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FamilySearch is a free online genealogical database created and run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You will need to create an individual account order to access the site. You can do so here.
The two places on the site you will use the most are Records (aka searching for specific family records) and Research Wiki.
The Research Wiki is a great resource to help introduce you to the kinds of records you might be able to find and use on a particular place, or type of group. For example, researching African American ancestors requires some extra ingenuity. Reading up on what sources to check, may help you push things further back.
Always choose “More options” so that you can also select “exact search”
Family search also allows truncated/* searches and wildcard/? searches
Familysearch’s search box is a little more awkward to use, especially if you are not on a laptop. It is organized vertically and you need to get down far enough to toggle the “Show exact search on” And still, you need to check that you want to use “exact search” with each search field you want to use—here three different checks after you toggle into “Show exact search”. This search with exact search gives us 20 results to look at. If we hadn’t checked exact results we would have had to look at 767 results. More is definitely not better when you are trying to identify a specific person.
