Domain: geni.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to geni.com.
Comments · 7
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Re:Haldane
Wikipedia was uninformative.
I found a genealogy site with a page for JBS: https://www.geni.com/people/J-...
Unfortunately, sometimes the links are to a 'private' person, at which point the chain is broken.
JBS had a stepchild but no children of his own. His dad was famous, as were his dad's two brothers and his grandfather. One of those (Richard Burdon Sanderson Haldane) was a viscount and Lord Chancellor, but had no sons. The other, Sir William Stowell Haldane had three sons.William's sons: Thomas Graeme Nelson Haldane (1897-1981): a 'private' child and a son Richard W Haldane. Richard W has four children, all 'private', three of whom have different surnames so we can guess they were daughters.
Archie Richard Burdon Haldane (1900-1982): two children, but they are listed 'private'
Patrick Haldane (1893-1915): no children listed.So assuming the listings are accurate (no missing children), it is possible that the Nobel Laureate is descended from JBS's grandfather via JBS's uncle William.
The Laureate's full name is Frederick Duncan Michael Haldane, and he goes by Duncan. This pattern of three first names, using the second, appears a number of times in JBS's family tree. -
Re:Abraham Lincoln
According to this website:
http://www.geni.com/blog/look-whos-related-george-washington-and-all-the-presidents-325451.html
if you're related to any of the people who have been elected President, then you're somehow related to the rest of them. Note the word elected, as the only President that has not somehow been linked to George Washington is Gerald Ford. -
Re:Danger for which democracy?You left out the heriditary tendencies for President.
Every single elected president - INCLUDING Barack Obama, has a genealogy related to President George Washington.
Note I did say Elected President. Gerald Ford is (as of yet), not known to be related to George Washington.
Barck Obama is George Washington's 9th cousin, 6 times removed. Yes, this is through his white mother.
From what I can tell, the least connected elected President was Martin Van Buren - 17th cousin thrice removed.
Also, President William Henry Harrison was related by marraige, not by blood.
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How about geni.com ?
Geni.com is an online service, not open source software per se, but it's free to use, useful, and there's a lot of data there already. I found my ancestors going back to the 17th century after matching up my own tree back to my grandparents. http://www.geni.com/
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Focus on recording her memories, not yours
My wife lost her grandmother a few years ago... here are the things she wishes she could have gotten from her before she passed:
The story of her life : her earliest memories, what she remembers of her parents and grandparents, her brothers and sisters. All this will be relevant to your daughters once they grow up a little more and have children of their own... they'll want to know more about their family background and characteristics... and a lot of that information on your wife's side of the family will be best delivered by her. If you do http://www.geni.com/ or any other genealogical mapping thing, that might be a good way to start filling in blanks.
It's a good opportunity to just set up the camera / recorder somewhere out of the way, and forget about it and have a pleasant discussion face to face. I'd even go so far as to recommend that you get a friend to conduct the autobiographical "interview", because people talk about different things to outsiders than to family... I've always found out more interesting things about my own family by listening to them talk about that kind of thing to strangers.
I've sure you can think of other interview questions, but here are a few to get started:
- Where were your favorite places to travel?
- What were some things you did to save money when times were tough?
- What did you want to grow up to be when you were young?
- How did you meet your husband?
- How did historical events affect their lives?
Have fun! Not everyone gets the opportunity to make peace and say goodbye...
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Privacy issueThis company is jockeying to become a social website by allowing its registered users to construct their family trees. The idea seems to be once a vast tree is created the users will be able to find their rich and famous relatives etc. I could imagine this being a very useful service to many people. One of my relatives added my name to his tree and geni created an account in my name and added me to the tree and notified me about it. The email had options to opt out of more spam from them. I had a talk with my relative and expressed my concern about adding vast quantities of private info about our lives to a searchable, indexable database owned by some for-profit company over which we have absolutely no control. As it is the net has so much of our public information. Why compound the problem by adding our private information as well?
Looks like it had an impact and my relative decided to close his account and destroy the tree. But geni claims they need my permission to destroy my account. Is it reasonable for a company that bribes its users with free family tree service in exchange for private info about people to follow a opt-out policy? Shouldn't they be required to notify me and get my consent before they add my name? I have received invites from other social networking sites, but they all require me to create an account first. If I ignore the email, I hope, they would not add me to their databases. Probably they will just sell my email address to spammers and stop with that.
I believe there is neither a technological or legal solution to this problem. A new geni.com could easily be run by Russian mafia outside US borders and thumb their noses at us. I think the only solution is social. They are using social engineering to pry private info from the public by offering some service or the other for free. We need to educate the public about the implications of succumbing to the temptations by them. Today if I set up a stand in a fairground and ask people to give the names, addresses and phone numbers of their relatives and friends in exchange for small token gifts the response would not be overwhelming. Somehow people believe it is wrong to tell strangers such information. But set up the same stand in the internet and people are punching in the email addresses of their friends and relatives like gangbusters. What would it take to educate the public about the menace to privacy these companies pose?
I did my best. I pointed out the liability issues the company has like some stalker tracking down someone hiding in a relative's home or identity thieves making use of the mother's maiden names data etc. Told the company that they must disclose their liability to their investors and to anyone they are trying to sell to. Made it official and made it difficult for the company officers to claim later, "We never anticipated that development". If we keep raising the liability issue with these companies, may be we can get their venture capital to dry up. Just a thought.
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Re:Making more attractive....
Then maybe grandma should have gone to http://www.geni.com/ instead of wasting loads of money on genealogy software which doesn't work..
Yeah, yeah, I know. Didn't look at the options but maybe next time you should recommend it. Not only is it easier, it is more fun and the whole family can get involved.
Also means you don't need to be at your computer to show someone the tree.