What Is The Handprint Concept And How Does It Benefit My Family Tree?
Most genealogy sites today let you search large record collections to try to find details about your ancestors. This technique focuses primarily on names, dates and places to identify ancestors. Names, Dates and Places are valuable, but they have limitations. How many Benjamin Johnsons might have been born in Arlington, Virginia on July 5th, 1921? Focusing on family relationships is far more effective in identifying an ancestor as a unique individual. In our previous example, you would feel much more confident that you had found your ancestor if the mother’s and father’s names matched in addition to the ancestor’s name, date and place.
OneGreatFamily takes a very different approach to genealogy by factoring in all the direct relationships of an ancestor in addition to names, dates and places when searching.
We call this unique way of searching the genealogy handprint. Like a fingerprint, it is a way to uniquely identify an individual based on relationships rather than patterns made by the ridges of your skin.
The genealogy handprint can be visualized by thinking of an ancestor standing in the palm of your hand, with your fingers outstretched. Then visualize each of that ancestor’s family members standing on the fingers. On one finger stands the person’s father, on another is his mother, on another is his spouse, on another stands the ancestor’s children and on the last stands his siblings. Those relationships taken together, then coupled with dates and places will uniquely identify an individual far better and more accurately than just names, dates, and places.
You are able to view any ancestor’s handprint in Genealogy Browser™. Selecting any name in the Starfield makes that person the current individual. OneGreatFamily then displays that individual's unique handprint, allowing you to see the relationships that identify who that person is. The handprint view also lets you see details for the selected individual and for that individual's family.
Clicking on the selected individual opens those details, and allows you to edit the record and view additional information, such as biographies, photos, notes, and sources. By clicking the button that says "Family Info" you can view the details of the selected individual's immediate family. You can see the family in which that person was a child or the family in which the individual was a parent (if there were offspring). The family view provides marriage/divorce information and access to additional information that applies to the entire family.
OneGreatFamily’s unique handprint technology is also useful when finding matches in the OneGreatFamily database and showing you where more information is available on your family tree. While OneGreatFamily searches for matches with everyone who has submitted their family trees to OneGreatFamily, only subscribers gain unlimited access to the new relationships and the information that results from the matching and merging process.
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