Fly or drive to the nearest city that has a national Archives, check into a hotel, have a good breakfast, take a taxi to the building. Find the microfilm reel that you are interested in, put it in the reader and start transcribing. Go back to the hotel when the archives close at 5, repeat the next day. Repeat the whole process in City #2 if the archives at City #1 don’t have, for instance, US Passport Applications 1827 – 1955.

Ancestry is selling convenience, not data.

On the same note, if you tell me what county you live in, I can send you a link, so you can transcribe obituaries for people, so they can see them for free. I do it 1 – 5 times month in my county, and I’m a piker. There are people on find-a-grave who do 10 – 20 a day.

If you aren’t willing to do that – or some other act of genealogical kindness – stop complaining.

For instance, Ancestry.Com has had people to go into libraries, state vital records offices, county offices and obtaiin vital records and put them on line. They have also obtain military records and immigrations records. That cost money and they have to pay people to do that.

They also have to pay people to program the computer system and maintain it.

You can still get the information for free if you want to travel all over the country go to county offices, state offices and libraries. It will cost you GASOLINE, motel or hotel rooms, eating out expenses. You can write and you will be expected to pay those offices for looking up the records and making copies for you and then after sending a SASE you might not hear from them.

Now, the family trees on the genealogy websites are subscriber submitted. That means someone else has done the work. Also you must not take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on ANY website, free or not free. Usually, they are not documented or poorly documented. Even if you see the same information on the same people from many different subscribers that is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying. There are errors in online family trees.

However, what you are paying for is the convenience of going into the records sites like Ancestry.Com has obtained in the convenience of your own home. You can still get them without subscribing to their website but you have to go and get them.

Now, your public library might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com that you can use during their hours.