Genealogy Chat

Sorry had a few problems this end thats why i have never replied. The only reason this upsets me is because i allowed the person to view my tree and asked if he would like to take any information off of it would he possibly contact me with who he would like to copy. I only asked him this as then i have the right to say yes or no as to whether that family member has given me permission to let others put them on their tree. The bit that really upsets me is to see my son on his tree when his birth details are not yet available on ancestry or anywhere but the local registry office. I have changed my tree so that living relatives are now hidden as i don't want to go through this kind of upset again. I can totally understand that all of this information is available for others to get hold of but the fact is that i have put a lot of time and money into getting all of this information and they have just spent about an hour copying it free!! i have no objection to sharing information but i would like to be asked when details are copied maybe if i was asked i would of sent copies of certificates as well. I think no matter how many times this is posted on this board somebody is always going to get caught out. Please please please be careful when opening your tree to others. I think i might have to ask for FTM for my birthday. Jen

Thanks Grampa for that advice - will give that a go in the next couple of days. Regards, Chris

Not at all Chris. I deleted my Tree from here yesterday and uploaded a new gedcom file which included the finds I have made since uploading the previous one. Before I exported the Gedcom from PAF I ensured that I had unticked the boxes relating to Notes, sources and living relatives. it only takes 10 minutes.

Clive & Grampa, What you're trying to tell me is that I'm too bloomin' late to delete the living relatives details completely?! I don't mind keeping the names there, per se, but birth places and dates I would prefer to hide. I don't really want to obliterate the whole caboodle from this site, as I have found some fantastic connections who are also researching the same tree. I would hazard a guess and say that the vast majority of folk researching their trees on this site are genuine and dedicated. The others appear to be just number-crunching, but I feel that is their perogative............. Regards, Chris

Christine, Funnily enough you have touched a nerve. One of the things which sparked my interest in Genealogy was when I realised that my Alsatian, Judy had a more complete pedigree than I had. maybe you should delete your Tree from here and import a new Gedcom because you can filter the information which goes into it.

Christine Apparently the hide living relatives feature only affects the way your tree appears to others, not to you. So you will still see names, others will see 'Living Relative'. I uploaded a test tree in a second user name to see that it works, and it does. It is a pity though, that the dates and places remain visible, because the name can very often be looked up in the GRO index, whereas a name without dates (which is what I import from a GEDCOM) makes it much harder to identify the individual.

Gordon, I have done as you suggested to delete living relatives from my tree - gone through my account details and clicked off 'hide living relatives'. I then checked my tree (and others who have access to my tree) and they are all still there. Should this be instantaneous, or do GR have to get around to it? I now realise how insensitive putting my living relatives on line could potentially be, so now prefer to hide them. I have no interest or angst if others wish to copy my tree, because I am only concerned that I get MY facts right. In saying that (and I know it might seem a strange anomaly) but when I was breeding pedigreed dogs, I knew there could be serious trouble with the Kennel Club if pedigrees were seen to be messed about with. I saw many a novice breeder stick down any registered names that took their fancy in a pedigree, particularly if the name was prefixed with 'Champion' in front of it to make it look more impressive. That, of course, made a mockery of the proposed 'next generation' which could have been completely incorrect. I guess that it perhaps the reason why I am a little pernickety about doing my best to get my 'human pedigree' correct! Regards, Chris

Grampa, Clive, Well said. Rod

Clive I do not agree with your opinions, but acknowledge your right to hold them. Have a good day Pam.

You're lucky. Unless I donate my stuff to an archive before I'm gone, the whole lot will go in the bin - or so my family tell me.

I ask myself the question: What will happen to my research when I am pushing up daisies? The answer is that it will go to two places. 1) Eldest daughter who has an interest in the Family History, and 2) An Archive where, hopefully, it will be available as a resource to other Genealogists. So why wait until I'm dead to share the information I have gathered, and I use that word advisedly because only about 1500 of my 18000 names are the result of my own research. The rest has been collected from distant cousins who have been happy to help me to extend OUR family tree. Only today I received a 45 page descendancy list from a distant relative in Australia which tells me what happened to many of my umpteenth Great uncles/aunts. Some of this info I already had, a lot I didn't. I sometimes get the impression that there are those who would prefer to have it buried with them rather than to share it.

As I am accused of a selfish attitude (by Pam), I thought I would post again on this topic. Perhaps we are talking at cross purposes, because I would readily agree that taking information about a living relation from another members tree, and then publishing that information without permission is clearly improper, and I am not advocating that anyone should do that. Beyond that I cannot understaind the attitude that it is 'upsetting' to find one's grandparents in someone else's tree, because they somehow belong to you (and by extension, relatives are the property of family historians, and other members of the family don't have any such rights). It's rubbish. Your grandparents are someone else's distant cousins (in all probablility), and if you condem them for 'name collecting' - that most awful crime, you are, in reality, admitting that your own interest in your extended family is narrower than the other persons. Some of the most interesting contacts I have made on GR have been from very distant relatives. It is arguably a tribute to both of us having devoted a huge amount of time to our researches, that we have reached the point where we can identify a connection at all. I am proud of the discovery of an eigth cousin. Each of us had information regarding the immediate family of our oldest shared generation not known to the other, and by folloing forward interesting lines of parallel descent, I found no fewer that four intermarriages between the two families. I have living individuals in my tree who are related six different ways (and no, I haven't found incest yet, but I sometimes wonder), and you don't get the opportunity to make connections like that unless you look at the descendants of distant relatives in considerable detail. You can just as easily turn this around, and accuse the owners of small compact trees as being a) not very good at family history research, b)not very interested in their extended family, but living exemplars of the selfish gene wanting to know its own roots, and little more, or c) control freaks with an obsessive interest in a tiny part of their tree of which they become jealous guardians. It all doesn't work for me. I am sensitive about my immediate living family. I wouldn't want to see my own infant children in the tree of anyone except a close living relative. But as for those that have gone before, they have returned to the dust of the earth from which they came, and they could no more hold onto life when their span was done, than we can control in whose memory they live on. My own late father appears in just one other GR tree (as far as a search reveals), and that is a tree of a very distant cousin with whom I have had no contact for months. It doesn't threaten or upset me: I am flattered that she finds our shared family interesting enough to record. In truth, apart from his name and vital dates, she knows little or nothing about my father, and that is equally true for me regarding over 90% of the people in my own tree. How could it be otherwise? If I'm a name collector, then I don't take it as an insult, although it is clearly meant to be one. We all have different objectives when setting out to research our family history. One of my three specific objectives was to identify living relations of whom I had no previous knowledge. In eight months I have already found so many that I have very little chance of ever meeting or remaining in close contact with them, and I reckon that I have barely begun to scratch the surface. Every time I find another generation with the typically large families that were so common in 18th & 19th centuries, that opens the way to revealing hundreds or thousands of new NAMES that illuminate the path to someone else. The connections represent the interest to me, not the people (at least not the ones long gone that I cannot know anything about). We each have our own reasons for having this hobby. What we don't have is any right to condemn others for having different ones. By all means moan when casual contacts are discourteous, when they copy information from you without acknowledgement (even when every large family includes a non-existent person to see if they are awake) or when they use that loathsome phrase 'rellies' that make my dear-departed and much loved Gt Aunt sound like an indigestion tablet. But why be a GR member if you don't want to share information, or perhaps do want to share (showing off?) but still control? Some other kind of site might suit your purposes better. And no one forces you to share anything if you don't want to.

Hi This is obviously an emotive issue for lots of you. I just have fun doing my tree and appreciate any help I receive - I always ask permission to add a name that I haven't previously found, but I always prove it myself as well. I personally don't have time to check up on what other people may have done with my info and to be honest, I'm not all that bothered. As I said I personally like to find out the info for myself as it feels like such an achievement when you do 'find' that elusive relative and prioe they did actually exist, or solve the puzzle of where they disappeared to on census night! Anyway it's late now and I've just finished adding all the rellies I found on my trip to Cornwall records office last week so it's time for bed, I think! Regards to you all and goodnight. Louise

Well said OC I cant understand people that say you dont own your tree! My tree has taken me lots of time and money and it certainly belongs to ME! Regards Sara

I had the same thing happen to me recently... again a very very distant link my 3x Great Grandfather's Brother's Grandson married the maternal aunt of the person who contacted me. This was all on my own mothers side. I stupidly gave him access to my tree as I thought he maybe be able to help any (children of his aunt) of his cousin's get further back with their tree. I have done a whole lot of work on this particular line and am always happy to share it. He then decided to not only to take all of the linking rellies right down to my mother and myself... along with my ex husband and current husband and his parents and grandparents. Also my father and his parents and Grandparents and even my step father!! I immediately stopped him having access to my tree and contacted genes (only because of the living people) and they asked me to send them a list of the living people he had added with their names, dates of birth and birthplace and they would remove them from his tree and contact him to remind him about adding names of living without permission etc. They did remove my living rellies (I checked) all except for my 81 year old Grandmother so again I told genes and they wiped her from his tree too. He still has my fathers parents etc and others from my tree that dont even come close to being a connection to him and I wondered what he was all about and if anyone contacts him about one of these people then what is he going to tell them?? Shaz

I don't mind giving people my tree when they are happy to let me know the connection. It irks me when they use it and then won't open their tree. But I think I've found a solution. First I don't open the tree. If someone wants it they can prove a connection and I'll send a gedcom. And the funniest part is this: I've had to add some names to the GR tree to get into the Trying To Find board. So I just add them willy nilly. Now someone has all the wrong info on their tree. It's not even the correct sides of the family. I have two other tree programs, so I know they are correct. When anyone asks for access, I just explain what I've done, and all the legitimate contacts are happy to get a gedcom.

Louise The FACTS are available in the Public records, for a price. What is not available without a good deal of hard work, is the weaving together of lots of bits of information which pull a family together and prove the FACTS. I often give out information about siblings, and other people I have come across in my research and I don't grudge that at all. But MY tree, my UNIQUE tree, is mine, no-one else's (oh well, ok, its my brother's too) and I'm not giving it away in one huge lump to someone who is related to me through the sibling of my 11 X GGP - what's the point? OC

lol. OC. Hadn't thought of that. You'r so right though. kept.

Hi Just thought I'd add my two-pennoth's worth! I have no objection to anyone using the names on my tree - as someone earlier said, it is all available in the public records- (although I can understand the sensitivity of say adopted children etc, particularly if they are still living). However I can't understand those people who just 'collect' names as I find the fun bit is tracking down and doing the research myself; the exhilaration when you find that relative that has been eluding you for months is fantastic. On another point, I like to add siblings where I can as I feel this may help other people establish a link back to a previous generation they may not have found. It is a starting point for them to continue their research; if they want to just take the names and not 'prove the info for themselves, that's their loss, not mine. I have been in contact with some fabulous people on genes, both distant and not so distant relatives (although geographically that's not true!) and they have all helped me over stumbling blocks. Sorry that's gone on a bit... I couldn't seem to stop writing! Louise

Kept But they'd have to PAY for stamps! OC