DNA Genealogy has become a hot topic in the news and with genealogy professionals and hobbyists alike. The reason is simple, people want to know, “where did I come from?”

Let’s face it, even the most skilled genealogist is going to come to the end of the line in terms of documentation, records, images and evidence of ancestors. When you compare the length of time humans have been inhabiting this planet to the length of time humans have been keeping records, there is a huge disparity. Then factor in natural disasters and unruly political and religious leaders who destroyed valuable documents either intentionally or inadvertently through poor storage methods and other circumstances. What we are left with is barely enough information to go more than a few hundred years back in our search for our ancestors.

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We always see them together, there are pictures of them together all over the Internet, and they collaborate together and they even grew up together, and now we find out they are related!

According to the New England Historic Genealogy Society, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, two prominent Hollywood actors are tenth cousins. Apparently, they share an ancestor by the name of William Knowlton Jr. He was a bricklayer from England who came to the U.S. in the 1630’s, a time when England was aggressively settling the new Colony of Massachusetts.

Here is what I found out about our Mr. William Knowlton Jr.:

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All too often genealogy doesn’t become interesting until a person gets a little older, has a child, or uncovers some amazing truth about the family.

It’s never too late to get hooked on genealogy research, but what if you could have started when you were a child or teen? Just imagine all the information you could have gathered at family reunions, from aunt Bessy, or the pictures you could have had of great, great grandma before she passed away?

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Once upon a time, a curious genealogy researcher wanted to learn all she could about her family and ancestry. She packed a light lunch, plenty of water and headed off. She made the long trek to the county court house where records of marriages and births, deaths, adoptions and everything else she could possibly think of were kept. She spoke nicely and politely to the county court clerk who led her through a maze of doors and rooms filled with stacks and stacks of leather-bound record books.

With a pen, some paper, a camera and tape recorder, she began to search through the books to find any information she could about her mother, father, grandparents and great grandparents.
She spent many a summer day, in that records repository, searching and reading, recording and searching some more until her lungs filled with dust and she just had to stop. She stepped out of the gloomy darkness of the repository into the searing heat, her eyes blinking against the bright sun…..

Things have come a long way in a short time. Now our curious genealogy researcher can access many of those same records online from the comfort of her home.

Last week, I wrote a post about my favorite free genealogy websites that have records and I mentioned that I would write about my favorite paid subscriptions sites.

As promised, here is my top choices for subscription or paid genealogy sites. All of these are membership-based sites that allow you to access their databases after you sign up and pay a fee. The fees range in price and some have shorter sign up options. There is also a huge range in the amount of data you can access.

In the end, you’ll have to decide which ones fit into your budget and which ones you think will give you the best options. I’ve written full reviews of all of these so look for them in the coming weeks in the reviews section of ObituariesHelp.org.

My top paid genealogy websites. These are the ones where I think you get the most for your money:

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