Pennsylvania Genealogy – Free Pennsylvania Genealogy

Pennsylvania Genealogy. This state page of our website provides direct links to free Pennsylvania genealogy databases and historical titles and information found on Pennsylvania Genealogy, whether they exist on our site, or across the web.

Pennsylvania Black Genealogy

Pennsylvania Cemeteries

Pennsylvania Census Records

Pennsylvania Church Records

The William Wade Hinshaw index to Pennsylvania Quaker meeting records
These monthly meeting records were abstracted from the original Pennsylvania Quaker Monthly Meeting records in the 1930’s by William Wade Hinshaw of Washington, D. C. They are a transcription of the microfilmed records containing birth, death, burial, and marriage records, as well as meeting minutes, removals and certificates.

Philadelphia Congregations Early Records
When completed, the Philadelphia Congregations Early Records project will offer over 41,000 pages of records from Philadelphia’s oldest congregations, connecting the archives of Christ Church, St. George’s Methodist Church, Gloria Dei, Mikveh Israel, African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Episcopal Dioceses Archives, Presbyterian Historical Society, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and American Baptist Historical Society. Digitized materials include minutes, account books, birth, marriage, death, and burial registers.

Burial Records of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, 1758-1902

Burial Records of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, 1900-1921

Burial Records of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, 1921-1948

Burial Records of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, 1949-1976

Pennsylvania County Genealogy

Organization of Counties in Pennsylvania
Organization of counties in Pennsylvania and those from which formed. Includes genealogical map of the counties of Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Genealogy

Pennsylvania History

Index to Warrants Written but Not Issued, Warrants Signed but Not Pursued, Deputy Counterparts, and Related Records

Names of foreigners who took the oath of allegiance to the province and state of Pennsylvania, 1727-1775
A list of foreigners who took the oath of allegiance to the crown of Great Britain and the Province of Pennsylvania, from the year 1727 to 1775, with those to the State from the close of the Revolution. All males over sixteen years of age were obliged to take this oath and declaration, as soon after their arrival as possible.

Southwestern Pennsylvania School Teachers

Ephraim Douglass ledger books, 1769-1790
The Ephraim Douglass Ledgers present a record of business and military activities undertaken by Ephraim Douglass in Western Pennsylvania. The information contained within dates primarily from the 1770s and illuminates aspects of life in Western Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War era. The ledgers reveal the foods, household items, and services in demand by colonists on what was, at the time, the western frontier. Douglass and his associates have meticulously recorded details of the transactions.

Pennsylvania Land Records

Warrantees of land in the several counties of the state of Pennsylvania
The lists of warrantees of land in the several counties of the Commonwealth are copied from the original record books in the Land Office of the Department of Internal Affairs. Only the names of the warrantees with number of acres and dates of warrant are given. They will serve however as a valuable guide to all desiring information from that Department.

Pennsylvania Military Records

Military Records

Pennsylvania Indian Forts
Examine and report to the next session of the Legislature upon the advisability of marking by suitable tablets the various forts erected against the Indians by the early settlers of this Commonwealth prior to the year 1783.

Pennsylvania Forts
List of colonial forts, trading posts, named camps, redoubts, reservations, general hospitals, national cemeteries, etc., established or erected in the United States from its earliest settlement to 1902.

Revolutionary War

1840 Pensioners Census

Revolutionary War Pension Records

Revolutionary War Military Abstract Card File
Arranged alphabetically by surname of soldier. The abstract card file contains transcriptions of data extracted from original records in the custody of the State Archives concerning Revolutionary War service in the Pennsylvania Militia, Pennsylvania Line, and the Navy. Note that duty after November 1783 is not considered Revolutionary War service. Information provided is name and rank of soldier, whether active or inactive duty, county of residence, battalion in which served, and record from which information was extracted. Also noted are whether soldier was delinquent and fined or whether militia fines were abated.

Civil War Records

Pennsylvania Civil War Battlefield Map

Civil War Pensions Index Cards
Each card gives the soldier’s name, unit, the application number, the certificate number and the state from which the soldier served. In some cases, the soldier’s rank, terms of service, date of death and place of death are given. The index cards refer to pension applications of veterans who served in the U.S. Army between 1861 and 1917. The majority of the records pertain to Civil War veterans, but they also include veterans of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, Indian wars, and World War I.

Spanish American War

Mexican Border War

World War I Records

World War 1 Draft Registration Records

World War II Records

World War 2 Casualties – Army, Air Force

Pennsylvania Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard World War II Casualty List

Korean War Casualty List

Vietnam War Casualty List

Pennsylvania Native American Records

Pennsylvania Newspapers

Pennsylvania Orphan Records

Lutheran Orphans’ Home and Asylum, Germantown PA 1892-1914
Philadelphia has been justly noted for its many charitable and benevolent institutions. Among these the “Orphans’ Home and Asylum for the Aged and Infirm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Germantown” holds a conspicuous place. When so many children were made orphans during the late war, this institution was among the first to open its doors for these soldiers’ orphans, and 98 were admitted up to the time when the State provided homes for them. Including with these reports are names and ages of the orphans who were present during the year.

Pennsylvania Vital Records

Pennsylvania Yearbooks and School Records

Chatham University Publications
This collection contains publications from the Chatham University Archives, including the long-running alumni magazine, campus literary magazines, select issues of the student newspaper, yearbooks 1915-2010, course catalogs, and a history of the institution’s first ninety years. All of these books, can be read, and/or downloaded from this page for free!

Pennsylvania Genealogy Websites

United States Genealogy

  • Pennsylvania Genealogy
    Pennsylvania Genealogy is being developed as a genealogical and historical resource for your personal use. It contains information and records for Pennsylvania ancestry, family history, and genealogy. Specifically, it provides sources for birth records, death records, marriage records, census records, tax records, court records, and military records. It also provides some historical details about different times and people in Pennsylvania history.
  • Kathi Reid’s Pennsylvania Websites
    Kathi Reid has placed online her websites various Pennsylvania genealogy material. This page links directly to that material. Her website contains various history and biographical material for Bucks, Butler, Centre, Clinton, Erie, Fayette, Lycoming, and Schuylkill counties as well as Pennsylvania military records.
  • PAGenWeb – Pennsylvania GenWeb
    PAGenWeb is created by a group of volunteers as part of the USGenWeb Project working together to provide free genealogy websites for genealogical research in every county in Pennsylvania. This Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free genealogy access for everyone.
  • Pennsylvania AHGP

New Pennsylvania Genealogy

PAGenWeb – Pennsylvania GenWeb

PAGenWeb is created by a group of volunteers as part of the USGenWeb Project working together to provide free genealogy websites for genealogical research in every county in Pennsylvania. This Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free genealogy access for everyone.
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Kathi Reid’s Pennsylvania Websites

Kathi Reid has placed online her websites various Pennsylvania genealogy material. This page links directly to that material. Her website contains various history and biographical material for Bucks, Butler, Centre, Clinton, Erie, Fayette, Lycoming, and Schuylkill counties as well as Pennsylvania military records.
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Pennsylvania Digital Archives

These databases comprise part of the Pennsylvania Digital Archives from the state government. We’ve only included those databases and documents which are most relevant to genealogists. All of them are free for you to use.
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Wistar Family: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Caspar Wistar, Emigrant in 1717

The book “Wistar Family: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Caspar Wistar, Emigrant in 1717” delves into the fascinating history of the Wistar family, tracing its roots back to Caspar Wistar, who was born on February 3, 1696, to Hans Caspar and Anna Catharina Wüster in Hilspach, near Heidelberg in the Electorate of the Rhenish Palatinate. Caspar’s father served as a huntsman or forester for the Prince Palatine, a position that was hereditary in their family.
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The Michael Fetter Family

Welcome to a journey through the annals of time, one that is deeply rooted in the lives of the Fetters family and the world they inhabited. The History of the Michael Fetters family, a culmination of a quarter-century worth of research, is an enriching tapestry of generational experiences, shared ambitions, and compelling stories that echo through centuries. This book invites you to traverse a fascinating timeline, beginning with an announcement of the discovery of the 1703/04 baptism of Johann Michael Vetter in Freinsheim, Germany. We then explore the lives of Vetter and his siblings, journeying with them as they brave…
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Genealogy of the Sharpless family

Five years after the great family bi-centennial reunion held on 25 August 1882 in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Gilbert Cope published his massive volume on the 200 years of Sharpless family ancestry in America, called “Genealogy of the Sharpless family : descended from John and Jane Sharples, settlers near Chester, Pennsylvania, 1682 : together with some account of the English ancestry of the family, including the results of researches by Henry Fishwick, F.H.S., and the late Joseph Lemuel Chester, LL.D. : and a full report of the bi-centennial reunion of 1882.”. This monumental, well-researched tome sought to answer the genealogical and…
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Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrants

This article helps you access the Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrants for free. Following two simple steps, one to search, and the other to browse the actual microfilms, you can quickly find your ancestors Revolutionary War pension record, or Bounty-Land record and download the images. During 1800-1900 the United States issued more than 80,000 pensions and bounty-land-warrants to soldiers of the Revolutionary War, their spouse, or their children. Was your ancestor one of them?
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Pennsylvania German Pioneers

This set of manuscripts was compiled in the 1930s by Strassburger and Hinke in order to provide the descendants of Pennsylvania German pioneers a publication of the most accurate of original lists of arrivals. In order to do this they transcribed the hard-to-read German and American script of the passenger lists, oaths of allegiance to the Crown, and oaths of abjuration and fidelity to the proprietors. These three types of records form the basis for the Pennsylvania German Pioneers.
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Bentleysville

Bentleysville was a rural community of three hundred persons in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1868. It had grown around a mill that Sheshbazzar Bentley Junior and Senior operated on the southern branch of Pigeon Creek. Its history is short because as a country village it existed less than a century. The events are substantially in chronological order, beginning with the settlers over the mountains in 1750 and ending after the Centennial in 1916.
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The William Wade Hinshaw index to Pennsylvania Quaker meeting records

These monthly meeting records were abstracted from the original Pennsylvania Quaker Monthly Meeting records in the 1930’s by William Wade Hinshaw of Washington, D. C. They are a transcription of the microfilmed records containing birth, death, burial, and marriage records, as well as meeting minutes, removals and certificates. After Hinshaw’s death, the unpublished material was deposited at the Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. This collection is known as the William Wade Hinshaw Index to Quaker Meeting Records. The following record has been transcribed from a microfilm copy of this Index. As this copy is several generations removed from the…

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Abbe-Abbey Genealogy

The “Abbe-Abbey Genealogy” serves as a comprehensive and meticulously compiled homage to the heritage of the Abbe and Abbey families, tracing its roots back to John Abbe and his descendants. Initiated by the life-long passion of Professor Cleveland Abbe, this genealogical exploration began in his youth and expanded throughout his illustrious career, despite numerous challenges. It encapsulates the collaborative efforts of numerous family members and researchers, including significant contributions from individuals such as Charles E. Abbe, Norah D. Abbe, and many others, each bringing invaluable insights and data to enrich the family’s narrative.
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The Turner Family Magazine

In 1916 and 1917, William Montgomery Clemens edited a series of pamphlets called the Turner Family Magazine. It was meant to be a genealogical, historical and biographical magazine about the Turner family across the United States. That series of magazines was later published in 1920 as a complete bound volume. This is what this book is.
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