Genealogy Links
Web resources for every genealogist
Ancestry.com
Mine your data from the documents, archives, indexes, photos, vital records, census records, and more. Build, save, and share your tree with a personal paid subscription, or use the free version of Ancestry at the Sacramento Public Library and FamilySearch Centers. (You cannot save your tree online at the library or FamilySearch Center, so bring a flash drive for that purpose.)
Beginning Genealogy, Part 1: Getting Started: Basic Ideas and Tools
Why research your family’s history? Many reasons: to satisfy your curiosity about your ancestors, to see if
family stories are true, to pass information to your family, to learn your family’s medical history, to join a
lineage or heritage society, for religious reasons, to write a family history! Identify your reasons.
Beginning Genealogy Part 2: Vital Records
Vital Records help establish the “framework” for your ancestor’s life.
Once you have set up this framework you will go back and fill in
information you find about the person from family stories, newspaper
articles, and other sources.
Beginning Genealogy Part 3: Census Records
The census helps you know where to look for other records. This guide will include the following information about census records:
● What census records are and why they are important to researchers.
● How census records were published in the United States.
● What types of information were recorded in the different censuses.
● How to find Federal and State census records.
Beginning Genealogy Part 4: Additional Resources
In this final part, we feature additional resources you might use to delve deeper into genealogy, learn more about sources and searching techniques, and/or get help. Add “genealogy” to Internet search terms like courses, podcasts, videos, blogs, newsletters - you get the picture.
Black Pearls of Genealogy
The Black Pearls of Genealogy (BPOG) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to preserving and honoring Black Family History through accessible genealogy tools.
California Digital Newspaper Collection
Repository of historical California newspapers published from 1846-present, including the first California newspaper, the Californian, and the first daily Californian newspaper, the Daily Alta California. It also contains issues of current California newspapers, collected as PDFs, that are part of a project to preserve and provide access to contemporary papers. In 2025, the Collection included 1,525,341 issues, comprising 23,449,221 pages and 53,713,870 articles.
California State Archives Collections
The California State Archives' collections document the broad scope of California government and its impact on the people of the state. Over 105,000 cubic feet of records of all types are represented including millions of documents and bound volumes, 20,000 maps and architectural drawings, 250,000 photographs, 7,500 video and audio tapes, as well as hundreds of artifacts.
California State Library
This library serves the California State Legislature, but contains collections of interest to genealogists. The California History Section includes an index and archive California newspapers on microfilm, and the Sutro Library in San Francisco has one of the largest genealogy collections in the United States.
Center for Sacramento History
Center for Sacramento History educates and enriches the public by collecting, preserving, and making accessible the region’s vast cultural heritage. We are the official repository and research center for historical city and county government records, and we house collections from individuals, families, businesses, and community organizations that chronicle the history of the Sacramento region.