Resources

Over many years of searching for long-lost cousins on the web, these are the sites that I keep coming back to year after year:

Family Trees

• Ancestry - billions of searchable records and family trees
• FamilySearch - free LDS resources that are very extensive
• Geni - the collaborative World Family Tree where everyone is related
• WikiTree - a quickly growing free family tree to connect the entire human family
• MyHeritage - parent company of Geni, with great research and integration tools
• Findmypast - over a billion records from the British Isles

Tools

• Birthdate Calculator - find a birth date from the age of death and the date of death on a tombstone, death certificate or obituary
• One-Step Tools - a huge portal toolbox for online genealogy by Stephen P. Morse
• Cyndi's List -  a comprehensive, categorized, and cross-referenced list of genealogical research sites
• Place Research Tool - The new Place Research Tool from FamilySearch 

Cemetaries

• Find a Grave - find the graves of your ancestors in over 100 million grave records
• BillionGraves - join the worldwide effort by uploading, transcribing, or searching

Places

Berlin

Berlin Map and Flag

• Landesarchive Berlin - Berlin State Archive
• Birth-Marriage-Death Index - from Landesarchiv Berlin online (PDFs) 
• Berlin, Germany, Births, 1874-1908 - in German from Ancestry
• Berlin, Germany, Selected Marriages, 1874-1936 - in German from Ancestry
• Berlin, Germany, Selected Deaths, 1874-1955 - in German from Ancestry
• The Digital Collections of the ZLB - Berlin Central and Regional Library
• Berlin Address Books 1873-1943 - ZLB (Zentral und Landesbibliothek Berlin)

Baden-Wüttemberg

• Landesarchiv Baden-Wüttemberg - official German government archives
• Grave photos of Jewish cemeteries - Findbuch EL 228 b II: Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg: Dokumentation der jüdischen Grabsteine in Baden-Württemberg, Fotografien

Waibstadt

Waibstadt Coat of Arms

• 1815 surname adoption list for Waibstadt - from the Leo Baeck institute
• Burial register created in 1914 - collection J 386 Bü 605 at Landesarchiv Baden-Wüttemberg
• 1785 census of the Jews of Waibstadt - by Archbischopric of Speyer in about 1785, transcription of now destroyed original from Bruchsal
• Waibstadt birth, marriage and death records - click on "Alle" on the right, and scroll all the way down to the W's
• Jüdischer Friedhof Waibstadt - the Jewish cemetery of Waibstadt on Find-a-grave
• Grave photos of entire Jüdischer Friedhof Waibstadt - Findbuch EL 228 b II: Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg
• Chronological history of the Jews of Waibstadt - by Wolfgang Vögele and Ulrich Marowski
• The Jewish History of Waibstadt - pictures and information in German, by Dr. Joachim Hahn

Schlesien

• Maps - historic maps of the province of Schlesien 
• Silesian Digital Library -  large site with many collections

Breslau

• City Directories - Address and Business Directory for Breslau, 1884 to 1887
• Birth Records - searchable Breslau civil registration of birth records
• Standesamt Breslau I, II, and III - Index of the Breslau civil records currently online

Reichenbach

• Kirchenbuchduplikat, 1811-1870 - Catholic church records for Dzierżoniów from FamilySearch.org [online, but available at centers only]
• Zivilstandsregister, 1874-1888 -  Civil registrations of birth, marriage, and death records for Reichenbach [online, available at Family Research Centers only]

Stadt Posen, Posen

Posen Coat of Arms

• The Poznan Project - Marriage database for Posen province, 1800-1899.
• BaSIA - the sister site to the Poznan Project, with Births, Marriages, and Deaths linked to images in the State Archive
• City of Posen Population Census - indexed card records from 1870 to 1931 
• City of Posen File - collection 53/474/0 Akta miasta Poznania
• SEZAM and ZoSIA - Polish State database search page
• Naturalized Jews of the Grand Duchy of Posen in 1834 and 1835 - by Edward David Luft
• Posen Adressbuchs indexed links - Address books for Posen, 1835-1941 in djvu formats
• Posen Adressbuchs on archive.org - Address books for Posen, 1835-1941 in various formats including pdf

Schroda, Posen (Środa)

• Film 1857841 Item 3 - Familienregister naturalisierte Kinder 1840-1847  

Lissa, Posen

Lissa Coat of Arms

• Civil Births 1874-1914 in Lissa - The Leszno Registry Archives has scanned all their German birth records for the Archiwum Państwowe w Lesznie  
• Civil Marriages 1874-1903 in Lissa - The Leszno Registry Archives German marriage records 
• Civil Deaths 1874-1912 in Lissa - The Leszno Registry Archives German death records 
• The Poznan Project - Marriage database for Posen province, including Lissa, from 1800-1899; once you find the marriage year and number use the links above to see images

Thorn

• Torun Indexing Status - currently there is only one LDS film for Landkreis Thorn, Westpreußen (now Toruń, Poland)
• Grudziadz Indexing Status - status for the nearby town of Graudenz (now Grudziądz, Poland
• Toruń State Archives - The History of the State Archives in Toruń

Pommern / Westpreußen

• Pommern Search Index - searchable index of records for Pommern
• Metryki GenBaza - birth, marriage, and death scans of vital record registers

Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein Coat of Arms

• Introduction to Wittgenstein - A nicely written introduction to the history of Wittgenstein
• Wittgenstein Heritage Society - dedicated to searching the archives and publishing history
• Map - big map of the area
• Wittgenstein Genealogy - Workgroup for the Genealogy of Wittgenstein
• Kreis Wittgenstein - German Wikipedia article on Kreis Wittgenstein

St. Blazey

• The Saint Blazey Families - a one place study for the town of St. Blazey, Cornwall, England
• The Parish of St. Blazey - database from the online Parish clerks of Cornwall

Jewish

• JewishGen - the largest Jewish Genealogy site 
• Jewish Families of Germany - Jews in the northern part of the former German Reich

Holocaust

Holocaust Symbol

• Yad Vashem - the central database of Shoah victims
• Das Bunderarchiv Memorial Book - victims of the Nazi persecution of jews
• Joods Monument -  Dutch digital monument to those lost from the Netherlands
• Holocaust.cz - Czech site with searchable database
• The Holocaust Museum - Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database
• Holocaust Encyclopedia - from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Auschwitz-Birkenau - memorial, museum, and online database
• Mapping Their Lives - new location of the May 1939 German Minority Census
• Tracing The Past - Source for Mapping Their Lives, with Ergänzungskarte (family cards) listing Jewish background of each resident's four grandparents
• ID cards for Mainz, 1939 - photo ID cards (Kennkarten) for many Jews living in Mainz.