OneGreatFamily Guest Newsletter
April 1, 2005

OneGreatFamily Springtime Special - Save up to 30%


In This Issue:

Springtime Special - Save up to 30%

Plant your family tree and Save!


It's springtime! Birds are singing, the sun is growing warmer, and the grass is becoming more verdant. It's time to plant vegetable gardens and fruit trees for future harvests. It's also the best time to plant your family tree at OneGreatFamily.com.

Why is now the best time to start your family tree research on OneGreatFamily? Because you get the same great service thousands of other subscribers already enjoy . . . for less!

Researching your family tree shouldn't be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Submit your family tree to OneGreatFamily, and let the service search for ALL of your ancestors ALL the time.


Your OneGreatFamily subscription lets you do more . . .
  • See all of your ancestors who are already part of OneGreatFamily
  • Meet and work with distant family around the world
  • See how you are related to your famous ancestors
  • View unlimited generations of your family tree at one time
  • Make new discoveries over time - new families and information are added daily

    . . . and Save $5 to $15 when you subscribe before April 30, 2004
We are grateful for your continued support as we make the vision of providing the world with a common family tree a reality. We encourage you to subscribe to OneGreatFamily to more fully enjoy the benefits of this expanding service.
Back to top

Spring Cleaning at OneGreatFamily

Add value to your genealogy research by "Cleaning Up" your Family Tree.

It's springtime! That means it's time for members of OneGreatFamily to clean their family trees with the help of others! Spring cleaning can often be a task that takes a great amount of time and effort, but not at OneGreatFamily. Our spring cleaning is easy and requires a small amount of time on your part. "Cleaning" your family tree is important because it adds value to the genealogy research you have already done and improves your ability to find more information through the matching and merging process at OneGreatFamily.

Sometimes users submit data to OneGreatFamily that contains errors. OneGreatFamily is good at showing where potential errors exist by showing where alternate information is available for the same person. This makes finding potential errors easy. Many submit erroneous information to OneGreatFamily, not understanding perhaps that OneGreatFamily's system works best with accurate information. Matching and merging isn't likely to take place on information that is incorrect.

Researchers should take some time to make corrections themselves as they identify mistakes. The first step is determining where the relationship, spelling, or event is incorrect. Next, you should take some time to analyze the problem. Finally, when you are certain where the error exists, you should edit the information. Remember that when you fix an error in one place within OneGreatFamily, everyone else immediately benefits from your effort. Fixing errors in OneGreatFamily can help the system provide higher quality matches and can help other researchers who have "tied into" your research. Remember that your changes don't affect the information that is displayed for the person who originally submitted the data. Rather, your changes create a conflict and make alternate information available for that person to now review. After reviewing your new information, other researchers can choose to accept or reject your changes.

When "cleaning" your family tree, you can gain comfort and confidence as you find and correct errors that you may have introduced to OneGreatFamily. By someone taking the time to fix an error in one place, everyone else who is interested in that piece of information can now see the correction. This demonstrates how the quality of the information found at OneGreatFamily improves with each passing day.
Back to top

Lisa Lights the Way

Locating Cemetery Records


by Lisa South, Certified Genealogist

When you know an ancestor's death date and location (or can approximate one), you will want to check for cemetery records. Many cemetery records have been placed on-line and can be located by using a search engine. Sometimes an obituary or funeral service program can tell you which cemetery to search; often death dates are listed by other researchers on sites such as OneGreatFamily. If you can not find a document that gives you the needed information, check with local historical societies to learn which cemeteries were used at that time. You should check the cemeteries in the following order: 1) those which allied with your ancestors' religious persuasion, 2) private graveyards, 3) family graveyards.

There are many family graveyards in the South. Sometimes land deeds tell of them. Also, the land owner may know that there was a graveyard on his property but not know where it was located. Of course, you will need permission from the current owner to search on his/her land. Many family graveyards are overgrown or the stones have been broken and covered. Most family graveyards were placed on a hill and a topographical map could help you narrow the search. If you obtain permission to try and locate an overgrown graveyard, carefully probing the ground with a pitchfork can help you locate tombstones that may have been covered up.

Once you have located the cemetery, you will want to determine if there are any cemetery or sextons' records. Family cemeteries, of course, have no sextons' records and church cemeteries rarely have them. Private cemeteries usually keep some type of record. They are often in the custody of the present sexton or office of the county or town clerk. These records can be very valuable when trying to locate your ancestor's grave in a large graveyard. They may also give some information about who purchased the grave. Occasionally, they will provide unexpected information. I contacted a sexton who kindly mailed me the records of the place of burial of each of my ancestors in the cemetery - and evidently this sexton believed in going the extra mile, because attached to each record was a copy of that ancestor's obituary!!

One Great Genealogy Site Award

Geneabios.com


Geneabios.com is a free genealogy biography database with biographies for your genealogy research. The site also offers links to other online biography sites to help you find your ancestors and surnames. The links directory includes thousands of online biography sites. You will find links to sites with collections that contain numerous biographies in each collection. You will also find links to individual biographies as well. You can search for your ancestors by entering a name or location, or you can see a list of all genealogy biographies in the database. The free genealogy database of biographies is growing rapidly, so check it out today!
Back to top

Get FREE Time on OneGreatFamily.com

Want some FREE time?

Current subscribers can earn additional free time by referring others to OneGreatFamily.com. OneGreatFamily needs your help in growing the largest single family tree in the world. You can get free subscription time on OneGreatFamily by referring others to this unique service. When anyone you refer to OneGreatFamily subscribes to our service and enters your username, you get an additional free month.

Back to top

This newsletter is provided as a FREE service to the members of OneGreatFamily.com.
You can view past editions of this newsletter by visiting our Newsletter Archive.
If you would like to receive a plain text version of this letter or unsubscribe to our newsletter service, you may do so by accessing our newsletter preferences page at http://www.OneGreatFamily.com/login.pl?cmd=emailpref.

Last Week at OneGreatFamily


319,650 people were added into the OneGreatFamily tree.

386,457 new connections between family trees were found by our automated search system.


Having Success?

OneGreatFamily wants to hear from you. Please send us your success stories and your recommendations for new features.

Submit your story
Send us your wish list
  
Copyright © 1999-2005 OneGreatFamily.com.    Link to Us | Site Index | Affiliate Program | About Us | Privacy Policy