Understanding TXGenWeb
What You May Not Find Here — and Why
Free Resources, Built by Volunteers
What TXGenWeb Can — and Cannot — Provide
We want TXGenWeb county sites to be as useful as possible, but there are practical, privacy, and copyright limits on what our volunteers can provide. Knowing those limits can help you make better use of the project.
We Can't Do Your Research for You
TXGenWeb, USGenWeb, and their county and state sites are maintained by volunteers. Coordinators spend their available time maintaining websites, sharing resources, answering questions, and preserving information for everyone.
Some counties may have volunteers who offer simple lookups, but TXGenWeb volunteers are not expected to conduct extensive personal genealogical research.
We Protect Information About Living People
Genealogy sites can contain information that was contributed many years ago. Whenever possible, TXGenWeb avoids publishing unnecessary personal information about living people.
A county site may link to an outside website that contains information about living individuals. Those outside sites are not controlled by TXGenWeb, and their content and privacy practices may differ from ours.
We Must Respect Copyright
TXGenWeb cannot simply republish books, cemetery inventories, articles, photographs, databases, or other copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder.
When useful material cannot legally be reproduced, a county site may instead link to the source, tell researchers where it can be found, or offer a lookup when a volunteer has access to the publication.