Genealogy can be a fun indoor activity. Rochester has a number of good resources for researching your family history, whether your family came from this area or not.
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Rochester Genealogical Society is a large, active group. They have monthly meetings at the Asbury First United Methodist Church on East Avenue.
The Local History and Genealogy room in the Rundel Memorial Library Building downtown has a good-sized collection of local histories, family genealogies, census microfilms, and other materials. These cover Rochester and Monroe County in particular, but there is also quite a bit of material on other parts of New York State, plus New England, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. These materials do not circulate.
There are three local churches in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) that have genealogical libraries. These are on Westfall Road in Brighton, on Kreag Road in Pittsford, and on Lake Road in Brockport. These are fairly small and have limited hours, but they are open to anyone, whether a member of the church or not. They have indexes to the huge collection of genealogical records that have been microfilmed by the LDS church. Patrons can order microfilmed copies of these records to view at the local libraries, for a modest fee.
The Monroe County NY GenWeb page has links to a number of genealogical resources in the area. NY GenWeb is part of USGenWeb, a volunteer project to create and maintain free genealogical web sites for every county in the United States.
One of the best free sites for on-line genealogical research is Cyndi's List. This amazing site has been compiled for over a decade by a Cyndi Howells, an enthusiastic amateur genealogist. It serves as a "card catalog" for genealogical sites on the Internet. It doesn't have any genealogical records itself, but it can help you find records and information on other sites. If you want to know more about how to get started with genealogy, or how to research your German ancestors, or how to do census research, there are links on Cyndi's List that will help you.
