by Mary-Ellen Mess
The past decade has seen a growing interest in genealogy research with an explosion of services offering DNA testing and online research platforms, most of which require paid subscriptions. However, there are resources available for free that can help you get started on your quest for family history.
Heritage Quest is one search option that you may access via the Red Bank Public Library website. This library edition from Ancestry has limitations (you cannot for instance save your family tree here) but it does provide a way to search census, immigration, and military records from the U.S. and around the world.
Using the navigation menu at the Red Bank Public Library website, go to Resources, then Research Databases. Scroll down and click on the Heritage Quest icon. From there, enter your library card number and PIN to gain access to the database. While you can’t save documents on the platform, you may email them to yourself.
Family Search is a non-profit genealogy website affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints otherwise known as the Mormon Church. Here you may sign-up for an account that lets you create and save a family tree for free. As your family tree grows, you may upload photos and documents and attach them to family member profiles.
Since the Mormon Church encourages members to research and record their genealogy, this website provides a wealth of data. By entering in some basic info about an ancestor, connections may pop up that surprise you if someone else has been researching another branch of your family tree. The records of deceased persons are public while those of living persons are masked to protect privacy. You can even message other researchers about their sources and findings.
So if you happen to have some time on your hands, this may be a great time to put those family stories to good use. By piecing together clues from the past, you have the opportunity to develop a greater understanding of your own family’s odyssey from past to present.
Working at the RBPL is a second career for Mary-Ellen, who spent 30 years managing youth programs in Newark, NJ. In anticipation of her retirement from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ, Mary-Ellen returned to school and earned a MLIS in 2013. A part-time Reference Librarian at RBPL, she resides in Red Bank with her husband. Mary-Ellen considers herself fortunate to have raised two sons in Red Bank, a diverse community with great public schools.