Family Tree Data
We REALLY want to include your family - we just ask that you appreciate the volume of work we are dealing with, and give us all the help you can by following the guidelines as much as possible. Thanks!
The database is available for access by all researchers. Inclusion of any materials in the database is solely at the discretion of the officers of the Society, as to pertinence and/or suitability for our purposes. It is our policy to refrain from publishing information on living persons in our on-line database. Our current cut-off date is 1905. However the database does contain information on persons born after that time, and may be included on social media and/or printed versions of the material.
Please be certain you do not send us information on members of your family who may not wish to be included. The volume of material we receive makes it impossible for us to manually select who to include and who to leave out in the varying forms of distribution of this information.
Please use the following format submitting information for the database:
Name: (surname in all caps - if you use genealogy software, the program should do that for you automatically). Always use the wife's maiden name, when it is known.
Place: city, county, state, country. If using a genealogy software program that provides different fields for each level of locality, maintain the same format. In other words, if there is no city, leave field #1 blank, and just enter the county in field #2. If there is no city or county, enter the state in field #3, and so forth.
We endeavor to observe copyright and privacy issues at all times. The Society, and/or the individual officers of the Society are not responsible for any problems that may arise from material we publish.
PROCEDURES: Whenever possible, submit family data in gedcom format.
Due to the high volume of mail and e-mail received by the Society, our policy is to acknowledge receipt of information within a few days. Any inclusion of the material you submit may take several months to show up in the database, depending upon the format in which it was received and the volume of backlogged material.
Any corrections or additions should be handled in the same manner as original submissions.
All materials, once entered into the society records, will be used and/or disposed of at the discretion of the Society. All materials deemed suitable for permanent preservation will be submitted to the permanent repository. [site still under consideration - we are currently approaching a few institutions to see which will provide the best site as a permanent repository, ie, libraries, colleges, etc.]
DOCUMENTING SOURCES:
The best guideline we have ever seen is to document your source so anyone reading it at any time can go right to the same source. Include full titles, publication information and dates, and where the document resides (ie is it in the Allen County library, or on Aunt Sophie's bookshelf?)
Include certificate numbers, and the state that issued them. Is it a family bible? Where does it reside? Microfilm? Film and roll number should be included. There are a lot of good resources available about documenting sources - it pays to check them out.
You will find yourself going back to something you entered 3 or 4 years ago, and wondering where you got the information - just ask anyone who has been doing this for more than 5 years!
PLEASE remember to respect copyright & privacy issues
Web Site: to contribute articles, stories, or photos for our website.