Ancestry Public Trees versus Private - a new debate

Well said Helen and something perhaps that should have occurred to me to least present a counter to those wish to have only 'direct ancestor' trees. It will be interesting to see what repostes are made to this, and I am sure there will be some ...or may already have been given as I am a little late in coming across your post.

 

Have you actually contacted any of those 4th cousins without trees? I have, and quite often they have done a fair amount of research (or in some cases have inherited research), but just haven't put their trees online. Following the initial Ancestry message (which I agree with others can be clunky) we have compared notes and established the connection, then exchanged e-mails with details of our trees, documents, photos etc. so it has worked out fine.

 

Peter, having read your latest newsletter, I am wondering if you may have misunderstood what I wrote in #79 above.

What I said was that I don’t own the information from which my tree is constructed, which is not the same as suggesting that people don't own the trees they have researched and put together. To use your analogy, if I were to say that you don't own the words that make up your newsletter, that is not in any way a comment on copyright ownership of the newsletter itself.

 

Would a public "direct ancestor only" tree supported by one or more private, searchable and more detailed trees work for you in those circumstances?

 

Yes, that's what I'm thinking of doing. I have an extensive private tree currently linked to my DNA test (and same for my husband), but am thinking of making stripped down 'direct ancestor' trees, as suggested by Peter, to connect to the DNA whilst keeping the detailed trees private.

 

Good idea, thanks for this suggestion. I've tended to concentrate on surnames of blood relatives, but connections by marriage can be useful in this context.

 

Fair enough, though in one sense it doesn't matter whose thoughts you had in mind - I still feel the analogy is flawed, as ownership of information and copyright of something which uses that information are not the same thing.

 

I have used both public and private/searchable trees in both direct ancestor and "the lot" versions. However, I have concluded that a public "Direct ancestors and siblings" version might fit the bill as a compromise, showing the start of sub-branches. There are no directly visible "by marriage" people on the diagram, but they are referenced in a custom "Married" event in the sibling's profile which provides the spouse and any resulting name change.

Phil

 

I haven’t as yet but as your experience is quite positive I will give it a go.

 

That is not strictly true, if a living person has two deceased parents they can be seen and searches can be made to ascertain the living person's identity.
I have come across photos that have a mix of living and deceased persons, when the photo has a caption to explain who each person is, the living person's identity is revealed. Please do not ask me for an example as I do not have one at hand and cannot remember which people I have found this to be true of.
I know I've joined this discussion late in the piece but I am all for keeping my trees private.

 

Yes I have come across occasional multiple family photos with names tagged to show who-is-who, and on rare occasions one might just be a living person. But even after years of using Ancestry it is such a rare thing as to be hardly worth mentioning. There are known methods to discover the names of living persons without relying on discovering by chance a name tag on a family photo. I make very (as in very) limited use of photos on Ancestry (99.9% of the remainder are all stored in my Tribal Pages available only by passcode to the family) and the ones I do entrust to Ancestry are just of the named (deceased) ancestor. Of course -as one who advocates Public Trees - (as I am sure you will have discovered) - I do not mind in the least anyone copying the photo if they so wish.

 

Agreed, and it wasn't my intention to suggest you had - or would.

However, it seemed to me that the copyright analogy in your newsletter could be seen as implying that anyone using the "publicly-available records" counter-argument was also suggesting that anything making use of these records could not be copyrighted.

And while I can't speak for anyone else, that isn't what I was intending to suggest - which I guess is why I felt the analogy misrepresented the counter-argument.

 

That's a good point I had "missed" (ie not thought about) - it also requires some "juggling" of the data (though it is an add-on automatic process).

Phil

 

That is what I am thinking about currently as I do not yet have any Ancestry tree(s). As I have mentioned elsewhere, I keep my master set of information at home in about 400 separate surname trees using GenoPro to make relevant automatic links between them all. That does pose a few problems if I want to create a consolidated tree anywhere. Note: I haven't needed to so far.

I am coming round to accepting that I probably need to get a DNA test conducted and am looking to see what other expense/effort would need to be involved at the same time, such as a new Ancestry subscription and tree upload, etc. I have started to prepare and as a first step I have created a separate direct ancestors only tree with each of 180+ members (all deceased) linking back to the appropriate entry in my main collection, to help with any further investigation. Obviously, adding siblings for all members would be an enormous extra effort and not to be undertaken unless a major benefit would result. So far, I cannot see that there would really be any advantage but my lack of DNA experience may be blinding me.

I would be grateful to receive the further views of current DNA researchers, via this discussion in case there are others who might be in a similar position.. I have found some 8th cousins via traditional methods but DNA should provide hints for many more. In particular, I have conversed with someone with the same surname about our joint researches back to English village inhabitants located only a few miles apart before the year 1600 but have failed to find any common ancestor. Appropriate records are either no longer available or very well hidden in places unknown to us. Is this a case where a Y-DNA test would be appropriate for us both to take?

'Unfortunately' Spring has sprung South of the Equator and the All Blacks have just played Australia in Japan so I am not finding as much time to carefully think this through as I would like.

 

I think that likely a 'win-win' on both counts because as far as I can recall (perhaps not a cast iron certainty but close) all the photos come from within the family* with permission to use.

*By family I mean from my own collection, (some inherited) or that of my siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins (you probably get the picture -pardon the pun!). There may be a handful transmitted via email or copied with permission from fellow researchers, many of whom are family by association (blood or marriage).

As for the second point (before 1945) I wouldn't be able to quantify that for all photos used in Tribal Pages (many hundreds as opposed to some two dozen or so in Ancestry) - but I'm pretty sure those on Ancestry are all before that date anyhow and the photo takers have long passed away.

As for the DACS website information, that if I may say so is classic legalese: (a) applies unless countermanded by (b) or amended by (c). No wonder lawyers are always in demand and it is a wonder we sleep at night?