Genealogy Chat

Can someone tell me how you copy a 'whole tree' off GR?
I sometimes sit here for hours taking notes on just the little bits that match my own family.

nameslessone

I once queried this and it transpired that the entire 'stolen tree' consisted of about 20 names in all.

Reading threads such as this you can easily get the impression that there are 100's if not 1000's of names involved.

I only keep a skeleton tree on GR. My complete trees (4 of them) are all private on Ancestry.

If I receive a query I am more than happy to provide details which I may have of their immediate family but no more. Branches are only of interest to me and those people included on the branch.

I have received and given lots of information but only to people who are truly related. When I get a request for tree details from someone who has thousands of names a great alarm bell starts ringing.

It's all give and take, within reason. Without help from others I would have been stuck with some rellies who did nothing remarkable and just sunk into the murky past.

The information on your living relatives is all out there if anyone wants to find it. A recent contact (with a shared ancestor) on GR was given access to my tree and a few days later emailed me a detailed document which, amongst other things, named all my living relatives giving dates (quarters) and places. The information was not on my tree - I had typed in each one as "living person". This person had ALL the information, including some that was unknown to me.

It's pointless to get uptight about the possession of the information, distressing as it may be; we all now live in the age of easy access to information, which how we were able to construct our trees in the first place!

Tina -
Click on "Help" in top banner, then drill down in Complete FAQ Listing
Hot Matches and searching for relations.
I have found my own and my living relations names on the site


I must admit I'm somewhat puzzled abt how one can steal something that's been given away.

I think we all have been the victim of a 'tree thief' at sometime and it will always go on.

What upsets me most is when I, personally, have never put my kids names in my tree, even hidden as living, I then find that someone else has given them away to others whose only connection to you is in the 16thC.

The best way I think is to keep your tree simple and then give others information if you think the query is genuine. Most of mine is still in folders and can still share. Some twenty years ago a couple brought there photocopy machine to our home and I allowed them to copy a lot of material on his side of the family. (A line shared by my husband) and a couple of years after they had a unveiling of a monument for this direct relation, ( a 35 min drive away)and we never knew a thing, til we read it in the newspaper. The word SHARED has a very good meaning to it. I have jotted down names from others trees that interest me so I can check them and I wish to be corrected if I have something wrong often helps to break down that brick wall.

Whilst I am in the main in support of the gist of this thread, I do agree that the twigs on our trees are not our personal property. However, our time and money spent researching it are. As Pat says, the word sharing has a meaning in the dictionary, and people that are quite happy to take info from us, without recipricating really annoy me. But my biggest dislike is for those that seem intent on connecting everybody in the world. I had someone take a load of info from my tree, and although they did open their tree to me, it took me ages to work out how they related to me. I eventually found that a distant cousin of mine had a wife, who had a distant cousin, who had a husband who had a half-sister, who had a distant cousin who was the person whose tree it was. There was so much zig-zagging up a branch, down the next , then up again, etc, etc. I got dizzy. When I looked again a few months later, they had continued the trend from the other half of my tree. What is that all about ?!?!?

Just more names on their tree, Fiona... I have to admit I am a recovering name-aholic ;-) ... when I discovered the second wife of the father of two of my cousins on here (I guess he's no longer officially my uncle as the 'blood' connection is that his first wife - and my cousins' mother - is my father's sister!) I set about merrily copying a lot of her names onto my tree just so it would have more names on it.

Then I metaphorically slapped myself about the face with a wet haddock and realised none of her family were actually related to me, and trimmed my tree back to just show my cousins' father's 2 marriages and the parents of his second wife. Thinking about it now, I'm even considering pruning her parents and just leaving her on... how times change!

I am very new to reseaching my family tree and didnt realise that this huge argument exhistied or that people would take people from your tree that they are not related to.
Until today i didnt even know how to hide those that are living, although i've yet to decide whether i want to do this as other people who share my tree have children not hidden and so it would be easy enough for anyone to find them if i were to hide them.
I have researched and have my own stock of census', birth certificates, marriage certificates and the like but i have not copied them onto here that they are the sources of my info because as far as i'm concerned i know they are my sources and if anyone RELATED wanted to know my sources i'd tell them.
From the half a dozen people i have shared my tree with so far there have been gains on both sides from sharing as sometimes i have had more knowledge on one branch and they've had more info on another and so sharing has been useful.
If i take this info from others trees is this stealing when its out there to share? I dont see that someone taking parts from my tree as stealing but sharing. If after granting access to my tree at the same time they granted me access to theirs and i dont see the connection i withdraw the access.
Am i being niave to believe that a site called Genes Reunited is about being United?

Back in 2003 I had never used a computer,my wife had her tree on our computer but I had no interest.One day she happened across a relative of mine looking for information.My wife gave a small reply to the thread.Next day she received an email from a member of the Guild of one name studies,after a few emails he sent us a family tree from 1789 to the present day.There it was from my g/g/grandfather to me the wife,our children and grandchildren.
Utterly amazing.
It turns out that he has on his computer every mention of my surname from Familysearch ,every census all bmd's etc etc.He makes contact anywhere and everywhere with people around the world connected to the one surname.
Most of the people contacted help with corrections and actual dates of bmd's and copies of certificates, plus anything at all that adds to mini biographies.
I think he is about 86 now but still striving for that complete tree.
And some of you begrudge sharing.

Picking up on Jim's points, it is all to easy to automatically assume that someone who has a lot of names in there tree has an ulterior motive. Each of us is different, has different interests and aims in life. I do hope his 86 year old reaches his goal.

I also do one-name area studies, albeit on an unofficial basis and on researching a particular branch, it is easy to add a hundred or so names in a single research session. Personally I will never add anything which isn't corroborated in some way, whether it be from a census return, BMD record or other source. Hardly stealing.....!

The catalyst to research a particular line often comes by way of contact with another member,on sites such as Ancestry, GR or passed on to me by someone who I have been in touch with previously. Most are happy to be part of my research but if someone want to preserve privacy or anonymity, that's also fine by me.

My approach is to find the link to my existing research and take it from there. I rarely go backwards from the connection other than, perhaps to record a partner / spouse's, unless I believe there is an earlier connection somewhere along the line. It is surprising how many couples were distant cousins without ever realising it.

Moving int the 1900's the transcribed indices on Ancetsry have made thing so much easier. You now able to trace people born in say the 1970's back two or three generations and link them to earlier research. If I am able to do this for someone then they are welcome to access their tree, sometimes back for hundreds of years more.

If you feel strongly protective, then the best advice is not to publish anything you do not wish others to see. It beats me why people put very personal information on their trees then go to great lengths to try and hide it.

If you are related then what is the problem? I only object when they think they could have a connection and without researching copy your entire tree. This did happen to me and this site were wonderful they contacted the guy who refused to clear my family from his tree at my request but as soon as genesreunited contacted him it was sorted.
Others who I have a connection with whether 2/3/4 times removed we continue to write to each other and form a nice relaxed e-mail friendship.
Why worry as after all you are related and take it as a compliment.
Still to this day I keep all my active relatives on my tree as I find it most frustrating when working with someone not to see who I am talking to.

This morning I sent a message to one of my fourth cousins who we made contact just a month ago having found one of her dad's second cousins who has only recently become a member.

This is one of the satisfying aspects of this hobby but has only come about because the two are part of one of my "one name" research projects for my great grandmother's family name which involves detailed research of all possible family members.

Tree Stealing or Name Collecting? I don't think so.....!

JD? that's all I'm saying...

I have no objection to sharing information with people who are related to me through my tree ........ but I do have an objection to someone just "taking" all the names when there is no real connection between us.

This is one reason why I only have 132 names on my tree on here ....... and many hundreds more that I have not entered. I establish that there is a real connection between us, and then send names and tree(s) limited to the connection between us.

OK, I may miss some Hot Matches ...... but the main names are on here. And as I have said several times, I now find that most of the Hot Matches that GR generates are Hot Matches simply because I shared the information with someone!


JimSoton .................... your story about the Guild of One Name Studies reminded me of my kerfuffle of last year.

I posted it on here at the time ...... but long story shortened.

There was a Guild of One Name Study on my maiden name. I tried to contact the "owner" several times over a period of years, with no response. I had a feeling he was my second cousin, descended from my father's eldest brother. We had lost contact with most of that family back in the 1970s. I really wanted to establish contact with him, as well as exchange information.

Finally, last year I discovered a major error in the information on that study .............. my father had got "lost", and my older brother was shown as my father. Mum's name was correct, but my brother was 11 when he "fathered" me. This information had been put onto a CD which was widely distributed at a meeting of "the" name around 2000, and is being put on trees all over the place.

You may imagine that I wanted to get this corrected!!

I made 3 attempts to contact him through the Guild, no response. That involved having to buy 3 International Reply Coupons costing the equivalent of about £15 to cover postage.

The Guild attempted to get him to respond to me, no response. After 6 months of attempts ................. they kicked him out, and there is no longer a One Name Study in that family.


The terrible thing is that he was my second cousin ........... but most of the work on the family history had been done in the 1980s and early 1990s by his older brother and my brother. There was a break up in his family and he stole the information from his brother and passed it off as his own.

How do I know this?? Because 3 of the other brothers in that family have started doing their tree, all have been in contact with me through Hot Matches. There is/was a family feud in which 4 brothers were aligned against this one brother and the sister. One told me of the stealing. It's really quite sad, because the 3 are all working on their trees seemingly independently of each other!


The refusal to answer me was, I am certain, because I had the proof of the work that our two brothers had done, and of who had done it!


And I told him that myself, all unknowingly, in almost every letter and email that I sent to him, because I kept making references to work done in the 1980s!



sylvia

I made contact through GR with a cousin and gave him a family tree and told him that my tree was on GR but I hadn't gone beyond what was on the 1901 census and didn't want living relatives and young children in particular put on GR., but being a cousin, I felt I should give him the whole story.

What did he do ? yes........he put the lot on GR ...right down to a 5year old

Like Helen, I think may of us have unfortunately experienced this. I had one man message me asking for my tree in a Gedcom format. Seeing as he was a member of this site, I couldnt understand why he wouldnt just look at my tree on here first. But no, he demanded a Gedcom. I emailed him a Gedcom of my huge tree, which Ive put a lot of time and money into, and never heard back. Fine, no probs. BUT I didnt expect him to put my tree on his website, full of amendments like saying my husbands grandmother had died when in fact she hasnt, and he's even named my stepfathers late parents....they are no relation whatsoever to him, he is distantly related to my husbands mother! Now I see why he wanted the Gedcom - with a Genes tree you can stop the access if youre unhappy, but you cant take a Gedcom back! He has a site full of messages praising him for 'his' hard work. Ive sadly learnt my lesson, its a shame some nasties ruin it for the nice people out there. Oh, and he found out my sons name from BMD and put him on there....he's only 11.

Romany Star,

Perhaps you should leave a message on his site saying it isn't his work.

I have shared my whole tree with two (one close, one distant) relatives only to find them reproduced completely elsewhere as their own work.

Learnt the lesson the hard way.

Please please, can we remove the word 'stolen?' No one is stealing anything.All the info is in the public domain.

I did a demo for my wife this morning on Ancestry.

Put her name in Births. Gave me her mums maiden name. Deleted her christian name put in her mums maiden name, gave me all her siblings.

Switched to Marriages, put in her surname and mums maiden name, got their marriage and both mum and dad's christian names.

Back to Births and repeated the process.

etc etc then you hit the census etc etc

All together? took about five minutes,