family members, and most countries have searchable databases for genealogists. With time and patience a researchers can find valuable information at the tips of there fingers.