12.  RootsWeb

Now owned by Ancestry.com, but free to users, RootsWeb has been around for a long time. Begun as a privately owned site run by volunteers, you can still volunteer to submit records to RootsWeb through the Volunteer link on the site. RootsWeb has a variety of free genealogical resources, including original records organized by state, lists of private genealogy websites run by individuals that are dedicated to particular families, lists of genealogy mailing lists you can subscribe to, links to message boards dealing with genealogy, online family trees, and research templates to help you keep your own research organized. It’s all free for your use!