Hi Everyone,
While I have been sleeping peacefully - there have been lots of comments on my post - Thanks for that. And I do agree with you all.
I am convinced of the value of knowing our heritage and backgrounds - and am not swayed by others opinions. Must say though that even if their opinions don't change mine, there can be ways of researching, and Telling the stories whether everyone is listening or not. Options to have 'private trees" online are good - but is that good enough to truly protect the "privacy" of those who are not genealogy inclined?? Must say though my tree is private I do see other trees online which are not, and some of them have major, major faults and mistakes. One other important point I think is to be able to research and tell the story within a social framework of the time.
So if as families can be major issues seen to be "faults" "mistakes" - is it true, that depending on what social strata we belong to, the faults can be seen to be more less acceptable. Programmes on various royal families and historical figures can bring forth issues which were fine in their day, - but if the same issues happened now to just the ordinary "Joe Bloggs" - people would put their hands up in horror. Absolutely extreme case? Recent programme about the Egyptian Pharaohs and their "lineages". Scientists have proved that in fact it was not just accepted but expected that a Pharaoh would "marry" and have children with his own siblings - The reasoning being, that a Pharaoh was a God, and they could only carry their line onwards, "undiluted" by having children with their own siblings who were also "Gods"!!!!!
Hey who could possibly say that Genealogy is boring!!!!
I keep reading about “privacy” in the last few years but what is “privacy”?
Here in the UK there are no laws of “privacy”, there are laws created to prevent the state, government and the authorities interfering with the private lives of population, which these days are being hijacked to prevent public information being displayed, i.e. censorship!
This was enshrined in laws such as the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Human Rights Act), signed in 1950.
A number of years ago the Information Commissioner (the person responsible for enforcing the Data Protection Act, etc. made a statement that “It was acceptable for individuals to publish details such details of birth and marriage on their personal websites and online family trees”. Since then amateur censors of all shapes and sizes decry people who do so.
This has the knock on effect of organisations such as the General Record Office (GRO), breaking the law by creating an office policy of insisting people provide details such as Father's Name & Surname before supplying recent (non historic) birth certificates rather than just the GRO reference as required by law.
That in turn breaks the Human Rights Act section 8 dealing with “family life”.
In a similar (and sometimes connected) way the official paperwork connected with births and deaths may not be correct. E.G. The father of a child born to a married woman is assumed by the authorities to be her husband unless it can be shown “he did not have access to her” during the relevant time period. However family knowledge may know the true picture and record someone different from the recorded father. Over time that family knowledge may be forgotten, confused or even denied unless it has been written down somewhere, perhaps in a family tree.
We are now in a period when DNA is revealing that some historically accepted “facts” are now dubious assertions.
Cheers
Guy
