Now I understand why some ancestry.com trees are private ... (family tree, pure)

[Aconite]

Originally Posted by kevxu

Heh heh. Genealogy has given me a whole new appreciation of that expression "an embarrassment of riches."

When one's forbears never let the grass grow on a grave before they remarried and number their offspring literally by the dozens , in some localities it is a feat not to be related to everyone.

I'm guessing the post-WWII migrations were good for at least shaking up the gene pool.

[linicx]

At one time I had a tree up. The next thing I know I have my entire family bured in a My X County Family file on ancestry. Didn't recognize one name. I spent 40 -50 hours trying to understand where this idea came from. This is what I found. Her maternal g.granmother had several half-siblings due to the fact her father married 3 times and had children buy these unrelated wives.

1- The son of one of her g.grams half-sisters married the neice of my grandmother's maternal aunt.
2- Another half-sister married the uncle of the man my grandmother's paternal aunt married.
3- When this same uncle died the half-sister next married my gg.grandfather but thankfull had no issue. They already had 30 children between them and 20 survived.
4- G-Gram had a son who married my grandfathers sister. They had sons who had no issue.
5- The son's cousin married my materhal grandfathers aunt's son.
6- This cousin's sister-in-law married my grandmother's brother.

This wpman also had the nerve to pump my aging mother for private information and put it in her file without permission and now Ancestry sells it.

Needless to say.....

Originally Posted by silverwing

... I bet they got tired of the lazy guys who pull every single record from their tree to their own

I'm not talking about pictures or obits or news items; I'm actually mostly OK with that. I subscribed to a news archive service and several genealogy societies. I go through Google books and the Internet archive and collect county histories for the information contained there. Stuff that can be hard to track down and/or entail a purchase, I'm glad to share - though it would be nice to receive an acknowledgment. If I see a unique item that I end up pulling to my tree, I send a message to the person or leave a comment in the box, stating my appreciation for what they've put up. I am grateful for the expansion of knowledge of my family tree by their contributions. It has even lead to my getting to know some very distant relatives and trading more family information.

So, no, not all record pulling is bad, but to pull the census records; the military records; the SS death records -- I mean, c'mon! Lazy! Spend a few hours out there looking for that stuff yourself! Especially on Ancestry, much of that is fairly easy to find if you have names, dates and place of residence - and sometimes you don't even need to have that much. You don't learn anything by merely saying "hey! that's my g-g-g-g-grandmother, let me scoop up everything this person has collected so I can have my very own family tree in an instant!" IMO, you don't get a sense of the person or family by merely collecting names and records. I've taken census records and tried to untangle the why's of a lot I see there. Parents disappear and kids end up with grandparents or uncle-aunts - I wonder what happened with that? I found a dissimilar name from the others listed in a dwelling and spent a lot of time scratching my head before learning that this was a granddaughter to the Head of House, yet her mother was living off in another state with a different name even than her daughter's. I guess this was a second marriage where the child of the first wasn't wanted? I recently found my g-g-grandfather's story of living in Texas with his brother and sister-in-law. That was 1910. In 1920, he was still in that house, only his brother was dead and the SIL was now listed as my g-g-grandfather's wife. That caused a lot "I yi yi!" comments from living family.

Even if people aren't so interested in researching family foibles and old gossip, it's still not fair to the person who might have spent hours (days) collecting all that and creating a tree. At least go out and do a little of the work yourself.

[Reedsmit]

I am very skeptical about copying from other peoples research. Just as I am skeptical of World Tree, unless you see the document - and even when you do there are lots and lots of mistakes due to similiar names.

I will look at documents and if I see that they are for the person I am researching - I will save the document. If there is a photo - I will contact the owner and ask permission to use the photo. If there is information about the family that I was unaware of I will use it as a hint - but than I research the family myself.

About a year ago I got really upset when someone raided my data - my photos and my research.
I contacted the person and asked them how they were related? I got a rude - "I am Roger's fiance" - who is Roger? Than a flip - I didn't mean to upset you - take what you like from my site.

Sharing is one thing - stealing is something else.

But beyond that you don't know what care has been used when you don't do the work yourself.

[Tallysmom]

I know what you mean about doing the work myself.... I frequently use other people's trees to confirm my work, and get some new leads and sometimes there is SUCH wrongness on them.... my favorite thing I've found is multiple people "sourcing" censuses using the maiden names of my female ancestors LONG after the woman has been married. Uh -- Mary Jones becomes Mary Smith after marriage and 30 years later isn't counted as Mary Jones -- even if that Mary Jones is around the same area that Mary Smith is -- it doesn't make her the same person.

And some of the people doing it seem to be SUCH sticklers for accuracy, it makes me wonder if they are doing it on purpose to screw tree raiders up.

My newest kicker -- my dear late Aunt, who got me started on this many years ago, was a major buff for genealogy and had one done for her so she could belong to the Daughter of the American Colonists.

Since that work was done by a pro, and accepted by the DAC as fact.... I never questioned it. But someone else who is working on the same lineage has told me that there is no linkage for our adjoining relative, and he may be right... looks like the pro took a "leap of faith" and combined two women with the same maiden name, with about a 10 year age difference between them.

It's okay, though -- I've done enough research to know that maybe that route wasn't the one to the DAC, but there are several others she could have taken...

[Reedsmit]

Originally Posted by Tallysmom

I know what you mean about doing the work myself.... I frequently use other people's trees to confirm my work, and get some new leads and sometimes there is SUCH wrongness on them.... my favorite thing I've found is multiple people "sourcing" censuses using the maiden names of my female ancestors LONG after the woman has been married. Uh -- Mary Jones becomes Mary Smith after marriage and 30 years later isn't counted as Mary Jones -- even if that Mary Jones is around the same area that Mary Smith is -- it doesn't make her the same person.

And some of the people doing it seem to be SUCH sticklers for accuracy, it makes me wonder if they are doing it on purpose to screw tree raiders up.

My newest kicker -- my dear late Aunt, who got me started on this many years ago, was a major buff for genealogy and had one done for her so she could belong to the Daughter of the American Colonists.

Since that work was done by a pro, and accepted by the DAC as fact.... I never questioned it. But someone else who is working on the same lineage has told me that there is no linkage for our adjoining relative, and he may be right... looks like the pro took a "leap of faith" and combined two women with the same maiden name, with about a 10 year age difference between them.

It's okay, though -- I've done enough research to know that maybe that route wasn't the one to the DAC, but there are several others she could have taken...

I am a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), their process is very strict as you must prove by documentation your direct linage to the person who was either a Soldier or Patriot. Only glitch is they will also accept information which is published in a book.

Recognizing that no system is perfect - documentation is sometimes difficult to locate - but - how do we know the accuracy of the vanity published books?

I recently had a whole section of my research blown completely out of the water by a book - one of my previous sources had been a very well known book on the family. The book was in it's 3rd Edition. However the new book used pages and pages of source notes for everything that it claimed plus DNA TESTS to prove or disprove various lines. I have no choice but accept the 2nd book - as I can go back and double check the source notes - plus I was aware of the DNA testing at the time that it was being done.

I had a research cousin who insisted on 3 sources for each fact. I thought he was being overly caustious - now I think he was right.

[jeansipes]

What I do not understand is people who are doing research on the same family tree and do not want to simply compare notes ! I mean for crying out loud ...... you are related even if it is a 'distant relative' you are from the same 'stock' ! Those that ignore emails or refuse to swap info. are in my opinion, just plain selfish and RUDE. And the ones that completely ignore emails ....... would it kill you to at least answer the email with a reply like "I'm sorry but I cannot help you" or "I'm not interested" ???

When more than one family member is researching the same tree ; it only makes sense to assist each other. But we live in a day and age where too many people are dismissing manners and are only looking out for themselves. They have forgotten the meaning of "FAMILY".

[kevxu]

Originally Posted by jeansipes

What I do not understand is people who are doing research on the same family tree and do not want to simply compare notes ! I mean for crying out loud ...... you are related even if it is a 'distant relative' you are from the same 'stock' ! Those that ignore emails or refuse to swap info. are in my opinion, just plain selfish and RUDE. And the ones that completely ignore emails ....... would it kill you to at least answer the email with a reply like "I'm sorry but I cannot help you" or "I'm not interested" ???

When more than one family member is researching the same tree ; it only makes sense to assist each other. But we live in a day and age where too many people are dismissing manners and are only looking out for themselves. They have forgotten the meaning of "FAMILY".

I think you have summed up the situation quite accurately. Most people living today have no sense of, nor experience with "family" beyond Mom, Dad, siblings and the TV set. I love remembering the days when people used the expression "my people," and meant a virtual tribe of relatives they were related to and kept in touch with.

I am old, and am pretty much on Death's doorstep, but I am happy as can be that much of my life was lived in a society much different than that of today's. I have the feeling as if I had been standing in line and was the last one to get a piece of cake.

[bjh]

Originally Posted by kevxu

I think you have summed up the situation quite accurately. Most people living today have no sense of, nor experience with "family" beyond Mom, Dad, siblings and the TV set. I love remembering the days when people used the expression "my people," and meant a virtual tribe of relatives they were related to and kept in touch with.

I am old, and am pretty much on Death's doorstep, but I am happy as can be that much of my life was lived in a society much different than that of today's. I have the feeling as if I had been standing in line and was the last one to get a piece of cake.

Most people think history began the day they were born.

Now we have evidence that some think it ends the day they do.

I am about to make my tree private because I am sick of getting 'hints' to 'sources' that are trees made up of snippets of my already existing tree - these ususally consist of around 10 -20 individuals or a completely other branch that has linked into a section of my tree. And I know they did not even enter the information themselves because it consits of the same type setting, spelling, even nick names, and date style I use in my tree - IT PISSES ME OFF TO NO END that I get 10 'tree hints' that are not even sourced just copied from me.

And to make it all worse some of them can't even follow basic chronological sense - it is like they just spent 2 minutes to copy it and now that is their tree. I wish I had delete powers for some trees.

P.S. Also, many times I will enter info on my tree as preliminary info in order to further work with - I see the relics of my previous info on some trees when they copied it before I got to confirming it and changing it.

[rohirette]

I am not embarrassed to say that I use other trees as a resource.

It seems ridiculous to do the exact same research that fifty other people have done before me, particularly when we are talking about an ancestor that easily has a thousand descendants. I am not, however, taking or giving credit; this is purely for my own knowledge.

Now, I won't blindly copy an unsourced tree; I have to be able to find some document confirmation via archives.com, ancestry.com, a published book, etc. And my tree is private, on software on my home computer.