Get a Free Copy of the Genealogy Reference Book "Evidence!" When You Become a Member of OneGreatFamily.

Great News! Right now, OneGreatFamily is offering a bonus to all guests who sign up for an annual subscription. Once you sign up, you will receive a free copy of the book Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian by Elizabeth Shown Mills. Take advantage of this special bonus offer, valued at $21.95. This offer will end July 9th.

Here is a little bit about this very informative book:

"Genealogy attracts a stunning mix of people. Hobbyists curious about their ancestry. Genetics in search of medical breakthroughs. Legal researchers gathering evidence to defend individual or ethnic rights. Anthropologists, archeologists, demographers, geographers, historians, and sociologists probing the past to better understand the present. Evidence! provides a common ground upon which all can meet, speak the same language, and share the results - reliably." Evidence!, Back Cover

What a great combo: OneGreatFamily.com offers you an additional unique way to advance your genealogy and Evidence! helps you understand how to research with a minimum of wasted time and funds. Subscriber today to take advantage of this bonus offer.

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Standardization Improvements at OneGreatFamily

Automated searching, matching, and merging constitute a unique and powerful feature of OneGreatFamily. This powerful capability does work for you, comparing every person you put into OneGreatFamily with every other person in the system. The results are then highlighted in Genealogy Browser so that you can zoom right in and focus on validating leads, researching dead ends, or just enjoying the work of others as it expands your family tree.

Still, there are times when obvious matches are not identified. The primary reason behind these cases is inconsistencies in the information about each person. Consequently, we have been working on a project behind the scenes to enhance the standardization of the data in OneGreatFamily in order to increase the likelihood that obvious matches are automatically detected.

As a result, we are starting a computerized process that will automatically go through and standardize all the data in the OneGreatFamily Family Tree. These are examples of the types of changes that will be made:

• State and country abbreviations will be expanded to the full place (e.g. CA will become California, USA will become United States).
• Places will be normalized to contain 4 political subdivisions (e.g. City, State, County, Country). Missing data will not automatically be filled in. However, commas will be put in where data is missing, so you might get Anycity,,Anystate or Anycity,,Anystate, United States.
• Capitalization will be standardized (e.g. john Jones will become John Jones).
• Indeterminate terms, such as child or wife, will be removed from name fields.
• Terms such as County, Township, and all their abbreviations will be removed from place names.
• Terms such as unknown, unk., and ? will be deleted from name, place, or date fields.
• Terms such as deceased, died at birth, private, and living will be removed from date fields.

In order to maintain good genealogy practice, all records that change because of these standardizations will have a note added to them showing all the specific changes.

Let us assure you that no meaningful information within OneGreatFamily will be lost. Instead, this process will lead to cleaner, more clear data.

We continue to invest in OneGreatFamily in order to make this the best and most useful system on the market. Our intent with this enhancement is to improve your success using OneGreatFamily.

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Using World War I Civilian Draft Registration

by Lisa South, Certified Genealogist

The following article was written in the April 14, 2005 OneGreatFamily newsletter. Since Lisa is no longer writing for us, we are featuring some of our favorite articles written by her.

In 1917 and 1918, all men born between 1873 and 1900 had to register for the draft. This included immigrants that were not yet naturalized. Most of these men weren’t required to serve, but this registration created approximately 24 million WWI draft registration cards.

There were three separate registrations. Each asked for slightly different information, but in general, the registration cards will contain the registrants full name, birth date and birth place, citizenship status, information about nearest relative, physical description, address, and occupation.

At least 5% (this figure will continue to increase) of these draft registration cards have been placed online and can be easily located. For the others, the best way to access the cards is usually to search the appropriate microfilm at your local Family History Library. Search the Family History Library Catalog under “Keyword Search.” Enter the search words “World War I draft registration cards” to locate the film numbers for the cards. You can also access the Family History Library Catalog at www.familysearch.org.

There may be a few problems in locating your Ancestor’s card. If the man was illiterate, you will need to get creative about possible spellings of his name. Many Italian immigrants listed their last names first; therefore, the cards were filed under the first name. Because of the naming system of taking both parent's surnames and placing the mother’s last, Hispanics may be filed under the mother’s maiden name.

As you evaluate the records, you should be aware that men listed as British citizens could come from Britain, Canada, Australia, etc.

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• Visit the OneGreatFamily Learning Center for more helpful genealogy articles by Lisa South.
  

YesteryearMemories.com

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