Imagine searching and searching and searching to fill out your family tree, and never getting past finding an extra name or two.
You probably don’t have to imagine it, you’ve probably been there (and so have I). In fact, most people don’t get past just a few generations when researching their family.
If you want to find ancestors in your family tree (especially famous ancestors or relatives), you’ve got to research your family tree. It’s the number 1 problem that individuals come up against when trying to find famous relatives or simply finding their roots.
Fortunately, with the Internet, it’s now easier more than ever to find people in your family tree (even famous people).
OneGreatFamily is a genealogy site that helps build your family tree. What makes this resource different than others is that it can automatically link dozens of generations into your family tree (for some it adds thousands of ancestors and relatives).
Even celebrities like Donny Osmond have used it.
Site advertising states: See how Donny Osmond added 38 generations to his family tree using OneGreatFamily!
You can view the Success Stories link on the site to see testimonials of those that have used it:
“We have had fabulous experiences with OneGreatFamily.com. We went from a few hundred people in our PAF program to over 10,000 each in OneGreatFamily.com.”
—Mark & Betty Stilwell
How easy is it to make connections through the site?
How much you find will depend on the number of people in their database (which is millions) and how much information you can enter of your family tree into the site.
The site then starts making suggested matches and if it finds matches, you’ll start adding to your family tree almost immediately. You can add generation after generation with just a few clicks when matches are found.
What about the cost?
There is a subscription fee to use the site; however, the site does offer a Free Trial. So if you try the free trial and find it’s not for you or isn’t working out, just cancel within the trial period.
Check out the site for more details.
What are the pros and cons versus other genealogy sites?
Pros:
- It’s fast. You can start drastically expanding your family tree.
- You can try out the service first in the Free Trial.
- You have the option to include possible tree matches, so you’re not forced to accept connections that you want to look into a little further.
- You can use the site’s Relationship Calculator to find famous relatives
- You can expand your family tree by generations upon generations at a time if a match is made. You don’t have to manually import each and every family member it finds as a relation. Once you accept the connection, you can greatly expand what you know about your family tree.
Cons:
- The site’s specialty is in connecting family trees together, so it’s not a records site where you’ll find lots of census information, birth certificates, and so on.
- The information in the other trees are based on information they’ve collected as well as family tree submissions, so you’ll want to check and make sure when you do make a major connection that the information looks like a good fit and makes sense.
- The biggest drawback is that there is a subscription. OneGreatFamily is different from all the other genealogy websites in terms automating the process of finding people in your family tree as well as the scope of their database in doing so. The silver lining is the free trial they’re currently offering so you can test it out for yourself.
Here’s a video made by the site (note, there’s no sound to the video):
Check out OneGreatFamily for more details.
So, here’s what you could do first to get started:
- Gather the information you know about your family tree (names, birthdates, etc.) for as far back as you and your family know.
- Make a quick sketch on paper of your family tree info (you’ll enter the info later to OneGreatFamily
)
- Sign up for the trial with the above link and enter the information about your tree as far back as you can
- Check the site for matches to your tree
It’s a great resource to use in conjuntion with other recording finding sites to help validate what you’ve learned and find famous ancestors to boot.
You can make use of the site’s relationship calculator to find famous connections once you log in, but the biggest advantage the site has is that it can help you expand your family tree research. Because once you expand your family tree by many generations, you’ll be able to plug that information into other resources to help you find famous connections.
So whether finding famous relatives or just looking to expand your family tree, OneGreatFamily can help save tons of time in the process and find connections you might have missed otherwise.
The site can be visited here: OneGreatFamily.com
