Your best bet at GeneaNet is searching for ancestors with an uncommon last name and restricting the search based on birth and death dates. The site also gives options for searching on locality, sub-region, and region. The free search, however, does not permit you to seach both birth and death locations at the same time.
I did find information using GeneaNet that I have not found anywhere else. GeneaNet pointed me to a website where one of my ancestors was referenced. The source was a book I had not heard of. That was a wonderful find.
A unique feature of GeneaNet is the ability to specify the minimum number of individuals with a specific family name in a given database. For example, I may want only the databases that have 10 or more occurrences of "Barry." This feature can be especially handy if you are searching a fairly common family name, but only want those pedigrees that are the main line of that name.
How to Search GeneaNet for Family Trees
- Best Way to Search: Go to Active Searches for easier searching. At the Active Searches page, you need only to enter your ancestor data once to search all the websites listed at the left. Active Searches is a free service that creates the optimal searches for your ancestor data.
- Manually search GeneaNet yourself. This will open a new window so you can refer back to the search hints above.
GeneaNet Website Capabilities
See the definition of terms for any questions on the meaning of the entries.
| x | free searches |
| x | free viewing of pedigrees |
| paid viewing | |
| x | free downloads of pedigrees |
| paid downloads | |
| x | contact information for submitter |
| ability to see all the names submitted by a particular researcher | |
| ability to restrict searches to updates since a specific time | |
| searches with spouse's name | |
| searches with parent's names | |
| searches by place of birth | |
| searches by place of marriage | |
| searches by place of death | |
| x | searches by country |
| x | searches by state, province, or political subdivision |
| x | searches by date |
| x | ability to specify date ranges for searching |
| x | searches by exact spelling of name |
| searches by metaphone | |
| searches by soundex | |
| ability to automatically find possible matches in your ancestry |