If you do not scribe to ancestry.com, which is expensive or have access to Heritage Quest for free, I think the best free records is at the LDS Family Search website. It includes the census records, federal and state, many with images attached, many marriage, birth and death records. Depending on the state many of the marriage, birth and death records have an image attached. 

The LDS have said they intend to put all the records they have in their Granite Mountain storage site on the Internet this would include the milllions county records. They are constantly adding new records.

I agree that many of the family trees on the LDS website are terrible and have many, many errors, I don't use the website for the family trees but for the actual records many of which are available no where else on the Internet. The Temple ready records I ignore. I fully expect that my name will appear on their website as Temple ready after my death with my official birth date but not my actual one because the date on my birth certificate is incorrect.

Other great sites are those of the USGENWEB Archives Projects that they have for just about every county in the US.

I must say that some states are much better with access to their records that others. The worst I have encountered is Kansas where you have to prove you are related to the individual you are seeking info on or you get nothing no matter how old the record is. Some of the best are Georgia's Virtual Vault and West Virginia's Archives and History website. 

There are not many people that are 110 years old and I don't think anyone is trying to steal their identity. Isn't it about time that our legislators and record keepers have a little common sense? If they want to make money off the records, as many do, then charge a reasonable copy fee for the information and not try to gouge the public.

Clay

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