OneGreatFamily Blog

  • Are Others Working On your Family Tree Right Now?

    Celebrate National Family History Month By Collaborating With Others

    You can collaborate with other OneGreatFamily members by following simple steps:

  • Launch Genealogy Browser
  • Select an ancestor on whom you would like to collaborate
  • Click on the ancestor in the Handprint View to see the Individual Details
  • Click on the "Collaborate" button found in the lower-left corner of the Individual Details box



  • Click on the "Owners" tab on the "Collaborate with others" window. This window will show your group and any other group that has a family tree with this individual
  • Expand the groups to see individuals by clicking on the (+) sign to the left of the group name



  • Click on an individual's username to view the user's name and email address and to send the user a message
  • If you have an email application, such as Outlook, clicking on the "Send" button will open a new email message to send. If not, you will need to copy the other person's email address and paste it into the "To" field of your email application.
  • Whether or not you collaborate with others through email, you are still collaborating every time you use OneGreatFamily. You are adding individuals to the world's largest family tree that will someday result in hints, merges, and collaboration for others who are also using OneGreatFamily.

    We hope you enjoy collaborating with other genealogists through OneGreatFamily.

Full story

Comments (0)

  • Outlaws By Kimberly Brown

    By Kimberly Brown, Family Historian


    Train robbers, horse thieves, and colorful characters of all kinds made up the composition of the bandits and outlaws of the Wild West. Who were these men? What kinds of families did they come from, and did they leave any descendants behind?

    Butch Cassidy, born Robert LeRoy Parker, was the leader of the train- and bank-robbing Wild Bunch. He was born in 1866 to Mormon immigrant parents and grew up on his parents' ranch in Circleville, Piute, Utah. His father Maximillian Parker and his mother Ann Campbell Gillies had both come to Utah from the British Isles. He was the oldest of thirteen children, and left home as a youth to work on a dairy farm, where he became friends with a cattle rustler named Mike Cassidy. He took his false last name from his friend Mike; later in life he worked briefly as a butcher in Rock Springs, earning the nickname of Butch. He has no known children or descendants.

    Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty in 1859 in New York City. His parents were poor Irish immigrants. He moved with his mother to Silver City, Grant, New Mexico, where she died shortly thereafter. He had one half-brother, and no known descendants.

    Harry Alonzo Longabaugh was born in Mont Clare, Montgomery, Pennsylvania. After spending a year and a half in a jail in Sundance, Crook, Wyoming, he acquired the nickname of the Sundance Kid. Along with Butch Cassidy and the rest of the Wild Bunch, he was a train and bank robber. He spent many years traveling the U.S. and South America with his girlfriend, Ethel "Etta" Place, whose origins are unknown.

    Notorious train robber, bank robber, and murderer Jesse Woodson James was born in Kearney, Clay, Missouri to parents Robert S. James and Zerelda Cole. Robert was a farmer and Baptist minister; he left his family for the California Gold Rush and died in California when Jesse was only three years old. Jesse's mother Zerelda re-married twice. Jesse married his first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Amanda Mimms, in 1874. Together they had four children, two of whom survived to adulthood. Jesse James, Jr. and Mary Susan James (later Barr) both married, and each had four children. Thus Jesse James still has many descendants in America today.

    Full story

    Comments (0)

  • How Does OneGreatFamily Compare With Other Genealogy Products?

    OneGreatFamily is Four Products in One

    People have asked us in the past what makes OneGreatFamily unique. They have also asked us another similar question: How does OneGreatFamily compare against other genealogy products?

    OneGreatFamily provides an enormous amount of value because it successfully combines four products into one. OneGreatFamily is an online database of lineage-linked data, a genealogy records management software program, a collaborative environment for sharing and working on family history, and our Family Dashboard allows you to experience a whole new way to explore your family tree.

    The following is a list to consider when comparing OneGreatFamily against other genealogy products:

  • OneGreatFamily is creating a combined database for the human family

    There are several benefits of tying family trees together. These benefits include gaining research leads to explore, easily identifying others who are researching your family lines, discovering how you are related to other researchers, tracing collateral family lines, seeing how you are related to famous relatives, and gaining instant access to updates, conflicts and new information on your ancestors.

    Other services will search multiple databases for instances of a name, but no other service makes finding information on your ancestors easier by comparing all the family trees at OneGreatFamily.
  • OneGreatFamily is searching for ALL of your ancestors ALL the time

    OneGreatFamily searches for ALL of your ancestors ALL the time. Other programs require you to enter names and dates of specific ancestors or require you to be using their software at the time potential matches are found. OneGreatFamily, on the other hand, is always searching for any possible matches based on the individuals and families in your family tree. OneGreatFamily only notifies you when matches have been found for YOUR ancestors (not just anyone with the same name).
  • OneGreatFamily does not sell your family tree

    OneGreatFamily sells a subscription service to provide users with a system that matches and merges their family trees and provides new opportunities for collaboration. You can search OneGreatFamily and submit your own family tree for free. A subscription is only required to access the features that provide additional value by saving you time and effort in researching your family tree. Free services that provide you with access to millions of names in family trees do little to add value to the data provided. Other services actually charge people to access family trees that have been freely submitted. They charge access fees to search their family tree databases or sell the records on CD-ROMs. Many people who have purchased family trees on CD-ROMs express dismay when they realize they have actually purchased the very same data they submitted!
  • OneGreatFamily is a living, dynamic family tree that is always growing!

    OneGreatFamily is continuously updated by tens of thousands of subscribers. Everyone who uses OneGreatFamily is working on a shared database, but enjoys the benefit of seeing the family tree from his or her own perspective. Any additions or changes in OneGreatFamily can be seen instantaneously by everyone around the world without any waiting or additional processing. While working on your family tree in OneGreatFamily, you may suddenly receive a notification that new ancestors have been added to YOUR family tree.
  • Family Dashboard, shows you a whole new way to explore your family tree
    • Family Dashboard allows you to explore and work on your family tree in ways no other program provides. Family Dashboard makes exploring your family tree a lot of fun while aiding your genealogy research. Family Dashboard, which is fully integrated with Genealogy BrowserT, allows you to analyze your family tree from a variety of unique aspects, and then drill directly into a specific ancestor you are working on. Family Dashboard provides drag-and-drop widgets designed to provide interesting information and insights into your family tree. Example widgets include Relationship Calculator, Migration Calculator, Time Capsule, Top 10 Birth and Death Countries, etc.

      Full story

      Comments (0)

      OneGreatFamily

      Using OneGreatFamily

    • Famous Ancestor Of The Week: Bill Clinton

      Bill Clinton


      Bill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on 19 August 1946 in Hope, Hempstead, Arkansas. His father William Jefferson Blythe, Jr. was killed three months before his son's birth in an auto accident. When Bill was fourteen years old, he adopted the surname of his stepfather, Roger Clinton.

      He graduated with a law degree from Yale University in 1973 and married fellow Yale law classmate Hillary Rodham in 1975. Their only daughter Chelsea was born in 1980. Clinton served two terms as governor of Arkansas.

      In 1992 Clinton was elected as the 42nd president of the U.S. Despite a scandal with a Washington intern that led to impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice, Clinton was acquitted by the Senate and left office at the end of his second term with the highest end-of-approval rating since WWII.

      You can see whether or not you are related to Bill Clinton by going to the Relationship Calculator on the Family Dashboard Page when you login to OneGreatFamily.

      Full story

      Comments (0)

    • How To Date Old Family Photographs

      How To Date Old Family Photographs: Basic Techniques Of Dating Pictures

      Great-Grandma's family collection of antique pictures can be a treasure trove for you, the genealogy researcher, especially if you can establish when an antique picture was taken.
      Dating a photograph can help you identify the subject(s) (in early photography the subjects were referred to as sitters) and can provide additional information as you piece together your family tree.

      There are some basic techniques to begin the process of dating an antique picture:

      What is the print made of? Is the image printed on metal, glass, card stock, or paper? Daguerreotype (early tintypes) and ambrotypes (printed on glass) were often mounted in double wooden frames that opened like a book. These were the most common types of early photographs and date back to around 1839. By 1870, almost all antique pictures were printed on heavy paper or card stock. The heavier stock was much more common in early photographs; by the 1930s even studio portraits were printed on thin paper.

      Is the antique picture printed in black and white or color? Some images were being hand-tinted as early as the 1850s. Although color still photography was introduced in 1906, it was an expensive process that only professionals could afford to use. Color antique pictures did not become common for home use until the late 1950's and early 1960's.

      How are the people in the photograph posed? Very early antique pictures showed people in rigid poses and usually without smiles, partly because exposure times could be as long as twenty seconds. Many portrait photographers even used braces to help sitters stay in position during the process. Candid pictures and then snapshots became more common in the 1920s.

      How are the sitters dressed? The straight tunic dresses and bobbed hair of the 1920's are easy to distinguish from the cinched waists and luxuriant chignons of the late 1890's.

      What other objects are visible in the antique picture? A Model T car is absolute proof that the picture was not taken before 1908. Furniture, toys, brands names, logos - all these things can provide clues, and thus, invaluable assistance in identifying previously unidentified photographs.

      Additional information on dating family antique pictures is available from this list of links.

      Tracing a family resemblance through the generations with antique pictures can give you a warm sense of connection to your family's past.

      Store your pictures and other media in OneGreatFamily - it's a safe place to keep your treasures.

      Full story

      Comments (0)

      1. «
      2. 1
      3. 2
      4. 3
      5. 4
      6. 5
      7. 6
      8. 7
      9. 8
      10. 9
      11. »

      Ancestor Search

      Enter Ancestor's Last Name:
      Advanced Search
      See what information we have in our database of over 190 million unique entries. Browse Alphabetically
      • Photos
      • Biographies
      • Histories
      • Country Origin
      • Alternate Spellings
      • Number of Generations
      “...One person can't possibly do all of the work alone. They need help to speed up the work...The only way to do this is with your wonderful service...”
      —Jeff Bagley
      More Success Stories



      Watch Demo

      Use the buttons below to navigate through all four demos.

      Previous Restart Next

      Demo: Introduction

      Learn More

      Close