Frequently asked questions
I make it a priority to ensure the privacy of all living people within the Kelleys Island family tree.
Fortunately, this software's confidentiality functions are excellent in the application of certain rules of privacy - our main site hides details about people who are alive or to those who you are not linked. To view details of living individuals, you must first register with a free account. Secondly, you must be linked to a person in the family tree. In addition, this site uses several levels of privacy access and user verification, as well as relationship privacy. The latter function lets you see information for people defined as a close relative. A close realitive is considered an individual that is with in seven steps in relation. Typically, this is your second cousins and closer.
If you think your access is too limited, please email me and explain with details of identification numbers, where you were blocked and why you believe you should see this information. Of course, no system is perfect or unbreakable and inadvertent access to data remains a possibility. We do our best to address privacy issues quickly. If you feel strongly about some of your personal data stored here, please contact the genemaster via the e-mail links below. Your data can be removed from the site, but your access may be restricted. See also the FAQ on the site information. We take abuse of our information seriously, and will not tolerate theft or misuse. We will take legal action against those who engage in or attempt identity theft or harassment as result of accessing our data.
Do not copy our data on living persons to any other sites or to places that you may be unable to protect the privacy of these individuals. You can be held responsible for this exposure or abuse. As posted on our home page of this site, we do not share the information contained herein with other sources, nor do we contribute information to any commercial enterprise. The database will remain in our possession for the public display of public domain information, and will not be sold, given or loaned in any way or form in order to generate revenue by us or by others. Personal data will not be shared by us with a public source and our users are sworn to the same high standards.
Remember, the security of your password is essential in protecting the privacy of your own and other family members information, so keep it safe. We recommend that you change your password from time to time. Please note also that, as site administrators, we can not access your password. If you forget, use the "Request for new password" on the login page for a new, temporary one by e-mail.
Most of the information found here has been collected through public records:
- US State and Federal Census
- Death Certificates
- Marriage Licenses
- Social Security Death Indexes
- Birth Certificates
- Christening Records
- Cemetary Records
Most all of the other information has been contributed by people whom I have contacted or been contacted by. If there is any information that intersts or concerns you as to its souce, please contact the site administrator.
Kelleys Island Ancestry does NOT REQUIRE REGISTRATION to gain access to data on deceased persons on this website. However, to contribute or to see facts on presumed living relatives, you will need to register for a free account and advise me of your relationship.
- Registrants should be relatives, albeit a distant cousin in many cases, however somehow related to someone already listed or someone who should be listed on our site;
- Registrants should be prepared to regularly visit and contribute to this site, at a minimum providing me with your personal and immediate family information and later - modifications, augmentation, amplifications and additions to our existing data;
- Registrants must pledge to protect the privacy of the data on all living persons on the site, and, as noted above, contribute their own personal information. Violations will lead to immediate termination of access privileges and may be cause for legal action. We take the possibility of identity theft or information abuse seriously. Please see the Privacy Section below for more details.
If you qualify for registration and agree to abide by these rather simply policies and procedures, please feel free to use the registration form built into our site. Please use the comments field to answer ALL the information requested on that page, explaining your relationship to relatives contained within the existing site, a brief lineage to that person and also clearly confirm by affirmation your acknowledgement of your intentions to abide by our policies and access rules. We will then review your application for approval. Please be patient as proper review and verification may take some time and effort and we may be away for several days. Incomplete applications will be held until we receive the confirmation of relationship, enter you into our database and receive your promise to protect privacy and all data on living persons.
When you add or edit any data on the Family tree there a few general principles that should be followed:
1 - Every person and / or every event in that person's life should include a source reference. The concept is very simple. If you have a piece of information about someone, you MUST have got that information from somewhere. That "somewhere" is the SOURCE. It might be something sophisticated like a database, a Parish register, or a book. It might be something as simple as "Aunt Mary remembered....". These are both valid sources, but the more information you can give about a source, the easier it will be in ten, twenty, or more years time to look and say, "Ah, so that is where we got that bit of information!"
2 - All information must be factual, or described in a way that clearly indicates how accurate it is. If, for example, you know a person's age, from a census, but not their actual birth date, then you cannot say AS FACT that they were born in a certain year. There are issues of rounding, possible error on the census page, or even in some cases people might have misrepresented their age. In these cases, the use of date qualifiers like ABT (about), or EST (estimated), or CAL (calculated) to show how you arrived at the birth date you entered would be appropriate. Another good example is finding a birth, marriage or death on the UK's registration index pages. These only record events within a quarter (3 month period) so the closest you can record the date is, for example, BET JAN 1850 AND MAR 1850, meaning "in the Mar quarter of 1850. Entering a date like that is easy in the software we use - just type "Q1 1850" and it will be converted to the full text required for you!
3 - Information should accurately reflect what it really is, and what you really know. This means that the date of a baptism found on a Parish Register, for example, should NOT be entered as a BIRTH. It is a baptism or christening date. If it is the only record you have for the person's birth you should either not enter a birth (the baptism will be used instead in any age calculations), or enter the birth with a date of BEF (before) whatever the date of the baptism was. That clearly shows that the only thing we know for certain is that the birth happened before the baptism, but we don't know if it was 1 day, or 10 years before! The same applies for Parish register burials. They are not a death event, so the death would be better recorded as BEF the date of the burial.
4 - Use of data and media - May I use information obtained from this site elsewhere? This site, its contents and presentation are all subject to varying copyrights and licensing. While much of what is written and exposed to casual visitors was obtained from public sources, some data is still of a personal nature and may contain notes written by us or others. If you copy this information elsewhere, it is important to document their source and provide appropriate credit. Visual images (photos, pdfs, documents, certificates, census images and more) are copyrighted by us or others. You are expressed forbidden from using images from our site on your own online or printed versions. If you are intending to use any data ot images on this site for commercial purposes, then do not even both to ask as the answer is very emphatically - NO.
First of all, you need to register for a free account. A link to register can found on the "Home Page" on the right.
During your registration, please leave a note who in the tree you are related too, and that you wish to have editing access. If you are not related to anyone in the tree, but believe that you are related to someone who should be in the tree, please make a note of that also. You MUST request editor access, you will not be provided editor access by default.
Once you have been given editor access, you can add, edit, and delete information.
To edit existing information or to add facts to an existing person you must first bring up that individuals record. You can do this many ways, however, the simplest is to enter their name in the search box in the upper right corner of any page. Once you land on the individual's page, you will see the existing records. To edit the existing fact, click on the "pen" icon. To delete it, click on the page icon with the red "X". To add a new fact, click on one of the quick fact buttons in the "Add new fact" box or select a fact from the drop down box and click "Add". When adding facts, DO NOT GUESS. If you don't know a particual piece of information for certain, do not enter it.
To add a person, you must first find a close realtive in the tree. You cannot add anyone to the tree unless they are related to someone else. Once you have brought up the closest relatives indivudal page, click on that persons "Realitives" tab. On this realitves tab, you will be provided with links to "Add a brother or sister" or "Add a son or daughter" or to "Add a new wife". I suggest that before you add NEW individuals, you do a quick search and make sure that that person isn't already added, especially when dealing with wives. It is certainly possible that a wife may already be in the tree as a daughter of another family. Once duplicate entries of an individual exists, it can become difficult to sort out.
Also note, all changes, additions, and deletions will not become finalized until they are reviewed for accuracy. Temporary changes or additions that have not yet been approved will display with a solid blue box around them. Deleted entries will be displayed with a sold red box around them. Most of the exising information can be supported with documented sources. If you plan on changing something, please make sure that you have solid evidince is true. When adding facts, you will have the ability to add a source. Adding sources is helpful, but not necessary.
Click the following link to view a video tutorial of using the census assistant.
http://www.genealogy.beattyfam.com/tutorials/census_assistant.htm
To learn how to add pictures, click on the link below to view a video tutorial.
http://www.genealogy.beattyfam.com/tutorials/AddingPictures.htm
Your family is listed because they are somehow realted to someone that is. While focused on Kelleys Island genealogy, at times members have contributed details of their family lineage that braches away from Island ancestry. In liu of having to draw a hard line in the sand that says, "you must be X number of hops away from an island ancestor", all related ancestry is included. Your relationship can be quite distant, but if your family is listed in the tree, there is a relationship.