Discover A New Way To Do Genealogy At OneGreatFamily

OneGreatFamily is unlike any other service available on the web today. OneGreatFamily is unique in that our software uses a matching and merging process to tie every family tree in our system together in a very meaningful way. This process allows your family tree to grow over night. As new names are being added every single day, a distant relative can add more information to your family tree anytime. The merging process also provides you with certainty that you are meeting and collaborating with others who are researching your ancestors.

After the family trees have been tied together, you can access the information others have provided for YOUR ancestors. This is done by checking your family tree for new information. Any individuals who are added to your family tree will appear in gray boxes. You can also review hints and conflicts that appear in your family tree . Hints are indicated by light bulbs and conflicts are indicated by lightning bolts. Below is an article written about how to resolve conflicts.

As you review hints and conflicts, you can also see the other groups in OneGreatFamily that provided the additional information. You can then collaborate with these groups using the collaborate feature in the Genealogy Browser. This process allows you to contact and communicate with other members of OneGreatFamily via email.

Several people have been surprised over the years to find that other members of OneGreatFamily have duplicated or extended research they had already done. The ability to find and collaborate with other researchers can create relationships with distant cousins and provide a wealth of genealogical information that may be hard to find otherwise.

By combining duplicate research, OneGreatFamily also makes information available on collateral genealogical lines. A collateral line is a line that includes the descendants of a sibling of your ancestor. They also let you see how you are related to your distant cousins and others with whom you collaborate on OneGreatFamily.

The ability to meet and collaborate with others who are researching your family tree is one of the core benefits provided by OneGreatFamily. OneGreatFamily is the ONLY genealogy service designed to let you see everyone else who is researching your family tree and to let you see how you are related to the rest of humanity.

• Visit OneGreatFamily to grow your family tree the OneGreatFamily way.
• Subscribe to OneGreatFamily to see who has been added to your family tree.

Have more success and help others by resolving conflicts

Resolving conflicts not only will help your success at OneGreatFamily but it will help others find success as well.

OneGreatFamily alerts members if there is a conflict in information. Conflicts are highlighted by a lightening bolt (). After two records are merged, any differences in information is never lost, but instead become conflicts for the new single record. Most conflicts occur when two different members have the same person in their family tree but the information is different. However if you submit information more than once, you may receive conflicts from yourself.

There are two different types of conflicts depending on what information is conflicting. One type of conflict is an Information Conflict and the other is a Relationship Conflict. When you have a conflict you have four choices:

1) Accept the information on the right as your own by clicking Accept. (This will erase the information on the left.)
2) Reject the information on the right by clicking Clear if this button is available.
3) Postpone making a decision by clicking the button labeled "Close" or choosing another tab at the top.
4) Choose to collaborate with another OneGreatFamily user by clicking the "Collaborate" button. We'll talk more about collaboration in a future newsletter.

Information Conflicts:

When you click on a lightning bolt, you will notice two boxes containing information (The "Details For" box on the left and the "Individual Conflicts" box on the right). The information on the left is yours and the information on the right belongs to another OneGreatFamily User. The following are different types of Information Conflicts:

• Name/Birth/Death: These conflicts are simply a date or place dispute.
  
  
• Individual's Spouse: These conflicts state that there are two family records for this individual as a spouse/parent. Look to see if the names in these families look similar. If they are, press Accept and then Merge Families. This will bring up both of the family records so that you can examine them further. Press Merge again, if you believe them to be the same family.
  
  
• Child's Biological Family: These conflicts state that there are two family records for this individual as a child. They can be examined in the same manner as the Individual's Spouse conflicts.
  

Relationship Conflicts

• Marriage: These conflicts are simply a marriage date or place dispute. If you want to accept the information on the right as your own, click Accept. (This will erase the information on the left.)
  
  
• Child: These conflicts state that some child record is being left off the child list because a different record is listed in their slot (A slot is the order of that child in the family. For example, the third child in the family is in slot 3). If you would like to add the child to the list in the left box, click Accept and Add Conflict. If you want to merge the conflicting child with the child listed in the left box in the same slot, press Accept and Merge Individuals. If you want to have the child in the right box replace the child in the left box in the same slot, press Accept and Accept Conflict. If the child in the right box should be merged with a child in a different slot in the left box, press Accept, then Add Conflict, and then Merge the duplicate children.
  
  
• Child Order Conflict: The left box will show which slot your information states for this child, while the right box will show the conflicting slot. Press Accept and Accept Order to accept the order in the right box.
  

• Visit OneGreatFamily to learn more about this unique genealogy service.
• Subscribe to OneGreatFamily to find others searching for your ancestors.
  

Introduction to the Census

by Mandy Mathews, Family Historian

How can Census Records help my genealogical research? Census Records in the United States date back as far as 1790. While early Census Records do not contain a lot of valuable genealogical information, they can be helpful. Many countries have Census Records available for research and many of them are available on the internet. With census records becoming easier to access, you should be aware of the value they have.

In the United States the first “valuable” census was taken in 1850. In England and Wales it was 1841. The census for those years asked individuals to list every name in the household, hence the reason we deem them “valuable.” Before that the census asked for the head of household only and then had columns to check for the gender and approximate age of others in the household.

The census is taken every ten years, in the United States it is taken at the mark of every decade; 1850, 1860, 1870, and so on. In the United Kingdom and Canada the census is taken the first year of each new decade; 1851, 1861, 1871, and so on. These records are released to the public for research after a certain amount of time that varies by country. In the United States it is 70 years. We now have access to U.S. Census Records from 1930 and before. In the United Kingdom and Canada the wait time is 90 years, so we have access to the 1911 and earlier.

The information requested on the census can vary from one year to the next. Some census years offer how many years a couple has been married, others ask what year immigration occurred. It is beneficial to search for every census available during the course of a person’s life. The information gained can be different from one year to the next and it can help paint a picture of what your ancestor’s life was like as it evolved throughout the years.

Over the next few weeks we will highlight the different census years and what information they contain. For example, the 1890 census in the United States was almost completely destroyed in a fire. There are only a few fragments that remain. How can you fill in the gap from the 1880 census to the 1900? We will discuss records that are available to help you do that.

In the meantime, here are a few websites you may want to try:

www.ancestry.com – for fee based site that has wonderful census records to view.
www.heritagequestonline.com – free census searching through most public libraries and universities.
www.usgenweb.org – a volunteer based website that is building a census transcription database free of charge.

• Login to OneGreatFamily to enjoy this unique genealogy service.
• Subscribe to OneGreatFamily to find all your ancestors.
• Visit the OneGreatFamily Learning Center for more helpful genealogy articles.
  

CensusTools.com

CensusTools.com features 40 free spreadsheets which are designed for researchers to electronically organize and archive extracted census and cemetery data. The census spreadsheets faithfully reproduce the format of original records for the US Federal (1790-1930), Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, and eight states. There are also spreadsheets available for specialty census records such as slave and mortality schedules, surviving spouses, pensioners and Indian rolls. Complimenting each census spreadsheet is what CensusTools calls the Tracker, a special spreadsheet which allows a researcher to display census data from multiple years for a particular person in a single worksheet for ease of analysis. The beautifully designed spreadsheets can also be printed blank to use as extraction sheets or filled in for inclusion in book projects. All of the spreadsheets are available as free downloads from CensusTools.com

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