The Ancestor Hunt regularly adds and updates new collection links, as well as searches for and fixes broken links.
(This page's most recent update is May 2026)
Practical solutions for real genealogy research problems. Explore the new Field Guides
PICRYL is a massive public-domain search engine with over 25 million images, making it one of the largest free visual history platforms in the world. While most genealogists have never heard of it, PICRYL can provide something that traditional genealogy databases cannot: Photographs and illustrations that visually reconstruct the world your ancestors lived in.
Even if you never find a photograph of an ancestor, PICRYL lets you discover images that show what their world actually looked like. This Quicksheet explains how to search PICRYL effectively, where genealogical clues hide, and how to avoid common pitfalls.
Download the Quicksheet
To obtain the five-page Quicksheet PDF for easy reference, you can download it by clicking on the Download button:
For all the previously published Quick Reference Guides, click on QuickSheets.
If you use Quicksheets often, the Quicksheet Vault puts 390+ of them in one organized place — clean, printable, and easy to reuse whenever you need them. Whether you keep digital references handy or build your own genealogy binder, the Vault makes research simpler. Learn more about the Quicksheet Vault HERE