Genealogy Chat

I love Mick's story!!!


good one!



sylvia

Mick,,!! You made me laugh..lol,,,

On my tree I have only entered the year for BMD etc,,, full details of such events are available to the right applicant,,!!

Mick


You never know - one day he may appear on

Who do you think you are !!!!!

Great story - we all know people copy without checking - but this proves it

I made a couple of mistakes
with my Johns and Elizabeths - muddling up the father and son -

I corrected mine - my copiers have not

So Mum and Dad appear to have given birth to a grandson !!!

I'm glad to see that there is a light-hearted side to all this. All to often this topic ends up being a bit of a slanging match between the two opposing views.

Last year I was in contact with a member on here who turned out to be a distant cousin. After we had exchanged messages a few times sharing our details, and presumably on the basis that she had by then established I was a genuine connection, she offered to send me a more detailed genealogical report and tree of our mutual connection, to which I was happy to receive.

To be fair she did make it plain that it wasn't her own work but that much of the detail had been provided by another distant relative.

So, the reports duly arrived as promised, and lo I could not hide my amusement when I realised they had started life as extracts from my own personal tree on FTM a year or so before.....!. I can only assume that they had been passed around by yet another member who I shared them with some time previously.

So even if you do go down the route of sending selective information to other researchers, don't be surprised if they turn up later, having done the rounds.

With regard to IGP's comments on research 'doing the rounds'...

Personally if I have been given info, that I have then confirmed by my own research, I will always note in my source records the originator for the info. I believe that they should have recoginition for their work. Likewise I would hope somone would note me in their source records but sadly it rarely happens.

I 'mark' my certs/records that I copy to other people and I can't tell you how many times I get the same copies back attributed to other people's research, some of whom I haven't the faintest idea who they are! :-)

Oh well at least I know, to the best of my ability, the info being passed around is correct. I would rather that than some of the 'interesting' public tree info I have seen relating to my ancestors.

Chris

InspectorGreenPen's story. I have had this sort of thing happen once or twice on Ancestry - where I have a public tree. My tree on one side is copied from an inherited tree without many sources, but has usually turned out when I research it to be pretty accurate - it does go back to 1450ish, so if I get a possible match I do try and chase it up. But when I have found such a contact via Ancestry's hints and ask for their sources it turns out all too often to be my own tree!

Well, considering that Ann accused a fellow member of stealing, it's surprising that she hasn't bothered to return to her thread.......especailly as she was supposedly asking for 'advice'

I think there has been plenty of advice given on here.

I would guess that Ann was expecting people to think the same way as her.

Once you've put information onto a public forum it becomes public property unless you protect it carefully. Even the GR rule that forces members to remove the living relatives of someone's tree can only be enforced on this site. There is nothing to stop the person who has obtained the information to post it elsewhere on the internet.

Unfortunately, it's a bitter pill to swallow when you realise that not everyone's motives are the same as your own and worse still that you can't take back what you have given as a gift.

You don't even need to put it on a public forum for it to end up there. In the past there has been great play made about only passing selected information to other members by private email, and not giving access to your tree in the interests of preserving confidentiality and control over your hard won genealogy research.

As I have already said, even this isn't fool proof as you have no control whatsoever over the other persons actions once they have your info. It might be only a part of your tree but don't be too surprised if it appears somewhere else that you are not expecting.

One of the dangers of marching backwards towards Adam, glancing not from side to side, is that you can miss the interesting loops in relationships.

If two ancestors both happen to marry a Smith twenty or thirty years apart, unless you have explored the branches you will miss the fact that the two Smiths are related.

The bigger picture you have, the more insight you get into how families are interelated.
For example, I was able to show that a Canadian immigrant who was assumed to be unmarried was, in fact, the widow of a member of another branch of the family.

That is a very good point, Brian, and echoes my experiences to a T.

One of my particular areas of interest is the Derbyshire / Leicestershire border where some of my mums ancestors came from. Over the past few years I have worked on mini one-name studies for three surnames Goacher, Bettridge and Thornley.

Each of these names is in effect a mini tree in its own right, In fact there are two seperate trees for the Bettridges, who are the moment are completely unconnected. In total, each of these mini-trees has upwards of a thousand plus names.

As you can imagine, along the way, other names keep cropping it on a regular basis through marriages. When this happens I also research those names too, not necessarily in the same detail, but to the extent where I can see how the connections all tie together. It is surprising how many new distant cousins this can identify, sprouting additional mini-trees along the way.

I have to admit it baffles me as to why people put any living relative on an internet tree. Quite some time ago I even changed my own details so I can remain anonymous.

I don't mind sharing relatives but they have to be dead'uns and name sharing starts at my grandparents generation only.

Cheryl :-D