Genealogy Chat

Pat I have explained my reasons for being a member of GR on another thread, so I won't bore you with that again. But my reasons do not include me PAYING for the privilege of supplying other people with information which may not be relevant to them! OC

Presumably you paid for the information for your own benefit. Or is someone asking you to pay for information that you don't need?

That is fair enough, I like to share all my resources including any certs that may be of use to them, these £7.00 soon amount up, If i can save someone the expense then i am pleased to do so, perhaps genes should put in place a check box if you dont want contacts or to share your tree, i would like an introduction to my tree to save me keep on typing to my contacts the same old stuff about double checking my information, we all make mistakes and if we have then it is nice to be told that way we can get it right. I wouldnt bother making any contact with anyone that was rude to me, people dont have to stand for this, I am probably guilty of quite short contact messages, the problem being i do answer alot and time constraints dont allow for this as it is taking up my valuable research time. I think check boxes are the answer then we would all be happy and know where we stand

Some interesting thoughts on this thread. I think the amazing thing about the Internet is the way it allows people from all over the world to communicate and share information. I began my own research with questioning old family members. I then spent about 5 years going into our local records office about once a fortnight and spending a day each time searching original documents. I have found a large amount on my own but nothing like the huge quantity since getting computer literate and pooling resources with others. I've now been doing my tree for about 35 years on and off. I run online sites for some of my family names and on one 54 of us are sharing everything we find. For example when I discovered a transportee, a contact in Tasmania found his details on arrival in the records on the other side of the world. It would have taken me many lifetimes to find all the information I have now. I imagine that many of the researchers I have contacted have spent money building up their genealogies but so have I. Sometimes the people I share with have nothing to give me in return that I do not know already, but many of the people who have shared with me also gave freely and got little in return. In my opinion the whole point of sites like this is the sharing and the gradual building up of connections. I get the 'Is your John Smith the same as my John Smith?' message all the time but I try to be friendly when replying even to obvious non connections. I must admit I don't like the automatic GR responses but I assume newbies must be the ones using them. I only open my tree on GR when people are related somehow to me but I have no named living people on it. If someone is able to see my tree it will only give them minimal information anyway because this one has only the barest of details and I cannot put everyone on it. If people turn out to be closely related or share an interesting ancestor then I contact them and share details later. No one looking at my GR tree would see the many files full of information which I have on my computer, backed up on discs or in about a dozen lever arch files on paper..........there are 3 bulging lever arch files full on just one of my family names. All the interesting snippets and details of the lives of my ancestors are shared with those who are also their descendants and I've been fortunate to meet many of those via this site. A lot of those were by the much maligned Hot Matches. If anyone is never going to show anyone the tree on GR then it exists on here surely just to generate Hot Matches and other contacts? I can't imagine people use the GR tree as their main record. It surprises me if anyone does. Reading some threads it does sometimes sound as if there are people who are almost resentful of contacts! If I meet someone who is descended from 'my' ancestors then I have frequently even posted them packages of printed out trees, photos and interesting information. Others have sent me among a multitude of items, copies of Indentures (from a 4th cousin in Australia!), previously unseen photos of my 2x great grandparents (those came across the Atlantic) and lots of family details. In my experience the more I have given the more I have got back! Good luck to everyone anyway. Sue

Charles What I meant was - I PAY to be a member of Genes and the only thing I seem to be getting out of it lately is the privilege of passing on MY information to other people. I too have masses of stuff not on my GR tree - if you are my relative, then I will share that with you and I won't grudge it either.But you have to be my relative - otherwise what is the point????? I also have masses of stuff which is not relevant to my family - wrong turnings taken, etc. I frequently give this information out - an acknowledgement that it was received would be quite nice, never mind a thankyou. Perhaps I have been unlucky, but even when I have given someone ten detailed generations, including Wills, Leases, PR extracts etc - they NEVER come back and say 'I see you are stuck on Joe Bloggs marriage in 1745 - tell me where you have looked and I will look too'. In fact, in one such situation, I received a message about 4 months later, asking me if I had found it yet! OC

Hi All, I generally do not mind opening my tree to anyone. I try to be a little carefull that the tree does not include children. It does pay off as one or two people recently, where there has been no real family connection other than a very distant one, have been kind enough to provide corrections where I have made mistakes. I enjoy the hobby and I am in contact with some very friendly and interesting people from Australia, Canada and home. The small amount of rudeness is insignificant to the pleasure and satisfaction that I have in digging up my ancestors and meeting new people. Bye Paul

If it wasnt for my aunt who spent years trawling church yards and records offices and paying for cerfificates , long before internet, sharing her infomation with the rest of the family , i wouldnt have known where to start. We all pay in some way or another for our information , either financially or time wise. I do agree that some people can take the perverbial but just ask plenty of questions. If i contact someone about a possible match i let them view my tree if they dont respond within a time limit i delete it , i think the best part of this site is sharing info lorraine

I agree that a small minority are rude.I thought the whole point of GR was to share info with others. Not everyone is an expert at researching families (especially me) and I am extremely grateful for all the help I can get and would willingly help others. I know it can be expensive doing research but I am always happy to share with others and get really excited when I have contact from someone through hot matches who is a relative no matter how distant. People have shared with me for which I am very grateful. If the cost is a problem then why don't they ask for a contribution instead of being nasty. I would happily pay for information. By refusing to share all you are doing is making money for the agencies that provide the certificates etc by forcing others to pay for them. If you don't want to share why are you in GR? Cynthia (Australia)

I would love to SHARE information, I really, really would. In three years, all I have done is GIVE information. That isn't sharing. Cost is not the point - IF YOU ARE MY RELATIVE, you are welcome to the information. If you are not my relative, what to do you want to share my information for? OC

It sounds as if you have been very unlucky OC. I suppose it is all down to whether your relations are interested in family history. I have large areas of my tree where I have made no helpful contacts.........there must be relations out there as on one line 2x great grandparents had 12 children and great grandparents had 8 surviving but no-one has turned up descended from any of them. Some parts of the family are in areas of the country which are not easy for me to get to and it would be convenient to find a contact who is researching that bit at their local records office. However........with family history being so popular these days you can never tell who might join the site in the future. Maybe some time soon a distant cousin will turn up who has useful information. If they did I'd hate to miss them! Sue

i open my tree to everyone that has a common ancestor. i havent updated my tree on here for months but i do have it on ftm so i give the contact my email address and send them the relevant info. i also scan all of my certs and forward them onto the person. i love sharing and if it saves them time and money im happy. i have also recieved many certs from records offices dated before 1837 which is wonderful. share and share alike i say lol susie

On the whole I have been very lucky and found information on my family through GR. I have also given others any information I have and sent copies of papers/certificates to them in the post. I have been impressed with the kindness of others who have searched records for me and come up with the answers for me. I have even had people send me disc's in the post so I have a big thank you to say to most of the GR members. There are a few that are rude - but thats life, some people are just rude and I expect something has happened in their life to make them this way. I think the nice people out weigh them. Thank you to anyone that has helped me in the past. Regards and good hunting Irene

hi i am a new to all of this and i have to say i find it all very hard and confusing. I have had some hot matches well not just some alot and i have sent a message to whom i think have the closest information to mine. unfortunatly i still have had no response from anyone. On my motheres side i am finding difficult as my mums dad passed away when she was very young so i don't have alot of valid info to put on my tree or give to anyone else i also find it hard to look for records as i dont have the relivent dates and names. This is the main reson i joined to see if anyone else can help me. I hope that people don't think i am lazy or don't want to pay for this info because i would if i could.if anyone could give me any advise i would be very gratefull. Thankyou sharon

Sharon I don't think you (or any other newbie, come to that) is a freeloader. I have to say that personally I find twentieth-century research to be the most difficullt, in many ways. Hot Matches are not a very efficient way of finding connections on here - sometimes they work, most times they don't. Have you tried searching the site yourself, for the names you are interested in? In your case, I think you have to do things the classic way, by getting certs for every event, as you have so little information to go on. You may even have to face getting a few wrong ones as well - most of us have a few of those. Once you can get back, with certificates, to the 1901, it should be much easier for you. Post a thread asking for help - I am sure you will get it. OC

Sharon sent you a PM here to help pat

I said to myself many years ago that I would like to start a family tree, but like most things, I never got round to it. When grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles left this mortal coil, I decided...'now was the time to start' oohhhhh but if only I had asked questions when they were alive, so i had to go on what I could remember. I found that family stories had very little substance in them, or if they did had been well and truly embroidered, so I went up and down many avenues, but that is the way I learnt to navigate my way around things. When you have made a mistake you ensure you do not take that route again. Being a little on the scared side of computers and techknowledgy, I took the plunge and subscribed to GR. The help I received gave me so much confidence that I signed up to Ancestry. Through GR I have made contact with several distant relations, we have exchanged info, certs and photo`s, without this exchange my research would not be as full as it is. When I made contact with one rellie, through Hot Matches, and told him I had a photo of his greatgranddads sister, he weas over the moon. Sharing is what this site is about, I do check relevant info before I let any of my research go, and as I said in an earlier reply to this thread, DO AS YOU WOULD BE DONE BY kATHLYN

Thankyou oc thanks for taking the time to reply to my message and thankyou for you help on trying to find out more. Much appriciated sharon

Oops, opened a can of worms with this one! I, too, love sharing info; it's lovely to be able to tell people about their own ancestors, researched info that they haven't already got. And some real gems of info on my tree came from fellow GR members, who are distant ancestors. Stuff that isnt recorded on certs, that I wouldnt have known about otherwise. Obviously, if a link isn't proven, or the emails are sent in a bullying tone, its a different matter, and thats what I was talking about.

The thing is sharing means a two way exchange. I had to research to find living rellies, i am adopted, if i waited till someone had the one name i knew (my birth mothers) i would most likely still be here next millenium with no progress. I started by not knowing if i was on only child or not,i had to research. A lot of work in placing events means trawling the bmd, it costs nothing but time and commonsense, births,baptisms etc can be researched at the records offices. Ignorance of the methods can't be an excuse either, in most cases the non look up questions asked on here have been asked many times before and can be searched for easily and quickly. The thing is though that if it isn't online a lot of people won't even consider an alternative way of finding the information. It isn't so long ago that you had to use alternative methods as little or nothing was available via the internet. Genealogy didn't suddenly start with the world wide web being introduced and at some point, if you are halfway serious about this hobby you have to get out of the armchair and use other methods. If someone just lifts a whole tree from someone else are they really a 'researcher'? Recently there have been requests for info about where to order their first certs from people who have been on this site for many months. By checking their tree stats it is obvious they can't have researched much. How could you have a tree with over 1000 correct names without ever having bought a cert or visiting a records office?

Actually, it can be pretty easy to make good progress without certificates. If living relations can get you back to 1901, then it is remarkable what you can piece together from census material, the BMD indices and the IGI. For the keen but broke, church weddings can be viewed for nothing in registers (and you can see the original signatures, not some clerk's transcript). What you often won't find is the actual date of certain events, but then I know with complete certainty who my grandfather was, who he married, where he was born and much more. The fact that I don't have his birth certificate (yet) doesn't mean that I haven't 'proved' the link to the next generation, it just means that I don't have his birth certificate yet.