OneGreatFamily Blog

• How OneGreatFamily Is Different From Other Genealogy Services

  1/23/2013 5:28:00 PM

  OneGreatFamily.com has been online since 2002, which is significantly longer than a majority of the other genealogy websites. From the very beginning, our services have been quite revolutionary to the genealogy community. Surprisingly, there are critical components of our services that have never been duplicated by others and make it critical for anyone who is even partially serious about doing their genealogy or building their family tree to have and maintain a subscription to OneGreatFamily. We have come up with 3 Core Concepts that explain what makes us so unique and how our cutting-edge, yet simple, approach to genealogy can greatly help you in building your family tree.

  Concept 1: OneGreatFamily is a Single Global Family Tree 

  OneGreatFamily is a single, global family tree which everyone helps to build. It's not just a collection of individual trees that people work on alone. This means that when ANYONE works on OneGreatFamily, they are also working on your tree, and when you work on your tree on OneGreatFamily, you are collaborating with others to explore their family trees. 
  
  As OneGreatFamily members add to the global family tree, the system searches to see if any of the names submitted could be your ancestors. Even if we find some of your ancestors today, we may find more in a week, a month, or a year. Just think; while you're concentrating on a maternal line, OneGreatFamily may identify a breakthrough on your paternal side! Your next step forward could come when you are sleeping, making dinner, or enjoying an evening out with friends, all thanks to the efforts of tens of thousands of OneGreatFamily members.

  Concept 2: OneGreatFamily Searches and Sifts For You

  OneGreatFamily automatically does all the "search and sift" work for you. Let's face it, most of the effort being done on other genealogy websites is essentially "search and sift", where you initiate a search and then have to start sifting through the tens of thousands of matches you get back. Obviously, most of these possible matches will be wrong and a few may clearly be right. The rest have to be sorted and checked.
  
  OneGreatFamily does all this tedious work for you. We compare all the people you enter into your family tree against every other person in the OneGreatFamily single, global family tree. Then, we sift the results and alert you of possible matches, which we like to call "Hints". Instead of endlessly sifting through obviously incorrect search results, OneGreatFamily focuses your attention and effort on likely matches. Also, when we find two individuals who are obviously the same person on trees submitted by different members, based on our patent-pending matching algorithms, we don't even bother you with them. Instead we automatically merge the two identical records together to combine their trees and eliminate the duplication. This avoids the even-more-painful task of having to approve dozens or even hundreds of obvious matches. It is this process of automatic merging that could end up adding thousands of ancestors to your branch of the tree.

  Concept 3: OneGreatFamily Handles Different Opinions

  OneGreatFamily easily handles differences of opinion. Sometimes genealogists disagree. Perhaps there is documentation supporting multiple dates for the same event or even regarding parentage. Since all evidence is valuable, we built OneGreatFamily to handle these situations. These discrepancies are called "conflicts". OneGreatFamily will never force you to accept someone else's information, nor someone else to accept yours. We call this View Preservation, because your view of your tree is always preserved for you.
  
  Now, there are two primary types of conflicts: informational and relational. Informational conflicts occur when a fact is in dispute, perhaps a birth date or a marriage location. Relational conflicts occur when a family relationship is in question. In resolving both types of conflicts, you will be presented with your information and the conflicting information. You will then be given a choice to 1) accept the alternate information presented, 2) clear the conflict, which means you are satisfied with your information and no longer want to consider any alternative information, or 3) cancel for now, which will allow you to postpone making a choice until you can find more information.

  Dive into OneGreatFamily and see what we can do for your family tree.

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• OneGreatFamily: Simply Put...

  10/12/2012 8:00:00 AM

  So, what are you getting when you buy a OneGreatFamily subscription? Simply put, you are paying for a service that searches across millions of family tree names to find duplicates and then merge, or combine, those duplicates into a single tree. If you are researching a specific line, wouldn't you like to know if someone else, a distant cousin perhaps, has already completed the research. If that distant cousin has entered their tree into our system, it would take us hardly any time at all to merge matching names from their tree into yours. Additionally, we'd enable you to collaborate with that cousin to work on a combined research plan to continue working on the next road block.

  As an added bonus to your subscription, we give you full access to our PC-based genealogy software, GenealogyBrowser. To this day, GenealogyBrowser remains the only genealogy software on the market that allows you to view your entire family tree at the same time with our patented Starfield view. With our Handprint view, you can see all the immediate relationships of an individual in a quick glance, making it easy to see where the holes are.

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• Meet Your Distant Cousins at OneGreatFamily

  10/3/2012 10:00:00 AM

  Researching Your Ancestors' Siblings May Help Your Family Tree

  
  A family tree is a pretty basic concept to understand; two ancestors have children, their children have children, and so forth, down to the present day with you and me. Each set of children is what we refer to as a generation. Each generation adds more branches to the tree.
  
  Your direct ancestral line comes through only one of the children of each of your ancestors. Did you ever stop to think about the descendants of the other children? Not only will you find that many other researchers connect to your same ancestors, but you may even connect to the same ancestor more than once. Depending on how many generations back the common ancestor is, there may be hundreds or thousands of descendants alive today. One may be your neighbor, your friend, or even your spouse!

  Another advantage to researching collateral lines is that it could result in adding more ancestors to your family tree. As you meet and collaborate with your distant cousins they may have information and stories about your ancestors. Collateral lines are one of the most neglected areas of research on other genealogy websites, but it here that OneGreatFamily users have experienced some of the greatest success as trees from collateral lines are combined into theirs.
  
  When submitting your family tree to OneGreatFamily, make sure you include as many relationships as possible. Sibling relationships are very important to include at OneGreatFamily because relationships are the primary source of information for OneGreatFamily to be able to match your genealogy with those that have been submitted by others. Accurate dates and places for events, while important, are not as valuable as actual family relationships, although it certainly helps and is encouraged.
  
  How do I reverse engineer my family tree?
  
  Let's start with reverse engineering a smaller family tree to better understand the concept. Suppose your grandparents on your father's side had five children. Being a child to any one of the five children would make you a cousin to the children of any of the other five siblings. The concept of "reverse engineering" your family tree is to look at all of the collateral information that is available in your family tree. Start by tracing your family tree back to a common ancestor (your grandfather in this case). Now, instead of looking at your father and your family, trace the descendancy of one of his siblings.
  
  With OneGreatFamily, you can easily "Reverse Engineer Your Family Tree" and see just who you are related to. Collateral lines often help fill gaps with your own direct ancestral line.
  
  What are the benefits of reverse engineering my family tree?
  
  Reverse engineering your family tree allows you to find relatives that you otherwise may not have found. Families tend to migrate together, so finding a brother, sister, or cousin of your ancestor may lead to the discovery of records for YOUR direct-line ancestor as well. You can also see if any of your direct-line ancestors have any famous descendants by tracing the various lines of descendancy. Some of the most exciting relations that you can find are relatives that are still living today!
  
  With OneGreatFamily, not only can you trace these lines to your distant relatives, but you can also communicate with many of them! When you find a living relative, or any ancestor for that matter, you can use the Collaboration feature to get in touch with the submitter.
  
  For those genealogists who are dedicated to finding their direct ancestors, reverse engineering can also be particularly helpful. When you are stuck on a certain line, having data on the siblings and children of the ancestor you are looking for can aid in finding data for them.
  
  Many people enjoy genealogy because of the stories and information they learn about their ancestors. The reverse engineering technique can increase that learning by making it possible to gain knowledge about your "very-extended" family. By knowing about your ancestor's immediate family, you can learn more about who they were.

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• OneGreatFamily is celebrating National Family History Month!

  10/1/2012 6:00:00 AM

  October is National Family History Month in the United States, and it has been since declared such by the US Senate back in 2003. At that time, the US Senate dedicated October as a time "to encourage family history research, education, and the sharing of knowledge."

   Here at OneGreatFamily.com, we can't think of a better way to encourage family history research, education and the sharing of knowledge than by giving the biggest discount possible on subscriptions to our services. We believe that a OneGreatFamily.com subscription is the perfect way to get your own family history research started. With our unique, patent-pending matching algorithms, your tree can grow automatically as we add family tree names already in other family trees in our system.

  If you've already begun your family history research, then OneGreatFamily's collaboration tools are the perfect way to share your knowledge with family members and other interested parties.

  To take advantage of our best pricing of the year, just click here.

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