When you start exploring a new-to-you homeland, it’s easy to feel a bit lost. You don’t know what records are available, or how to find and access them. If the records are in another language, you may not know how to read them. And if the history or culture is unfamiliar, you can’t place your family’s experience in a wider context.
In fact, exploring your family history in a foreign homeland is not unlike planning to travel there. Travelers spend a lot of time looking at maps, learning new words, and absorbing local lore. But if you were actually traveling there, you could learn your way around from expert guides, fellow travelers, and the locals.
For some homelands, expert genealogy guides are available—in fact, they appear regularly in the pages of this magazine. But if your ancestors came from farther-flung places, you may struggle to find current, comprehensive how-to resources. And even if you can find guides, you may wonder what you’re missing.
FamilySearch Research Wiki home page
Here, we offer a whirlwind tour of wikis and web resources to help you find ancestors from anywhere—including places that don’t tend to be covered by how-to genealogy guides. We’ll point to records, repositories, how-to resources, and online communities that provide research paths from Nigeria to
