Pennsylvania, United States Genealogy

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Origin of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania began as a British colony in 1681 when King Charles II appointed William Penn (1644-1718) proprieter. Pennsylvania was the second state admitted to the Union in 1787. Colony, and later state boundary lines, were in dispute for many years, and often lead to bloodshed (i.e. Cresap's War). The Mason-Dixon Line was the result of one of these disputes. Philadelphia served as the capitol of the United States from 1790 to 1800.

Did you know

 * PAGenWeb This non-profit orginization is the oldest free Pennsylvania genealogy federation of sites on the Internet. Their transcribed records are  available to the public for free in every area of Pennsylvania genealogy and history.


 * PA-Roots, a non-profit organization, offers free access to its transcribed records projects, including vital records, military records, newspaper articles, obituaries, and county histories of Pennsylvania.
 * FamilySearch Record Search offers over 25,846 unindexed digital images of Philadelphia marriage records.
 * Pennsylvania is the only Union state in the Civil War to have an existing file showing names of men who were conscientious objectors for religious reasons. The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania lists them in a free database.
 * The Israel Daniel Rupp Collection of 30,000 early Pennsylvania immigrants from 1727-1776 is digitized in PDF form. Get it at the BYU Family History Archives.


 * FamilyHart Pennsylvania Dutch Online Database This online family database has the largest collection of Pennsylvania Dutch names on the Internet.  It currenlty has over 630,000 names online.  It grows by 1,000 names per week, and is updated online quarterly.


 * Harry Senft York and Adams County Cemetery Pictures This site has 100s of 1000s of headstone pictures from over 200 cemeteries in York, Adams, and Cumberland Counties.  Indexing of these headstone pictures is currently taking place.  Map links are also included for easy finding of these cemeteries.

Research Tools

 * Find the county a town is in by using the United States Geographical Survey's Geographical Names Information System.
 * Pennsylvania county creation dates and parent counties.
 * Ask a question about how to find Pennsylvania ancestors at the North America Research forum!
 * View historic Pennsylvania maps in the David Rumsey Map Collection.
 * Find other Pennsylvania genealogy websites at Cyndi's List - Pennsylvania.
 * Ancestor Tracks has posted free, downloadable 19-century landowner maps for approximately 85% of the counties of PA (scroll down to Pennsylvania map and hover over counties for contents)

Pennsylvania counties
Extinct or Renamed Counties: | Ontario |

Things you can do
In order to make this wiki a better research tool, we need your help! Many tasks need to be done. You can help by:


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