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Family Tree Magazine Podcast
Celebrating the 101 Best Websites of 2025 – An Interview with David Fryxell
00:19:57
In this episode, host Lisa Louise Cooke interviews David Fryxell about the best online tools for genealogy research.
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- [00:12]
A
Welcome to the Family Tree Magazine podcast. This is the show from America's number one genealogy magazine. I'm Lisa Louise Cook. Well, today I'm excited because we get to dive into a topic that every genealogist, whether beginner or seasoned, will find invaluable. The best online tools for tracing your roots. Joining us is David Fricksell. He's the author of Family Tree magazine's highly anticipated article each year and this year it is the 101 best genealogy websites of 2025. Dave's curated list highlights the top free and subscription based websites, from heavyweights like Ancestry and familysearch to hidden gems like DNA Paint and Chronicling America, and a lot more. Welcome back to the podcast, Dave.
- [01:05]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [01:07]
A
So your article, it's titled Boldly Go. Of course, I always love a great Star Trek reference and it's so appropriate because technology and specifically artificial intelligence are dominating websites this year. So let's start there. Tell us about the impact that you're seeing as you're reviewing the website landscape. Tell us about that impact that AI is having.
- [01:32]
B
Well, it's interesting, it was not really something that I had given a lot of thought to in terms of genealogy. And of course we hear about it with, you know, ChatGPT and you know, you can't do Google anymore without getting their Gemini thing and, you know, it just seems everywhere. But I hadn't really thought about it as a, you know, genealogy thing, but indeed it's sort of coming, you know, into our world too. FamilySearch, for example, has used AI to make documents searchable that previously were unsearchable. The chore of actually indexing these things would have been impossible for mere humans, but apparently machines can do it. MyHeritage is using AI to animate old photos, which some people may find a little creepy, to be honest. It's like suddenly, you know, grandma's like, I don't know, movie. But, you know, it is what it is. Extracting info from old newspapers and we can talk about that more in a minute. The, the old newspapers thing from MyHeritage I've gotten a lot out of for my own genealogy that, you know, I, I guess without AI, maybe we never would have found. Ancestry has a new beta tool called AI Assistant that can sort of answer general family history and DNA related questions. In fact, some genealogists are even using ChatGPT and other chatbot type AI clients to dig into their family history and do the sort of the research for you. I've never tried that. I Confess. But maybe you and I are just going to be obsolete now because AI is going to do everything.
- [03:06]
A
Yeah, sometimes it feels that way. But as I often tell my listeners, we can kind of think of AI as being a competent assistant, but one that needs to be checked.
- [03:19]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [03:20]
A
Yeah.
- [03:20]
B
And it's sort of almost like AI is sort of like pedigree charts online in that sense, you know?
- [03:24]
A
Yeah.
- [03:25]
B
Oh, look, I've traced my, you know, genealogy back to Charlemagne. Great. Well, maybe not. So you need to check that, just like you need to check AI.
- [03:33]
A
Exactly. Well, you mentioned some of the really big genealogy websites and you kind of start the article off there, but. And you touched on newspapers, and I see you have a whole section on newspapers. Tell us about some of your favorite websites there.
- [03:46]
B
Well, yeah, it's really interesting. I think, you know, when we were first starting out, newspapers were not really a really important source. You know, you had your census records, you got vital records, maybe some church records, even land records, but newspapers, you know, what's really, that's gonna. What's that gonna add up to? But increasingly there are more newspaper sites, so, you know, that must be popular. And we've added a few over the years. There's not new this year, but I think last year this thing called Arcanum Newspapers and even covers newspapers in Europe. So if you have European ancestors, as so many do, you can use that. Chronicling America, of course, from the Library of Congress just keeps expanding. We've had genealogy bank on there for ages, but it's still, you know, useful paid site, I think. Last year, Newspaper Archive, which was more of an industry type publication for the data industry, came out for the general public. And it's got like 16,000 titles and 200 million 8. All these have enormous numbers of, you know, pages. Ancestry, of course, has had newspaper.com, which just keeps adding stuff, and then the two new ones this year. In the newspaper category, I mentioned Old News, great name, which is from MyHeritage and already has 12 language options and hundreds of millions of pages. And what is cool is because myheritage is very good about scouring your uploaded family tree and then sending you emails, possibly even too many emails about its fines. Now it's started including Old News in that. And so I, I just subscribed into Old News for the first time this year. And every week or so I'm finding something in there. It's usually not like, you know, groundbreaking for me. Like, oh my gosh, I never realized, you know, but it's. They're little Bits and pieces or relatives I didn't know, you know, like umpteenth cousins or something that I'm able to catch up on because of old news. And it's. Interestingly, it's not just obituaries. I've also found that they will capture things that run more around the turn of the last century, where there used to be a lot of genealogy stuff in the newspaper. So, you know, it'd be the, you know, a brief history of the Oberton family, blah, blah, blah. And again, you got to take those with a grain of salt. But I actually, I do a talk on using published sources, and this next time I do it, I'm gonna have to add old newspapers, which had never occurred to me. Usually it's books and journals and that sort of thing. So, I mean, that's pretty cool. The other new one is a thing from Viridian Software. You may remember there was a site called Elefind, which was kind of cool, and we used to have it on our list, but they'd been busy digitizing historic newspapers and academic collections, and so they're. They're basically putting some of their clients stuff online. And so I found Colorado Historic Newspapers. There are a lot of student publications like student newspapers, which. That's certainly a source that I've never thought of. But, you know, you can find your college ancestors, perhaps there, some church archives. Even the National Library of Estonia is on there. So it's a interesting and I suspect constantly growing, you know, collection of really cool stuff online that I've just been amazed at how much I found in old newspapers.
- [07:18]
A
Yeah, I totally agree. And of course, they're a secondary source, so we take them, like you say, with a grain of salt. But there's so many clues there that we can have. And Viridian is really interesting because, yeah, they are a software company. They're just making accessible some of their client databases, which I think many of these would not even come across our radar. They wouldn't be on the first page of Google results necessarily. But they're fascinating. And they're free. A lot of them are free. We love old newspapers. But, you know, since you kind of have this tech theme going, let's talk about the genealogy tech tools section of your list. What are some of the newest and most exciting ones that you came across?
- [08:00]
B
Well, there are two ones that are new to the list, listed under Tools for Success. One is called birthparentfinder.com and it's really. It's one of the rare things to help adoptees trace their family. So it brings together, it's got consulting services and also DNA testing. There's a blog, search strategies, success stories. So if you're in that community where you're trying to find birth parents, it's really worth a look. And again, there's not a lot out there that directly aims at that, you know, audience. For more hardcore genealogists, there's something called Cite Builder, C I T E Builder. It helps you craft well formatted citations. So you choose the type of record, fill in the details, choose a style. There's a. The basic edition is free. If you're really into it, you can do a premium for I think 20 bucks a year. But it's a neat little thing for those of us who have trouble figuring out how, okay, I got this fact from this source. How exactly should I record this in my genealogy software or whatever?
- [09:04]
A
Yeah, that's a great one. In fact, we are featuring them in our Best Websites podcast in August. So we'll have a link for that in the show Notes. That's a really great site that has a sole purpose of helping you overcome this intimidation that comes sometimes with source citation and they make it so easy.
- [09:24]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. In the list you'll find, you know, the very broad researchy type things like the ancestry and family search. But then we've also included some that are, you know, really targeted like that, that, you know, aim at a particular problem and, you know, and try to solve it. A lot of research tools and things that are aimed to make your genealogy life easier, even if they're not directly serving up, you know, records and data.
- [09:52]
A
I notice here also, of course, you've got your genetic genealogy section. What are the some of the highlights there?
- [09:58]
B
Well, let's see. I think you know all about DNA Painter you mentioned, which is just visually very cool. It has color coded family trees, genetic ancestor marking, all kinds of options there to make DNA studies a little bit easier because it, you know, it certainly can be complicated and confusing. So it's nice to have some tools to help. Of course, there's still, there's GEDmatch, which got a lot of attention a few years ago because it would help solve cold cases. And, you know, even if you're not looking to solve, you know, decades old murders, it can help you find your, your ancestors and you can upload your data from any of the most popular testing services. There are like 2 million people using it, 45 different tools, 400 million people in their, in their files. And if you want you can opt to have your data included the next time they try to, you know, solve a cold case. What they've done in that, of course, you know, just as an aside, is pretty amazing where, you know, they pick up some, some thing from a trash can and it turns out that the. What the genealogists came up with in narrowing who the killer might be, you know, turns out to be Right. And then they go in and make the arrest and, you know, suddenly genealogy gets a little cooler.
- [11:10]
A
Oh, yeah. It's absolutely amazing how it has transformed the criminal cold case area. I noticed here too, that you've got so many great categories. You've got military records and UK and Irish and European genealogy websites. How about you just tell us as we wrap up some of your favorite sites that you've either added or that have been long standing pillars within your list.
- [11:37]
B
Well, I think I don't have Irish ancestors that I know of, but one of the really cool ones is that we had maybe last year is the Virtual Record treasury of Ireland, where apparently the old, the Public Record Office building there was destroyed in 1922, I think, in one of the uprisings. And they've recreated the building, in effect, so you would do a virtual walkthrough of it in order to, you know, access the records. I mean, what a. That's really just a cool idea. So even if you're not Irish, it's kind of fun to, you know, play around with.
- [12:14]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [12:15]
B
Then being half Swedish and having done a book on Scandinavian genealogy, of course, I gotta point out the Scandinavia ones. And I've long been a subscriber and just renewed to the Swedish site called Archive Digital, which really is a terrific site. It's very expensive, I think, but you get all the records in color and everything. But we recently added, I think again in last year, Rick's Arkivit, which is the Sweden National Archive, which is sort of catching up in terms of records and might be worth a look before you shell out for the other one, because that one, of course is free. So it's nice to see more and more free sites and, you know, they're putting lots and lots of data up.
- [13:02]
A
Yeah, great point. And of course you start off us, Canadian and Caribbean. So, I mean, there is something here for everybody. You gotta love the Passenger List and the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island website, the New York Historical Vital Records Project and of course the National Archives. I think that's one of the sites that oftentimes either isn't on people's radar as a As a first go to or when they get there, it's a little intimidating to try to find stuff, but it is jam packed with America's most important records.
- [13:36]
B
And I think initially people are sort of disappointed because either, as you say, it's a little difficult to navigate and it doesn't have everything. I mean, the sort of stuff you expect from, like, Ancestry or Find My Past or even fold three, a lot of that stuff has been outsourced or is elsewhere, but it still does have some really cool stuff, as well as a lot of helpful guides to the records and things that you can find. And we'll even point you to, you know, like Ancestry or findmypast or whatever.
- [14:08]
A
Right. Because they're partnering with all those big companies. Right? Yeah. And I've noticed lately they've been sending out emails that they have some free genealogy webinars. And what's nice about theirs is they are specifically tailored to helping you explore and find the records that you need from their website. So it's. It's very specific to the National Archives website.
- [14:31]
B
Right. And we should also point out the Canadian version of it, the Library and Archives Canada, which does have a huge amount of records, including censuses and everything. And I often point out to people who. They can't find their ancestors when they came through Ellis island, because maybe they didn't. And it's really worth checking there to see if maybe your ancestors came in through Canada because they have some very good passenger records there. And so if that's been your brick wall, and you may not think you have Canadian ancestors, but if that's been your brick wall, you might just find the answer to that. I found one of my wife's Norwegian relatives who, you'd think they just come to the United States, but nope, they came through Canadian Port and I finally found them.
- [15:16]
A
Yes. Actually, there's a situation like that in my husband's family, too. I have to bring up. You put USGenWeb on here. And I just think about way back when, you know, the Internet first getting started and ancestry came online. USGen Web has been out there for a long time. It's usgenweb.org and it's still a top player, isn't it?
- [15:38]
B
It really is. You know, the structure of it is so neat because they have. You can click on a state and then you can click on the county. A lot of counties still, you know, have individual administrators who. They're very helpful. They put up, you know, records. So for any sort of research in the United States and Of course, again, it's all free. So if you suddenly find that, you know, you have an ancestor in, you know, Podunk County, South Dakota, there might be a Podunk county, you know, U.S. gen website and some helpful person there who, you know, you may even be able to contact them and say, you know, where, where would the, you know, vital, the vital records be or whatever happened to that courthouse or, you know, those sort of mysteries. So it's really is a great resource and like, you know, a few things still on the Internet. It's done by volunteers really out of the, out of the goodness of their hearts and interest in genealogy. So that's great to see.
- [16:34]
A
Those are really people who are experts on the ground usually maintaining those. Well, the list is tremendous. Again, we're talking about David Fricksell's article called To Boldly Go. It is the 101 best websites for genealogy for 2025. I have to tell you, Dave, I was sharing with in one of my Genealogy Gems videos with my viewers how I love to use the Chrome browser and I will make folders, you know, on my bookmark bar. And I thought this list, you know, you pick a category that you need like historical newspapers, you just go visit each one, drop it in your little folder, and then they are one click away on your web browser. No matter where you are, we can take your with you all year long.
- [17:19]
B
That's a great tip, actually. I have to try that.
- [17:21]
A
Yeah. Oh, I love it. Well, anything else I didn't ask you about that you'd love to share with the listeners about your list or what you might expect for the future genealogy websites.
- [17:31]
B
Well, I just, I guess I'd say that, you know, it just keeps growing and they keep being able to go farther and farther back.
- [17:39]
A
Yeah.
- [17:40]
B
When I was talking to my old boss at Family Tree magazine, who hasn't been with it either for a long time, and he said at one point when they were looking to sell the company, one of the potential buyers, some hedge fund, didn't quite understand this Family Tree magazine thing because he said, well, you know, once you do your genealogy, you know, then you're done. Right. Why do you need a magazine? Well, obviously things change as we, you know, with 101best websites, there's more stuff coming out all the time. And unless you've traced it back to Adam and Eve, you probably still need the magazine and you probably still need the 101 best websites.
- [18:16]
A
Well, and even if we have a tree full of names and dates, it's the depth of the stories that are becoming known to us through all this additional content that just keeps coming online or being made available and searchable, so at least you know where to go find it offline. So I agree there's never a stopping point because the stories have so much richness and depth to them. Always good to talk to you. Thank you so much, Dave, for Excel for joining us here on the podcast. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Family Tree Magazine podcast. This is the show from America's number one genealogy magazine. I'll have links to everything that we've talked about today on the show over at the Show Notes page and you can find that@familytreemagazine.com podcast and there you'll also find a huge back catalog of past episodes full of topics that are going to help you in your genealogy research. And when you stop by the website, be sure to sign up for our free newsletter. That really is the perfect way to stay in touch with Family Tree Magazine and get all the latest and greatest news, plus the announcements of each and every new podcast episode. I'm Lisa Louise Cook and I hope that you'll come by and visit me at my website, genealogy gems.com and there you will find the Genealogy Gems podcast and a link over to our Genealogy Gems YouTube channel. So until next time, have fun climbing your Family tree.