"Ownership" of Genealogical Information?

    Among most genealogists such a concept is silly.

    I have a cousin who loves the genealogical information on my website. He and his family spend hours together browsing through it and learning about their ancestors. This past Christmas he printed almost all of it out and added some things of his own and made it into a rather thick book which he gave copies to his family as Christmas presents. Nothing could please me more. On several occasions he emailed me, to make sure it was all right with me that he do this -- referring to the information as belonging to me. In my turn I reassurred him that genealogical information of this sort is created for the sake of the entire family, and really could not "belong" to anyone. He was greatly appreciative.

    The basic family tree of Torsten and Johanna Uglem back six or seven generations in Norway is not any great secret. Anyone can copy the generations down in a couple hours time from the book DRAXENFOLKET. The 500 page book is written entirely in Norwegian so the person would have to learn the Norwegian words for "married" and "born" and "died" and etc. to be able to make sense of it. But our cousin Margaret Anderson (Rodvold family) does not speak Norwegian but she has learned those few words and is quite able to workably translate DRAXENFOLKET generations into English. Our cousin Richard Engan (Peterson family) the same. They both own copies. DRAXENFOLKET is an amazing book! It contains practically all the names and genealogical information of all the Draxten people of Selbu, Norway, and all the people they married, and all their children, and all their parents, an on and on and on and on. And it's been available since the 1970's! Mind-boggling! The book is very hard to find here in America though. But if you were fortunate enough to go to Norway a simple trip to any good library with a pad and pencil would enable you to jot down our complete Uglem family tree back to the seventeen-hundreds in an hour or two. DRAXENFOLKET costs upwards of $50 if you decide you want your own personal copy. Well worth it if you can get hold of one of the few copies available here in the states.

    So what I am saying is don't make the mistake of thinking that this genealogical information "belongs" to me. It wouldn't be right for a person to copy it out of a foreign book and then make out to all their relatives that they had slaved away researching for years on it, and say it was "their" information -- and make everyone think they were a big cheese. Hahahahaha! I am surely not that kind of person!!!! Please, by all means, pass it on to your children and to your children's children! That is what it is here for.

    I do spend many a sixteen hour day working dilgently on this hobby though. When my friends drop by to visit I am always on the computer. They really raz me about it.

All the best, and Happy New Year 2003, one and all,

Thomas Ross Holme