Once you have obtained data from your family and relatives with regards to your ancestors, the next step is to visit some resources online. While the Internet is a great place where you can find a lot of information about families and lineages, it can potentially create a lot of errors if the information has not been verified. There are various kinds of sites that will give you a lot of information about family histories but this information should be used with caution. Such information should be used as clues to investigate further so that you know the specific kinds of documents that you should look for.

The social security database is the first one that you should use. It contains birth dates and death dates of all people whose birth and death has been reported. It contains this information for almost everyone born after 1962 since this was the time that the records were computerized. If you do locate someone from your ancestors in the list you can ask for a copy of the Social Security Application. While this may cost you about $27 it will have details of the parent's name, place of birth, home address, date of birth and possibly occupation too.

Other online databases that you can also use are Rootweb's World Connect Project, Family Search, Castle Garden Database and Ellis Island Database. Sometimes you can also use some search engines to look up some specific details. You can find these because many people have transcribed census data and put it up on the Internet.