Genealogy Chat

Yay ~> Oh my oh me :-)

My favourite subject is on yet another thread - I haven't looked at the Community Board for some time - Its time for another rant ;-)

Yep - I agree and disagree in equal amounts to everyones thoughts. It boils down to what is a Family Tree. It is with this point that sets the cat amongst the pigeons. Most love to discover there families past [which I have been doing] - others are in search of a loved one - others just want to build a tree that goes on infinitum they don't care whose name is there....it makes them feel more important if they have 1000s of twigs in there tree. And Yes there are one names studies of which are fantastic when done correctly.

There are unscrupulous people out there sadly. No I do not 'own' my tree literally - but my direct ancestors 'from me' 'both parents' up are mine... last year a relative on my fathers [maternal] great grandmothers side not only transferred all that that side of my tree to her site - which I have no issue with [as it is our common ancestor] - but she then proceeded to transfer every other major branch of each and every side of my fathers paternal and maternal side - then she did the same with my mothers [now this is just not on]....including all siblings..there spouses and children - it went on and on 'YES' 100s of names - absolutely no logical reason for doing so....this is what I consider 'nutdome' in every which way. People can agree and disagree with me - but there is a point in time when you really have to think of others sanity in why they just 'collect names'....It makes genuine trees look like mud after a while, so much so that no one understands where a tree there viewing starts and ends. This relative proceeds to get some unusual pleasure of updating 'MY' tree written as - 'There Tree' with census information and the like on Ancestry.com....I have asked them to kindly remove it....silence is what I get back.

Oh and the tag line for my rant is that the above relative recently updated our 'respective' ancestors tree on her Ancestry.com site....going wayyyyyyyyyy back to the mid 18th Century....lots of new names. Wow I hear you cry - how wonderful you should be thankful.....nup its all made up....she just found a similar surname and ran with it and leached of other trees posted on ancestry.com.....making more mud pies as I see it for others to make even more muddier as time goes on - I could go on and on and....Thankyou for reading my rant...and apologies for the lack of grammar - full stops etc

Cheers ~> Steve ;-)

I was contacted by a member because we had shared relatives in our trees, after many messages I sent him by email my full tree and he promised to send me his by return, well over two years now and still waiting, he doesn't even reply to my messages.

i just don't understand why, In future anyone else will have to do the hard work themselves.

Once bitten.

n

I was asked last weekend how much I had spent on my research., A quick count of my certificates showed we were in the mid 4 figures and that did not include the subscriptions to sites such as Ancestry, GR, FMP and Scotlands People. This is why I get annoyed with those to take but do not give back.
Before I will take any info I find on a tree I expect there to be a source attached to the info (BMD or census) and preferably both. Otherwise there is no proof and it is all hope and prayers. I will also normally make contact with the owner of the information to understand if they are happy having their info borrowed.

3 weeks ago I started doing a tree for a friend on Ancestry and due to some certs that he had I quickly got back to mid 1800's. At that stage I found a hint to a tree, wrote to the owner and my friend is now in contact with a 4th cousin he didn't know existed.

This all started so he could have a family tree to give to his father as an 80th birthday present , instead I have been able to give him a whole new set of cousins who he has talked to by phone. and I have a contact who is helping me research the tree so we can get as much as possible onto it by October :-)

I would have thought the purpose of making a tree available on GR or Ancestry was to seek the help of others in building and extending that tree. I too have spent hundreds, possibly thousands, of pounds on subscriptions, CDs, books, certificates and journeys to record offices. This research has given me pleasure and delight at every turn. It seems rather mean-spirited not to share this information with interested parties who may or may not be related, particularly if I am willing to make use of their endeavours.

I also plead guilty to adding very distantly-related ancestors and complete strangers to my tree for weeks or months at a time, but the tree can shrink as well as grow if I fail to discover any possible link. However, many is the time I have found links between two different branches of the family thanks to the addition of complete strangers found in official records or other people's trees.

I am surprised when I am given access to a tree with over 30,000 names and can't help having doubts about the accuracy of the information, the way the names were obtained and the motivation of the owner, but if it helps me solve a problem then the exchange has been worthwhile. Ultimately, the pleasure is in the chase and the sharing of knowledge with others.

Hello Helen

So sorry to hear this, as it has happened to me about 2yrs ago. This person was not even a blood relative, stole the lot of my own research & i found on rootsweb, ancestry & another i had not heard of, all by accident, so as you can imagine i was livid.
I asked this person to remove all she took, & she did, only as i threatened her to report her to Genes & she did so, but not the other sites.
I have learnt a valuable lesson. Never give access to any one unless its someone you know really well & i have a few of them & most trusted.
150 yrs of my Tree is not available now to see.
In the yrs i have been with Genes have met some wonderful people & we keep in touch regularly.

The one thing i haven't asked of anyone is to look at their Tree.
Most time members give me access & i wish they didn't as they never stop the access & i have too may on my list.

Once bitten twice shy is that what is said?

I have one tree which has four main branches - my parents and my OH's parents. I have taken years to research - paying for certificates and memberships, etc., not to mention the time which I have put into it.

If someone contacts me and wants to know about someone who was born in 1816, I will gladly give them all details of that person and their parents, siblings, spouse and children. That should be enough to get them over a brick wall so that they can continue with their research. If anyone gave me that much info on one ancestor, I would very much appreciate it.

What I object to (and it has happened to me), is that they ask for access, claiming have a 'common' ancestor on my mother's branch - then copy my entire tree and I later find them on another site gloating about the thousands of names in their tree.

If they are only distantly related to me on one branch of MY family - how can they be in any way related to my husband's family and ancestors?

This is why I give help as mentioned above - but I no longer give access to my tree..

This is a difficult one for me.

I have found unknown cousins using both GR and Ancestry and they have access to my tree and so much more and vice verca.

BUT

I am really loathe to open my tree to just anyone. I like to know who they are and what the link is and then I will make a decision whether to open the actual tree or not. However IF I decide not to open my tree I do offer/send a written out precis of what and where I found information in relation to the people identified. This obviously has taken me some time to do, but is a way of protecting the identity of other members of the family that actually have little or no significance to the other person. I have found so many nice people, relatives or not, this way. However I have had some rudish comments from others, which I don't really understand, after all I am supplying the information, but perhaps in a way that the receiver can 1. identify the relationship and receive more info than they could get from my tree, but 2. probably means more work for the receiver in having to physically type the info into their tree.

Am I really being pedantic?

Why are so many hung up on analysing why someone should "steal" masses of data and reproduce it without crediting the sources etc? I wouldn't want to myself but if others get their fun from name collecting then so be it. How in this age of lack of courtesy and downright selfishness anyone can still be surprised at this sort of behaviour beats me. Surely we all realise the risks we run when we place data online? If living people appear on a tree and is based on data appearing on a GR tree then who exactly is at fault?

Difference is, Hawkwind, that was your own work. I've had someone copy & pasting my notes on people. For example, 'In my opinion Jane may have been born out of wedlock. If its the same Jane, then she is also related to my husband Paul.' If people copy this, without obviously even reading it, whats the point of them even doing family history?

Please please, can we remove the word 'stolen?' No one is stealing anything.All the info is in the public domain.

I did a demo for my wife this morning on Ancestry.

Put her name in Births. Gave me her mums maiden name. Deleted her christian name put in her mums maiden name, gave me all her siblings.

Switched to Marriages, put in her surname and mums maiden name, got their marriage and both mum and dad's christian names.

Back to Births and repeated the process.

etc etc then you hit the census etc etc

All together? took about five minutes,

Romany Star,

Perhaps you should leave a message on his site saying it isn't his work.

I have shared my whole tree with two (one close, one distant) relatives only to find them reproduced completely elsewhere as their own work.

Learnt the lesson the hard way.

Like Helen, I think may of us have unfortunately experienced this. I had one man message me asking for my tree in a Gedcom format. Seeing as he was a member of this site, I couldnt understand why he wouldnt just look at my tree on here first. But no, he demanded a Gedcom. I emailed him a Gedcom of my huge tree, which Ive put a lot of time and money into, and never heard back. Fine, no probs. BUT I didnt expect him to put my tree on his website, full of amendments like saying my husbands grandmother had died when in fact she hasnt, and he's even named my stepfathers late parents....they are no relation whatsoever to him, he is distantly related to my husbands mother! Now I see why he wanted the Gedcom - with a Genes tree you can stop the access if youre unhappy, but you cant take a Gedcom back! He has a site full of messages praising him for 'his' hard work. Ive sadly learnt my lesson, its a shame some nasties ruin it for the nice people out there. Oh, and he found out my sons name from BMD and put him on there....he's only 11.

I made contact through GR with a cousin and gave him a family tree and told him that my tree was on GR but I hadn't gone beyond what was on the 1901 census and didn't want living relatives and young children in particular put on GR., but being a cousin, I felt I should give him the whole story.

What did he do ? yes........he put the lot on GR ...right down to a 5year old

I have no objection to sharing information with people who are related to me through my tree ........ but I do have an objection to someone just "taking" all the names when there is no real connection between us.

This is one reason why I only have 132 names on my tree on here ....... and many hundreds more that I have not entered. I establish that there is a real connection between us, and then send names and tree(s) limited to the connection between us.

OK, I may miss some Hot Matches ...... but the main names are on here. And as I have said several times, I now find that most of the Hot Matches that GR generates are Hot Matches simply because I shared the information with someone!


JimSoton .................... your story about the Guild of One Name Studies reminded me of my kerfuffle of last year.

I posted it on here at the time ...... but long story shortened.

There was a Guild of One Name Study on my maiden name. I tried to contact the "owner" several times over a period of years, with no response. I had a feeling he was my second cousin, descended from my father's eldest brother. We had lost contact with most of that family back in the 1970s. I really wanted to establish contact with him, as well as exchange information.

Finally, last year I discovered a major error in the information on that study .............. my father had got "lost", and my older brother was shown as my father. Mum's name was correct, but my brother was 11 when he "fathered" me. This information had been put onto a CD which was widely distributed at a meeting of "the" name around 2000, and is being put on trees all over the place.

You may imagine that I wanted to get this corrected!!

I made 3 attempts to contact him through the Guild, no response. That involved having to buy 3 International Reply Coupons costing the equivalent of about £15 to cover postage.

The Guild attempted to get him to respond to me, no response. After 6 months of attempts ................. they kicked him out, and there is no longer a One Name Study in that family.


The terrible thing is that he was my second cousin ........... but most of the work on the family history had been done in the 1980s and early 1990s by his older brother and my brother. There was a break up in his family and he stole the information from his brother and passed it off as his own.

How do I know this?? Because 3 of the other brothers in that family have started doing their tree, all have been in contact with me through Hot Matches. There is/was a family feud in which 4 brothers were aligned against this one brother and the sister. One told me of the stealing. It's really quite sad, because the 3 are all working on their trees seemingly independently of each other!


The refusal to answer me was, I am certain, because I had the proof of the work that our two brothers had done, and of who had done it!


And I told him that myself, all unknowingly, in almost every letter and email that I sent to him, because I kept making references to work done in the 1980s!



sylvia

JD? that's all I'm saying...

This morning I sent a message to one of my fourth cousins who we made contact just a month ago having found one of her dad's second cousins who has only recently become a member.

This is one of the satisfying aspects of this hobby but has only come about because the two are part of one of my "one name" research projects for my great grandmother's family name which involves detailed research of all possible family members.

Tree Stealing or Name Collecting? I don't think so.....!

If you are related then what is the problem? I only object when they think they could have a connection and without researching copy your entire tree. This did happen to me and this site were wonderful they contacted the guy who refused to clear my family from his tree at my request but as soon as genesreunited contacted him it was sorted.
Others who I have a connection with whether 2/3/4 times removed we continue to write to each other and form a nice relaxed e-mail friendship.
Why worry as after all you are related and take it as a compliment.
Still to this day I keep all my active relatives on my tree as I find it most frustrating when working with someone not to see who I am talking to.

Picking up on Jim's points, it is all to easy to automatically assume that someone who has a lot of names in there tree has an ulterior motive. Each of us is different, has different interests and aims in life. I do hope his 86 year old reaches his goal.

I also do one-name area studies, albeit on an unofficial basis and on researching a particular branch, it is easy to add a hundred or so names in a single research session. Personally I will never add anything which isn't corroborated in some way, whether it be from a census return, BMD record or other source. Hardly stealing.....!

The catalyst to research a particular line often comes by way of contact with another member,on sites such as Ancestry, GR or passed on to me by someone who I have been in touch with previously. Most are happy to be part of my research but if someone want to preserve privacy or anonymity, that's also fine by me.

My approach is to find the link to my existing research and take it from there. I rarely go backwards from the connection other than, perhaps to record a partner / spouse's, unless I believe there is an earlier connection somewhere along the line. It is surprising how many couples were distant cousins without ever realising it.

Moving int the 1900's the transcribed indices on Ancetsry have made thing so much easier. You now able to trace people born in say the 1970's back two or three generations and link them to earlier research. If I am able to do this for someone then they are welcome to access their tree, sometimes back for hundreds of years more.

If you feel strongly protective, then the best advice is not to publish anything you do not wish others to see. It beats me why people put very personal information on their trees then go to great lengths to try and hide it.

Back in 2003 I had never used a computer,my wife had her tree on our computer but I had no interest.One day she happened across a relative of mine looking for information.My wife gave a small reply to the thread.Next day she received an email from a member of the Guild of one name studies,after a few emails he sent us a family tree from 1789 to the present day.There it was from my g/g/grandfather to me the wife,our children and grandchildren.
Utterly amazing.
It turns out that he has on his computer every mention of my surname from Familysearch ,every census all bmd's etc etc.He makes contact anywhere and everywhere with people around the world connected to the one surname.
Most of the people contacted help with corrections and actual dates of bmd's and copies of certificates, plus anything at all that adds to mini biographies.
I think he is about 86 now but still striving for that complete tree.
And some of you begrudge sharing.