Public or Private Ancestry Trees

I too had the same problem with elderly relatives and consequently hid details of all living people on my public tree on Rootsweb when I submitted it many years ago. However, I later discovered that my tree had been displayed on Ancestry without my knowledge or permission, with a multitude of errors and personal details of living people on view. Apparently Ancestry took over Rootsweb, but not having an Ancestry subscription at the time, it was several years before I realised what had happened. Rootsweb gave me to option to hide the names of living relatives and prevent the tree from being downloaded, which I took up, but Ancestry copied my tree. It translated Mx (Middlesex) as Mexico, West Ham, Essex as West Hampshire, USA to give but a couple of examples and many dates entered in UK format were altered to US format until the tree became so littered with mistakes it barely resembled the original. I contacted Ancestry and asked for the tree to be removed as I no longer had control over it and was unable to correct the errors (even though my e-mail address was published) but since it had been absorbed into Ancestry's public World Connect tree, my section could not be removed. All the private details which I had been so careful to hide were visible as Ancestry's ruling allowed any data regarding people over 70 years of age to be displayed and names of living partners or other family members for whom no birth year had been entered also became visible. The tree was widely copied and I had enormous problems persuading people whom I didn't even know to remove the personal details of my mother and her sisters and cousins and names of family members' partners (some of whom had since divorced). However, the distinctive errors make it easy for me to spot other 'researchers' who have since copied my tree and pass it off as their own!!

I am happy to share my information with anyone who is genuinely connected to me, but my experience with Rootsweb means that I no longer have a public or private tree online, apart from a few direct ancestors' names on Genes Reunited.

Ancestry's rules have finally changed and trees can no longer show details of living people without the person's permission, so perhaps I might consider having a private tree online again. The vast majority of my information has been gleaned from searching primary sources at local record offices, the PRO, Colindale's newspaper resources and from wills as well as the increasingly large volume of info online, so I am reasonably sure of its accuracy, but there are some shocking trees online!! It's frightening to think that some newcomers to genealogy might believe that info is posted on the internet is all factually correct......

The drawback of not having an online tree is, of course, that the onus is on me to search out any new relatives, so I don't get many hits per year (I currently have 10 from Lost Cousins), but those I do are worthwhile as they are handpicked.

 

The thing one needs to realise about Ancestry is it is merely a vehicle and a good one that records whatever anyone chooses to record by own input or copied from elsewhere. It offers a mine of information and strives to help ‘second guess’ what you seek but doesn’t always get it right, especially if you change search tactics. For instance I recently switched to another of my Trees to do quite a bit of US Census and BMD searching. A day or so later I returned to one of my UK Trees and quickly realised Ancestry was still US orientated. So when I entered Birmingham without waiting for its default mode to kick it recorded the place as Birmingham, Alabama. It took a while for me to insist I was back in UK & Ireland, but it still came up with US search data until I put my foot down and restored its defaults.

As many in the Forum know I am an advocate of Ancestry Public Trees and have had several different ones for many years. Of course I come across those containing pure gobbledegook and it is best to pass these by as no amount of communication will change them. But where experience and intuition reveals others that look to be on target, with perhaps the odd stray, maybe incorrect information (always remember you may be the one with the wrong information) – communicate politely and tactfully give your reasons. Likewise when you discover new information in a Tree that ticks the right boxes, ask if they mind sharing (and especially explaining their sources) with you. Most will respond favourably and far outweigh those who make no response at all.

I don’t have problem with senior family members and indeed I am one myself. I recently lost my 89 year old Uncle (the family Patriarch) and there was nothing he loved so much as to be told of the things ‘Bobby’ had found out about the family. It was for this reason I created my own Tribal Pages web page and made sure his children (my cousins) knew how to access it. The nuts and bolts side they left to me and apart from some of the earlier –often pre-internet – leg work undertaken, for the rest I have Genes and Ancestry to thank, and my Pubic Trees in particular. With experience one soon learns to sort the wheat from the chaff and used wisely Ancestry pays dividends many times over and I wouldn’t be without it.

 

That's good advice Peter assuming it will let me save information when required to the Tree in question. (In other words the Tree which often calls for US searching is one of the four I maintain in my UK Ancestry set up). I have a worldwide subscription so opening a separate Ancestry.Com webpage should auto recognise the login (or require me to enter my email & password). Then if, after carrying out a US search I need to save the information to a specific page in the Tree, it will prompt -as a UK search does - by asking me to select the Tree from a dropdown, and then entering the name of a person and confirming the 'save'. If none of that is a problem I will certainly follow your lead and use Ancestry.com for US searching. Thanks.