Big Brother? (was Public or Private Ancestry Trees)

[AndyMick]

* Only just found out that Family Search/LDS will no longer support this tree software. Any recommendations out there as to which replacement to go with ?
Ancestral Quest ,Legacy, or Roots Magic.

Why do you need to change just because the LDS don't support it? There are plenty of folks, maybe some on this forum, who can help with support queries. I suppose you may need to change eventually when you upgrade computer if by then PAF won't run on the latest OS.

Which reminds me, we should all back up our data to GEDCOM when we backup, just in case a hardware failure means we can't run the version of software we used to have. I know someone to whom this happened and he had to upgrade the software which wouldn't then read the old file format.

 

[Bob Spiers]

The older members of my family (oldest is 92 this year) are uncomfortable with me putting anything at all on the internet..... A few have made the point that "mother's maiden name" is often a bank security question and they are worried

I had the same experience but at different ends of the age spectrum. My elderly relatives were often forthcoming with information -what little they cold recall - and likely because they had little or no contact with bank security questions and least of all the internet. Passing on a mother's maiden name would not have been a problem.

However I recall one experience with the wife of a first cousin (once removed)who was only in her 30's. To set the scene, my first Cousin had been on to me for some time to extend her family line which could be viewed by all the family within my Tribal Pages. I had just begun the task. A visit to my cousin coincided with that of her son, his wife and family. I knew in great detail about my cousin's family but little of her son's marriage partner so I used the occasion to ask her about her family and came to the question "and what was your mother's maiden name?" This was greeted with shock and horror and her saying "I can't possibly tell you that as it is private and I use it for bank security amongst other things".

I tried to explain that in Genealogy females were always recorded under their birth names and furthermore it had been the practice for almost 100 years to record the mother's maiden name with the birth of a child. I merely wished to short-circuit my research; but she would not be moved. She was forthcoming about her parents and grandparents with localities and so I left it there.

Later my cousin tried to apologise for her daughter-in-law but I reassured her it was not a problem as it would take me about 2 minutes or less to get the information as indeed it did. In time I had the pleasure of meeting up again and finding her astonished I had taken both lines of her family back to great x2 grandparents. She made no comment on the fact her mother was shown under her maiden name.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

With the research skills you gather as a family historian it is amazingly easy to get such details with little or no effort. My parents are on holiday visiting me this week from their home in Spain, thankfully they seem to have brought the Sun with them. Whilst they've been here I've been putting the local taxi firms out of business with the amount of ferrying them around visiting friends and relatives.

We went round for an evening meal at one such couple of their friends on Saturday night, whilst there they took a phone call from the husband's cousin who apparently phones every week but is going a bit senile, so conversation is difficult with all replies apparently just yes, no, nothing much etc, drawing blood from a stone type conversations. Now they have lost her address and asking her hasn't elicited a usable reply.

So I said, oh what's her name, I was given it and the town where she lives so I looked up online and within 2 minutes had found 2 possibles. One was a single woman and one was a family. So the most likely is the single woman. The street name was given and it did ring a bell so they are going to visit next week to check it out and see how she is doing.

They were shocked how quickly and easily I could find her online, and this is a woman who apparently wouldn't know what the internet was let alone have used it and put any details online.

 

[Tim]

Big Brother is watching over all of us.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Have you got the birth certificate for Big Brother to prove there is a link?

 

[Tim]

Have you got the birth certificate for Big Brother to prove there is a link?

Yes, I believe it was 1949. Sometimes though, there are references that tie him into 1984. Think his father may have been George Orwell.

 

[Bob Spiers]

I like your story Alexander and when I have more time I will give account how I used similar skills to locate a relative who had married twice more (3 times in all) beyond the information I had been given on her. And it was all because she had a middle name to help identify her. There is a happy ending. Watch this space.

Edit: The account of how Bob tracked down his Lost Cousin can be found here