Pitard.net: Website Policies: Genealogy at Pitard.net

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Privacy

This site balances public and private interests. In part it is a public site for genealogical information and research. Information on the site not hidden behind a password does appear on web search engines. The advantage to this is that new family connections can be found when otherwise unknown family researchers get in touch (which some have—thank you!). But for closer family it is also meant to be a 21st-century version of a Family Bible.

To maintain this distinction, and to protect the privacy of the living, information about living individuals will not be viewable by the public. "Living" will appear in the place of the name. Passwords to allow more access are available for interested family members. If you are closely related, please send in a note for a user account.

People is considered Living, and hence information on them is hidden to guests, under several conditions: if they are alive; if they have no known birth date but a spouse who is over 100; if parents' or other relatives's ages mean that they must be over 100 or so years old; or if they have no known deathdate but were born over 100 years ago.

Therefore, for instance, a birth date alone after 1918 or so means that a person is considered Living, and all information about the person will be hidden.

Copyright

All information—text and images—on this website is under copyright by the website owner and author,. It may only be reproduced or distributed with written permission, whether you are a guest or a user with a password. I am very much in favor of sharing information--which is partly why I believe strongly in listing sources and many documents, but if someone wants to publish it, I don't want the website's name attached to questionable conclusions without at least communicating my concerns. Please just get in touch.
Copyright does not prohibit a reference, of course, but just using the material as if it is your own. If you do use the site, please reference the home page (http://pitard.net/genealogy/home.php), not a sub-page, since page addresses inside the site occasionally change. For more information on copyright, see the Library of Congress' Copyright Office page.

Commercial use of anything—images, data, or text—found this website is absolutely prohibited for any reason, genealogical or otherwise. Please do not use any information about my family in any disrespectful or commercial way.

Sources

A lot of genealogical information on the web is completely unsourced. That's a shame, I think, because much of the fun of genealogy is chasing down the full stories. Not citing references deprives users of that joy. And, it makes information intellectually questionable. I don't completely understand why people DON'T cite sources. Their work is a lot more interesting when they do!

That being said, you won't find a reference to every single bit of data on this site either. And if I have a half-dozen sources for a name, not all appear. But you SHOULD find a reference somewhere in the context for that name--by backing up one or more generations, for instance, to uncover a reference on that family's history; or going sidways to a spouse's family; or to a child to find a marriage certificate which gives parents' names. I'm not a professional, and this site relies on secondary as well as primary sources, but as much as possible I carefully choose those who cite primary sources clearly and effectively. See the Genealogical Proof Standards page at Familysearch for more on standard practices.

If it's not there, I beg your pardon; let me know, and I will work to find it it. Websites are interactive, so please ask. I sometimes have information that does not appear on these pages.