And how far back you are looking. Recent records can be hard to access due to privacy concerns. Older records can be non-existent. FamilyHSearch.org (https://www.familysearch.org/) has some, but beware of user submitted information since there is no checking to see if those trees are accurate. Fold3.com (http://www.fold3.com/) has US military and some Indian (especially Cherokee) info but not much vital records. Some states and/or counties have online archives, some have good sites on the USGenWeb (http://usgenweb.org/) or USGenWeb Archives (http://www.usgwarchives.net/).

If you want stuff looked up on Ancestry, let me know - I have a World membership and can try to find what you need.

and no one is left alive (both of my father's parents died when he was still a kid)

I know his mother's name, her parent's name (both) and that's it. I believe the Native American link comes from my paternal grandmother's maternal grandmother. My grandmother died in 1956 or 7 at the young age of 33.

Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Though be warned - lots of families think there are Native American roots when there are not.

If you send me the info soon, that would be good. Dec. 10 I go in for carpal tunnel surgery. I'll still be doing stuff, but with my dominant hand in a splint, typing will be slow.

I just found out that one of my ancestors was an interpreter for Gov. Winthrope of the Plymouth Colony and acted as a delegate between the English and the Indians very often. He is on colonial records in Massachusetts and Connecticut as an interpreter from 1638 to his death in 1688. Three of his sons were also interpreters! That is the second family I've found in my grandmother's line with colonial era interpreters - the other was in Pennsylvania.

Thank you *SO* very much.

but you're limited to what's available; The LDS site is a good place to start, for free (a lot of the records you'll get in your search results may require payment to view, though); start with what you know (names of great-grandparents, if known, or great-great-grandparents) and work your way back; the census data is a good place to look and can be correlated with marriage, birth and death records (note that censuses prior to 1850 don't list all the inhabitants of a household, only the head of household and number of inhabitants by sex and age range).