Plant Your Family Tree at OneGreatFamily and Save

Great News! A lot of you are asking if you can still take advantage of our savings. Apparently, a lot of you were thinking more about your taxes this weekend than about genealogy. Imagine that!

So we are extending your opportunity to save up to 33% to midnight, April 30th.

Before you get busy outdoors, plant your family tree at OneGreatFamily - the best way to grow your family tree during the busy spring and summer months when you don't want to spend time indoors doing research.

The OneGreatFamily community is continuously growing and helping people further their genealogy. Subscribing is the only way you are able to use all of the resources and tools we offer. We want you to take advantage of everything OneGreatFamily has to offer by subscribing today!

Your OneGreatFamily subscription lets you:

• See all of your ancestors who are already part of OneGreatFamily
• Leverage the work of others to automatically grow your family tree more quickly.
• Meet and work with distant family around the world
• View unlimited generations of your family tree at one time
• Make new discoveries over time - new families and information are added daily
• Save $5 to $15 when you subscribe before April 30, 2006

OneGreatFamily would like to thank our many guests for supporting us and our service. We hope you have come to appreciate the unique service provided by OneGreatFamily and are now interested in subscribing. OneGreatFamily is continuously growing and helping people further their genealogy.

To take advantage of this special offer, you need to go back to OneGreatFamily.com, login, and subscribe now.

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• If you don't remember your user name and password, please click here.

• Visit OneGreatFamily and experience a shared family tree built by people all over the world.
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What is included in a subscription to OneGreatFamily?

Some customers have a hard time understanding what OneGreatFamily is and what is included in a subscription to OneGreatFamily. Some people erroneously believe OneGreatFamily is in the business of selling family tree data.

Some of this confusion is created by competitors that charge fees to access their family tree collections or that sell family tree data that has been freely submitted back to customers on CD-ROMs. OneGreatFamily does not engage in either practice.

If OneGreatFamily doesn't sell data, then what is included in a subscription? First, every subscription includes access to the only single shared collaborative online family tree in the world. Everyone who works on OneGreatFamily is working on the same shared family tree, so when one member adds to the tree, that material is immediately available to all other members.

Still, OneGreatFamily also has the unique ability to preserve each member’s view of the single shared collaborative online family tree. If one member believes that an ancestor had a 2nd wife and another member believes that ancestor did not have that 2nd wife, they will both see the tree as they desire.

Second, OneGreatFamily spent years developing technology that automatically searches every name in your family tree with every name in our single shared collaborative online family tree. Where exact matches are found, the data is merged. This means that OneGreatFamily eliminates duplication in research. If 100 people submit the same family line, all 100 will be de-duplicated, or merged, down to one single family line.

Third, merges in OneGreatFamily create opportunities for people to collaborate on their genealogies, identify new ancestors, and discover conflicting information. OneGreatFamily has collaboration built in, with the ability to easily reach out to others working on your same family lines.

Fourth, a subscription to OneGreatFamily includes the use of Genealogy Browser™, a free downloadable family tree program what allows you to view, edit, and print the single shared collaborative online family tree. This program includes many unique features, including the ability to zoom in and out on any portion of your family tree, allowing you to get the context of where various ancestors are in your tree.

Fifth, subscribers receive the added benefit of being able to view the names and information for individuals who have been added to their family trees through accepted hints and automated merges.

Sixth, OneGreatFamily allows users to upload and preserve up to 3 gigabytes of your multimedia objects. In addition to making it easy to share these with other relatives around the world, this storage represents a secure backup in case of accident or natural disaster that destroys your originals.

Seventh, a subscription to OneGreatFamily provides you access to the subscriber version of the Weekly Newsletter. This informative newsletter is focused on helping you get the most out of OneGreatFamily.

OneGreatFamily is not in the business of selling user-submitted data. However, OneGreatFamily has invested millions of dollars in the development of all the capabilities mentioned above. Further, these capabilities are unique—no other company in the world offers all these capabilities. We believe you will find a OneGreatFamily subscription to be some of the best money you have ever spent on genealogy.

OneGreatFamily's business is focused on facilitating genealogy growth and discoveries by providing personalized access to the shared human family tree.

• Visit OneGreatFamily and verify information in your family tree
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Migration (or Where Did My Ancestor Go?)

by Lisa South, Certified Genealogist

The following article was written in the April 26, 2005 OneGreatFamily newsletter. Since Lisa is no longer writing for us, we are featuring some of our favorite articles written by her.

John B. L. Soule wrote, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Horace Mann used that quote in an 1865 editorial and thousands heeded his advice. Actually, the United States was on the move from the very beginning. Understanding why and how people migrated is helpful in finding where your ancestors lived.

There are a variety of forces behind migration:

1. Trauma

• Political trauma, such as the many Tories migrating to Canada during the Revolution.
• Religious trauma, such as the Latter-day Saints expulsion to the West.
• Economic trauma, such as that caused by the Dust Bowl.
• Sociological trauma, such as that resulting in The Trail of Tears.

2. New Opportunities

• Gold
• Cheaper or better land
• Improving personal circumstances

If you suspect your ancestor migrated because of trauma, get into the history books and learn about the circumstances surrounding it. Some of you may need to learn all about The Trail of Tears, while others should find out where in Canada the Tories usually settled. The more you know about the trauma that forced your ancestor to move, the more likely you are to learn what records might have been kept and where they would be located.

Many of those that migrated in search of wealth or new opportunities were single men - which can sometimes make them a little more difficult to trace. When whole families or many families from a community moved together, they would leave a larger "paper trail" and are therefore usually easier to find.

Census indexes are good tools for locating where an ancestor migrated.

Often a family or group of families would move in search of cheaper or better land. Sometimes it would be a large group because of land lotteries (the Oklahoma Land Rush, bounty land etc.) Homesteading offered free land and many took advantage of this opportunity.

Land records sometimes give clues as to where a person migrated from. Homesteading records can be very valuable (this will be covered in a future issue of OGF).

Other records that might help establish your Ancestor's migration route are family histories (written or oral), journals, county or local histories, and military records.

Maps are essential for success. There are many maps available that show probable migration routes. As you study a map you can see if a mountain could be circumvented or if there was a waterway to get travelers where they wanted to go. As you search the records, plot a line of migration on your map.

To find your ancestor's records you MUST know where they lived.

• Login to OneGreatFamily to enjoy this unique genealogy service
• Subscribe to OneGreatFamily and see what we can do for your family tree.
• Visit the OneGreatFamily Learning Center for more helpful genealogy articles by Lisa South
  

Vitalrec.com

This web site explains how to obtain vital records (such as birth certificates, death records, marriage licenses, and divorce decree) from each state, territory, and county of the United States. It also has a page that explains how to get international vital records.

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