There are many online search engines that are now available, which could aid someone who would want to delve into family history work. Examples are: - Lists of Passengers on a Ship (as much as 10,000 passenger lists are available to be perused)- examples are Irish passenger lists to Canada and the US, Hamburg Emigration list, Germans from Russia to Canadian and US ports, US Immigration records on Ellis Island, Bremen in Germany to US list, Australian list. The same can be done if the place where the relative worked was in a church or in a hospital since most of these organizations usually have a website that feature its history and current projects. If the specialized websites were not that successful, another thing worth checking out is Ancestry.com. This has information way beyond the first world war especially when a lot of immigrants left Europe in the hopes of something better in the new world. These also hold an advantage over other documents since these will provide you an intimate look at the relationships of your ancestors. Interviews with people who've had contact with little-known family members can also bring some positive results. The only disadvantage is that it will require more research, interviewing, corroboration of information provided and some travel. Back then, our ancestors only use leaves and other herbs to treat wounds and infections because they still don t have the so-called antibiotics back then. We are still using this tradition in treating illnesses especially the Chinese people. If you will just trace the origin of medicines, you will be amaze that most of it actually came from herbs and plants but with modifications. It offers 140 versions of international search engines. MSN can also be a good source. The site that claims to have the biggest collection of family history (which comes in free, thank goodness!) is FamilySearch.org. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints own this site. The site has an assistant that could help the researcher on things like getting started, downloading forms that are useful to the search (pedigree charts or family group records), showing records that are relevant to the family name search (census and vital records, marriage and even death records) and the most important to you: the category on family organizations and surnames. Step four is about the slavery and owner s research. Once you found your ancestor s slave owner, you need to track their records to know what they did about their properties. The logic behind this is that slaves are part of the owner s property. Research on their probate records, wills, bills of sale, plantation records, and advertisements of runaway slaves from newspapers.