Volunteers Dedicated to Free Genealogy


Our goal at Genealogy Trails is to help others track their ancestors through time by transcribing genealogical and historical data and placing it online for the free use of all researchers.

We're looking for people who share our dedication and wish to help our websites become useful research tools by transcribing data.

Team Member Requirements

"Free Genealogy" means we ALL work for free.

• First and foremost, you have to want to transcribe data.
• You need some basic typing skills. Accuracy is more important than speed.
• You need some sort of program to type into --- WORD will work or any program that can produce a plain text file. We need just straight typing, nothing fancy. We'll be copying/pasting your typing onto webpages and it'll lose all the fancy programming anyway, so you can just keep it simple!
• You'll also need a PDF reader --- Adobe is free and you probably have it on your computer already.

How does this Work?
We will provide team members with a .pdf file to transcribe from or a .doc file to proofread. Type it up or proofread it, whatever is required for that file. Once you transcribe or proofread your assignment, you will send it back to the Team Leader via email, who will then check to make sure it's complete. The Team Leader will then forward it to the proper county website host to be formatted and uploaded to the website. Your name will be added to that webpage as the transcriber. If you would like to remain anonymous, we'll credit the "Genealogy Trails Transcription Team"

If you just want to submit data and not join our group, that's COMPLETELY FINE TOO!!!
Data is data and we'll take it any way we can get it! Email Linda to get started.

Ready to Join Us?

1. Contact our Coordinator to let us know which area you're interested in. Our Coordinator will send you the password to view what data we have available.

2. You'll be sent a file from the Area Team Leader to work on, via email
(Make sure your email provider allows attachments! Earthlink users especially!)

3. Transcribe exactly as it is shown in the original document.
(Don't change any misspellings from the original documents. Any corrections or notes can be added in Parantheses)

4. Send the completed transcription back to your Team Leader via email, making sure that somewhere on the actual file you have cited the name of the original document you transcribed from.

5. Let the Team Leader know if you want another assignment or if you want to take a break :-)

It takes a bit of work to get these documents ready for typing and that's time away from OUR transcribing, so please respect the work done by our hosts by not posting or submitting the data to any other website.
Thanks for understanding!

If you have an idea for a transcription project, please clear it with the Team Leader of that area so we're not duplicating work and so we can confirm its copyright status.

Transciption Team Group Mailing List: SUBSCRIBE HERE

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© Genealogy Trails
All data on this website is Copyright by Genealogy Trails with full rights reserved for original submitters.