Once you’ve got all your immediate family as done as you can – then you start working your way back into history.
I started with Census – Ancestry.com is a wonderful data base and wealth of information – it’s has changed over the past 18 years but for the better – I couldn’t of done all I’ve done without them ~
Ancestry.com is free to use and has a online Tree Maker you can use but it starts charging a fee monthly subscription to look at the documents (Census, records, etc) – If you are this point then I recommend the U.S .Collection monthly subscription it is I believe around $20.00/month but gives you full access to all United States Documents it has in it’s library – you are able to copy, save and attach them to anyone in your files unlimited~ Once you start going further back into history and foreign countries then you can subscribe to the World Deluxe Membership which is of course a lil more a month but this saves more time and money but doing it monthly thur them~
After Census I started looking for graves, obituaries and such – wealth of information. I used Find A Grave the most in my research.
One of my biggest helps was the local Historical Societies in the area’s I was researching – many will gladly help in anything you are looking up – sometimes there is a fee and sometimes they send it for free – it depends on how nice you talk to them.
Another help was local books published about the area – older books were of great help – I used Internet Archives Library – I was able to find 85% of old, old books thru them and download them and save them to my files.
Another wonderful site was thur Joyce Tice and her Tri-Counties Genealogy & History Site
"Ever Widening Circle" 