Genealogy Chat

Just over a week ago, the Surname Summary facility indicated a member had added my father and one of my brothers to their tree. The members name is not one that I am aware of having the remotest of connections with my immediate family. I did send a message asking for their connection to my family which my postbox indicates was read but so far ignored.

It's fair to say both of these family members of mine are deceased and could be publically added to a family tree that has a relevant connection. I do find it EXTREMELY RUDE however for a member to ignore a request for information about my immediate family. I suspect they may feel more than somewhat embarressed trying to explain a family connection.

I have no problem if a person wants to be a name hunter-gatherer-reaper, they only have my sympathy as it is they that have a problem not myself.

Michael

I`m with you on this one Mick........... as you say both people are Deceased so can be added to anyone tree publically, but if you have no direct connection to these people why would you want to ignore someone who is blood related when they contact you?

I expect they are embarrased now you have contacted them, prehaps they will reply later, plenty of people read messages and then deal with them later on, it dos`nt mean they won`t correspond with you at a later date.


How intresting that they have somehow made a connection to your brother and father, when you have no idea who they are.





Nicky

I have recently discovered that if a recipient of a message simply deletes the message without reading it, it will showup on your sent box as read.

I cannot see any reason why they wouldn't reply to you as a blood relative surely they would see you as a person who could give them further information. Unless of course it is embarrassment.

I think you are over-reacting a tad. Some of us have very extensive trees and like to work out cousins, 2nd, 3rd and even 4th cousins because it gives us a very wide picture of our origins. I can't really see the harm there.As to answering messages- some of us don't check gr that often because it is not our main source of information.

Don't worry too much about it Mick - I've sussed it.
Bet it's that unknown uncle, the black sheep of the family, the one nobody ever mentioned, but who has more money than he knows what to do with. He's coming up for 115 yrs old next birthday, and is writing his Will and just wants to make sure you don't get left out on receiving the hugest wad of cash you ever did see!!!!!!!!

And his ranch, and his land, and his sheep station.......etc


K

When I am bored I do start to look for "leaves" on my tree and this gives me a much larger picture of where I come from. I have made contact with some of these leaves and find they are as interested as I am as to how fragmented families can be.

Finding 2nd cousins who went off to the States after the 1st WW, and who`s decendents know nothing of their UK roots, has been a great experience.

Kathlyn

PigletsPal

This is not a case of name co-incidence but exact matches. My surname is relatively unique and my father and brother were the only people with those same names, dates and places of birth. I certainly do not consider my inital message to be an over reaction when a complete stranger adds my next of kin to their tree and then fails to respond to a polite message requesting family connection details.

I would think if the circumstances were reversed and I had added this strangers immediate family details to my tree they would want to know the connection. I am certain most members on GR would also ask the same.

The main point of my initial message was one of rudeness by failing to reply to a message that clealry indicated that other immediate members of this family are still living.

Michael

Michael, I have had a similar occurrence and it is not nice.

I made contact with a 2nd cousin of my husband in the spring. They have a tree on Ancestry. They sent me their details so I could look at their tree, which was huge, but had no one on it that I didn't already have. I was amazed and a little upset that she had my children details, my marriage and my husbands ex-wife and her subsequent marriage and children all on her tree. She had all the details saved in her shoebox too. I have been married for 15 years , so why she needs my husbands ex and her 2 further husbands and 2 children I do not know. We never gave her any of the info, she just found it. She has a public tree. I asked her why she felt she had to have all the info. I never got a reply.
I have also noticed she has now started on my mum in laws family even though mum in law hasn't seen her mum since she was a baby. Why do people have to do this.

I feel Cheryl in your case it is a massive intrusion into your privacy as you are all living. I would contact her again and ask her to remove all your family from her public tree as she did not have your permission.

This is why I object to records of living people being available on the Internet as we as individuals lose control over what information about ourselves being put in the public domain.

Cheryl thats terrible to have your childrens details on a Public tree.....when you think of the lengths we as parents go to to protect our children from the dangers of the outside world, its terrible that a stranger would put all their details on show for anyone to see.

As Tootyfruity pointed out,she shouldn`t have details of any living people on her tree without their express permission, and if its not law then it should be, especially when the information is about anyone under 18 years of age.

I would make contact and ask her to remove all information about yourselves and your children if she won`t then I would contact Ancestry and ask them to intervene.


I don`t put any living persons details on my tree, my tree details start with my grandparents, all living people are down as male/female living and their year of birth, nothing else.

I know who they are....no one else needs to know.



Nicky

Tootyfruiti and Nicky. I am glad you agree with me. I thought it was me being paranoid. My genes tree hides living relatives so I know she has got all this info herself. I have looked through her shoebox items and seen all the stuff she has saved.
My husbands ex remarried in approx 1990 but she has 2 daughters by her second husband before they married. She even has their details attatched to her tree, assuming they are my husband children as she registered their births using her married name from when she was married to my husband.
She also has an email from someone saying she has a member of their family in her tree who is not related. The person asked her to remove them. She has not done so, neither has she removed them.

I am so glad I never passed on any personal info to her.

It's sadly a problem that we can't really resolve - so much is available on the internet and there is nothing to stop anyone from adding it to their trees, however irrelevant it might seem to be to others. Yes, some people's aim is to build an enormous tree (though quite what they are going to do with it, I can't imagine), and whilst it is rude to ignore an email from a direct relative, well some people just do their own thing and go hang anyone else's feelings. Selfish of them. Bet they don't have many friends.

Cheryl

I would ask her to remove my families information and inform her that if she does not do it with immediate effect you will be contacting Ancestry and asking them to do so.

If she doesn't contact Ancestry and say you have contacted her and wish that any information pertaining to you and your family be removed from all trees on Ancestry apart from your own as no one has sort or been given permission.

I don't hide any living relatives I keep their details off line.

It frightens me how many UK records are online pertaining to the living and how easy it is buy certificates of the living. I know a lot disagree with me when I say that these records should be restricted as they feel it will hinder their research but I think that this hobby is not a good enough reason to be able to access personal information.

Tootyfruity - thanks for your advice. I will try that.

On the issue of obtaining birth certs. I only have the family ones that have been passed down through the family. Apart from one that is. This year I found out that my mum in law had a sister that she was not aware of. Her mum had been married when she walked out on the man and the 18 month old daughter. She had 3 children with my mum in laws dad and then walked out on them too. The sister I found, only lived 2 miles away and by pure fluke her daughter was best friends with mum in laws other sisters daughter. They had been friends for 40 years, unaware that they were cousins. I had to check my findings before I told mum in law so I got a copy of the sisters birth cert. They have since met for coffee and mum in law received her first birthday card from her big sister only last week.

I felt really guilty and have not told the sister that I did this as she may not be happy.
We are so pleased that it all turned out ok. mum in law is 68 and her sister is 72, so they still have a few years to get to know each other.

Cheryl. That's wonderful for your family and I have heard a story on another site where someone bought the birth And marriage certs of their cousins who had been separated as children after the death of their mother and been brought up in care. They were then able to reunite their cousins after 60 years and this too is a wonderful event. I just worry that someone with bad intent also has access to these records and can put them the information online without reprisal and without the person's knowledge or permission.

I think restrictions need to be put in place so that an individual has some control over the information about themselves is put into the public domain.

Birth certs are not proof of identity but are used to set up accepable forms of identity like passports and drivers licences. For me it raises issues of identity theft and personal security.

I also think we need to protect the vulnerable.

When I started this thread it was not because to members of my immediate family who who are deceased , appeared in a public family tree, (people are entitled to add deceased persons to public trees). It was because the person who did so has not bothered to respond to my request to advise me of their connection. This person is completley unknown to me and when you think about, I would have exactly the same relationship as both my deceased father and brother.

The question of living persons being on public trees without their permission has also arisen during the debate. It a required condition of this site that a permission of living persons be sought in advance before they can be added to a public tree. If requests to have such information to be removed are ignored the I think GR will remove it on request. It might also be an infringement of privacy regulations to have living persons on a public tree without their permission.

I have found out from my own research it is not neccessary to obtain a birth certificate to work out living descendants of almost everyone. Simply by cross referencing BMD's which go up to 2005 it is quite easy to work this out. This is one reason I have found out I do not really need the 1911 census. Any such information pieced together in this way is certainly not for publishing in a public tree.

Michael

With living relatives - I agree that they should not be made public , particularly if the originator has them hidden themselves. I should point out, though, that there are a number of other online tree sites as well as ancestry.co and it would be hard to monitor them all. I know what you mean, though, having come across a picture of my mother on someone's tree ( we were the only ones who had that picture) without permission. It is a little scary and thoughts of identity theft arise.

Michael,

I find it strange that the member has your father and brother on their tree and not you. I don't agree with the fact that because your father and brother are deceased then it's open slather for their names to appear on anyone's tree given that there is obviously living son and possible siblings. (I know others on here will disagree with me).

So I hope at some point your name appears on their tree so then you can contact GR and have it removed.

Gai

Hi Michael,

Maybe they have read your message but are checking facts etc before they get back to you.

I think maybe a lot of people on GR jump to conclusions, that if someone has not responded to a message straight away, that they must not care, or be a bit dodgy. The fact is that for everyone I would guess searching family history has a different priority. Just because you want to know what their connection is, they may not see the need to respond.

I'm not sure what you feel they have done wrong? Fair enough they have added your immediate family members who may be related to them, I am sure a lot of people here add on cousins etc to build up a bigger picture. It does not seem that they are doing anything they shouldn't with the information, that as you said can be easily found if people know where to search.

Perhaps they are a bit shy or reluctant to contact you? Maybe they misinterpreted your wording on your request..could be any number of reasons.

Unfortunately rightly or wrongly this is the age of the internet, and no real privacy measures exist across the broad spectrum world wide.

I hope you resolve this and get to make contact and that all ends well.