wrong information in family trees and theft of privacy

[phenolphthalein]

My grandparent's marriage is UNIQUE.
Only my dad, sister, son and I are descendants.
We would NOT have chosen to publish it because of privacy and lack of need to.

Back in the 1980's or 90's I discovered that
someone had incorrectly linked my great-grandfather
by marriage to one of the daughters of their extended family tree
 (who they weren't descended from).
They then proceeded to research and link in my great grandfather's descendants.
Great grandfather's surname is very rare.
Part of that was the marriage of my grandparents (as I said UNIQUE).
It was before my grandmother would have been 100 (and so may have been alive)
so unless they knew she was dead they had no right to publish,
even apart from getting it wrong.

At the time, I wrote to the tree people.
Got standard answer contact submitter. Could not do.
Found it copied on Ancestry. Same answer -- still can not do.

Such a frustrating situation.

Their Mary G. H--- was protestant, of English descent,
                           a city dweller and her father was John.
My Mary A. H--- was catholic, had 4 Irish grandparents.
                        lived in the country and her father was Patrick.

Searching randomly for grandparent's information again
I find my grandmother (again a rare name) appearing as
1. the daughter of her mother and paternal grandfather
with her aunts and uncles listed as her siblings
2. in several trees with her mother's middle name listed as her mother's maiden name.

Surely it is time that Ancestry etc guaranteed people privacy
and ownership of their own genealogical information so this does not reoccur.

Its not to the chat and speculation of this sort of site that I object.
Mistakes can be righted here and people understand it is just conversation.
It is the published trees copied and transferred and unalterable that I object to.

[Jamjar]

I can't see what this has to do with the Australia board.

I think maybe it belongs in the Common Room.

Jamjar

[majm]

Hi there,

Welcome to RootsChat.   

It is not part of the commercial website, Ancestry. 

I am not sure of your reason for posting on the Australia Board, but perhaps you may be interested in having a read through the following thread.   

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=368728.0


JM

[Erato]

"ownership"

Actually, you do not own your grandmother or any other ancestor.  Anyone who takes an interest in her, for whatever reason, is perfectly free to investigate her life.

[cando]

Welcome to the world of online public trees full or errors....and you can't do anything about it unless the submitter who placed the tree online agrees to remove the names.

It isn't the responsibility of hosting websites to ensure the accuracy or otherwise of uploaded trees.

If it upsets you so much then don't look at it.

Cando

[majm]

My grandparent's marriage is UNIQUE.
Only my dad, sister, son and I are descendants.
We would NOT have chosen to publish it because of privacy and lack of need to.

Back in the 1980's or 90's I discovered that
someone had incorrectly linked my great-grandfather
by marriage to one of the daughters of their extended family tree
 (who they weren't descended from).
They then proceeded to research and link in my great grandfather's descendants.
Great grandfather's surname is very rare.
Part of that was the marriage of my grandparents (as I said UNIQUE).
It was before my grandmother would have been 100 (and so may have been alive)
so unless they knew she was dead they had no right to publish,
even apart from getting it wrong.

At the time, I wrote to the tree people.
Got standard answer contact submitter. Could not do.
Found it copied on Ancestry. Same answer -- still can not do.

Such a frustrating situation.

Their Mary G. H--- was protestant, of English descent,
                           a city dweller and her father was John.
My Mary A. H--- was catholic, had 4 Irish grandparents.
                        lived in the country and her father was Patrick.

Searching randomly for grandparent's information again
I find my grandmother (again a rare name) appearing as
1. the daughter of her mother and paternal grandfather
with her aunts and uncles listed as her siblings
2. in several trees with her mother's middle name listed as her mother's maiden name.

Surely it is time that Ancestry etc guaranteed people privacy
and ownership of their own genealogical information so this does not reoccur.

Its not to the chat and speculation of this sort of site that I object.
Mistakes can be righted here and people understand it is just conversation.
It is the published trees copied and transferred and unalterable that I object to.

Of course, Phenol,  if you were to post on this thread your known and correct information about those four deceased ancestors, ... those four Irish great great grandparents  you mention above, then you would have contradicted those wrong trees, and you would have avoided infringing the privacy of any living person. 

JM

[phenolphthalein]

Apologise for posting to Australia not Common room.
Obviously I need to learn where things go.

Different people have different experiences.
My point was that the person who published the information
had no relation to it in any shape or form except for their error.

I've made mistakes in family history since I first started to do it in the 1970s
but they have all been by pen in my workbook
easy to put right
and not published to produce false trails for future generations.

I did not go looking for errors.
It was pre TROVE and I was looking for social notices in newspapers
not family trees.

As I said the information is UNIQUE.
Only my dad, sister, son and I are descendants.
We would NOT have chosen to publish it because of privacy and lack of need to.

If it was John Smith and Mary Green
to be honest it wouldn't matter on a personal front
even if it were wrong
but because it is unique it does.

I'm not quite sure why everyone is so snipey today.

[majm]

Errrrrrrrrrrr..... I  would not have considered that any of us are snipey today.
 

I am sure that several of us have notified the volunteer moderators about moving your thread to the Common Room.

JM

[Jamjar]

I would love to take up the challenge of proving that your information is not UNIQUE.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/unique

Want to share some names and dates? Or, have you no interest in research, which is what this site is actually for.

I agree with Cando that if you don't like what you see, don't look at it, while adding that if you won't like what you see don't look for it.

I am thinking you were looking for it and that's what brought you to RChat.

It's all out there. The 100 year rule doesn't apply to all things. I not long ago found my birth mother's marriage certificate on NSWBDM and she's very much still alive, in her 70s. Then with Trove and Ryerson it isn't hard to track living members of families. It's what you do with the information that counts. Putting it on an online tree because you think the person is an ancestor is lazy but fine, if they have done the research and found the information on line.

Here we do our best to protect the living, occasionally slipping up, but it's picked up quickly by others.

Jamjar