The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Family's history ends up on software program
This story was published Jan. 19, 1997
Children sometimes embarrass the family during weekly sharing times at school, and so do genealogists, for whom it's always sharing time.
Recently, I exchanged electronic mail notes with Beth Dunigan, a Richland genealogist who was disturbed, initially, to find some of her genealogy being shared without her knowledge.
"Two years ago, I researched and published our family history. The finished 305-page hardbound book was distributed to family members," Beth explained.
"Our book included photos from the Civil War forward. It was not just pedigrees and family groups. It also included stories, letters, news clippings, Civil War discharge papers and other items of interest to the family."
Imagine Beth's surprise and alarm when a neighbor showed her pedigree charts that he had printed on Beth's family. He had included everyone from Beth's great-grandmother through Beth's children.
"This file had names, spouses, children, birthdays, places of birth, etc., on all of us. For those relatives who were deceased, it even included their date of death and where they were buried."
Beth was aghast.
Her neighbor said the information came on a demonstration disk that accompanied Family Tree Maker software, which is published by Broderbund.
"We were shocked that our family information was included on the disk he received from the manufacturer," Beth said. "We think the manufacturer took the information from our family book. This is because dates of death are not listed for those relatives who have died since the book was published. No one in our family ever gave permission for our family information to be used."
Beth wanted to know, "Can someone use our family information in this manner? Isn't this information private? What can we do? What would you do?"
Beth's experience illustrates several important issues in modern genealogy.
First are the questions of privacy and of copyright. The vital statistics that go into genealogy - birth, marriage, death and burial dates - are personal, but they are anything but private.
They are a matter of public record. Anyone has a right to see them, even to publish them.
Aunt Tillie may have a tizzy if we publish her birth date to the world, especially if she's been mascarading as a younger woman, but we, or anyone, has a right to do so. The question is whether we can, or want to, brave the storm.
And if we publish her marriage date and her oldest child's birth date, we may cause an eruption to rival Mount St. Helens, if not Vesuvius.
Most genealogists, being of a timid nature, would elect to wait to publish these morsels of family vitals until they can include Aunt Tillie's death date. And that has never been better advice than it is today when genealogies have never been shared so easily, so broadly or so fast, thanks to computers.
All manner of sensitive information lurks in our genealogical records. Never has it been possible to be embarrassed so quickly before so many. Think twice about what you share, but don't be paralyzed by fear.
Copyright is a separate question. I am proud to say that I'm not a lawyer, and consequently this advice is worth just about what you're paying for it, but my understanding is the guts of genealogy - names, dates and places - cannot be copyrighted.
At some point, a collection of data can be copyrighted, but only as it pertains to the unique expression of that data. Normally that wouldn't include lists. At what point might pedigree charts come under protection of the law? I'm sure at some point they would.
Beth says Family Tree Maker apparently used five generations of her data. Legal? Gosh, hire a lawyer if you really want to know. Hire two lawyers and watch how quickly they reach different opinions. Get a judge to decide. If you don't like the judge's opinion, get another judge.
Oh, it's all very expensive.
Beth was concerned enough to call Family Tree Maker. After talking the matter over with Borderbund representatives, Beth was more comfortable with what happened.
In the first place, she learned that someone in her family - a relative on the East Coast whom she had given a copy of the book - did give the company permission to publish the pedigree charts containing information from Henricks down through the Dunigan family.
They did so by submitting the data to Borderbund's World Family Tree project.
A company representative explained to Beth that her family information was in a set of several compact diskettes with thousands of family histories included. "They said it was for use in helping find missing relatives and branches of the family. We feel much better now that we understand the purpose of the software and how this company received our data. It certainly surprised all of us."
Beth's experience is a common one. Many genealogists react negatively when they learn that someone is "selling" their family information.
But, like Beth, most are quite willing to share when they understand that having the information available on CDs is of value to genealogists everywhere because it makes the information accessible to many who otherwise would never connect to their families.
After all, genealogy is about sharing.