AIBU to say if you are going to look up someone’s family tree ask them first?

[BeMintFatball]

I don’t have a good relationship with SIL it’s tolerable at best and at worst she has been very nasty to me. She is my husband’s only sibling. She re-married about 5 years ago and has been a lot happier and nicer in that time.

Now she and 2nd husband are both retired. They have been busy researching my husband’s family. I guess they took that as far as they could and researched mine without telling me. This has brought to light some unexpected surprises. They have discovered my cousins on my Mum’s side have a younger sister and that their father is dead. So now I have this information, what do I do with it? I have decided to say nothing. I think it will only cause hurt and the information is in the public domain they could discover it for themselves if they wanted to go searching.

I’m not that bothered and they have saved me doing the research myself. They have also uncovered my grandmother told lies about what Country a distance aunt came from. Turns out she was as British as the rest of us (how unexciting, lol)

What has needled me is they have got their facts wrong about my Dad and his family. SIL didn’t like my Dad but that another story. All this information has been communicated to my DD2 . DD2 is an adult with additional needs. She showed me the conversation. I replied on her phone saying it was me, thanks you have found out some interesting stuff but you have your facts wrong about my Dad. SIL husband got all shirty saying he didn’t feel comfortable talking to me on DD2 phone and if I wanted to talk use my own phone. Except I do not have either SIL or her husband’s number and I don’t intend asking for them either.

so AIBU?
YANBU it’s weird to look up someone’s ancestry without asking

YABU the information is out in the public domain for anyone to see

It's very strange yes, but I have been researching by family tree in depth and it can take decades. They need to be concentrating on their own and stop being so nosy

It sounds like they have just lifted information from someone else's tree on Ancestry, which isn't great research. It's actually quite difficult to find out information about recent generations without talking to family members as there isn't really any information available to the general public about people who may still be living.

They've possibly stumbled upon someone else's research on Ancestry and as mentioned above, information after 1921 is quite hard to research accurately as it tends to be memories rather than paper trails.

I've been doing my DH's family tree and some distant cousin has a tree on Ancestry that is full of mistakes, including getting DH's Grandad's date of death wrong by about 50 years...

As its fairly public information you can't stop them but keep telling your DD that their research is wrong and hopefully they'll move onto annoying someone else.

I would that hope the info they sent is correct and dna confirmed.

I think it can be pointless to research a family tree without having taken a DNA test. Reason being, many people have hidden secrets in their families, and years ago it was more common than you'd think that some men raised children unaware that they weren't their own.

@skintbuthappyish agreed I could have called them out for being nosey . They have only gone back 3 generations at most on my Mum and Dad’s respective family trees. I assumed that was the low hanging fruit in terms of research. I have no idea how it’s done properly

Busybodies.

@WellsAndThistles yes big mistakes on my Dad’s side. They told DD2 that my Dad’s nephew was an orphan at 10. He actually lost his last parent aged 30. They haven’t found all of my Grandfather’s brothers. Worst is they have spun this whole narrative that my Dad was estranged from his family, not true at all. SIL only met my Dad once and that was the day I married her brother.

Nailed it

It’s snooping.

And given the mistakes they’ve made, they are not very good at it.

They sound a tad batshit!

I would be tempted to tell your DD that auntie/uncle are getting a mixed up in their old age and it's best to just smile and agree with them even though you and DD know better.

Lots of people research their family tree- it’s a very popular hobby.

Are you sure your dd didn’t ask them to do it? Even just as a throw away comment, ‘That sounds cool, I wonder about my family’.

I think it was done partly to brag SIL ancestors are wealthy educated people with European heritage whereas my lot are a lowly bunch from London’s East end.
whatever, fact remains both her and I were brought up similarly in 1960’s new built houses. We are not so different.

Definitely not. I’ve seen the whole conversation on WhatsApp. Uncle told DD2 what they were doing and DD2 asked to see the diagram they had made. And then DD2 asked questions and uncle made up what he didn’t know. My Dad has been dead 17 years. SIL new husband never met him. Which makes the nonsense more irritating.

It’s not an original idea by SIl. An aunt on her Mum’s side researched extensively and give my husband and I a copy when we got married 30 years ago. So a lot was already known of my husband’s family. The European connection is true and the surname was passed down the line as a middle name. I even offered to use it as DD1 middle name trying desperately to get in MIL good books. But was told no as MIL hated the name.

This is so odd. You can only tell your dd they have it wrong and give her the correct information. Does she have much contact with them?

I’d write down, or record, what you know about your family history and give it to your daughter so she has the more correct version. And she can pass that onto her children if she has some. What you write down and record will be an historical document at least as valid as an ancestral tree. And more interesting - as descendants of hers will hear and read your voice and memories.

I would actually be really angry and find it super intrusive

I have no interest in my family tree, estranged from 15
Im perfectly content with knowing nothing much

Did you actually read the OP? It's not their family. It's the OPs who is married to the researchers brother....it's like me researching yours... nothing to do with me, nothing to gain from it apart from not so juicy gossip...my family tree however 😄😄😄

It’s weird because ancestry is really so boring to anyone who isn’t closely involved. I would have very minimal interest in even my husband’s family tree, let alone my sister in laws.

I can see both sides of this.

OK, so first of all, when you start building a family tree, you can pretty much go on indefinitely. In fact, on one of the main sites, Family Search, the idea is to create one huge family tree, so if you find someone in your family tree and a separate record for the same person in someone else's family tree you're supposed to merge the records and join the two family trees up.

Ancestry, which I presume is what they are using, isn't like that in the sense that you build your own family tree. But you aren't limited to adding your own blood relatives and in laws. So if you add, for example, your brother's wife, it's quite likely that the site will automatically start giving you hints to add her parents, and once you've added her parents, her grandparents and so on.

Because it can stretch on indefinitely you kind of have to decide which direction you want to go in. Some people like their tree to stretch quite far horizontally, which would include lots of distant cousins and in laws who are still alive, whereas others are only interested in their ancestry and finding their own direct ancestors as far back in time as possible.

So, I don't think it is necessarily wrong that they have added you and your relatives to their family tree. A lot of people do this and the information is all out there in the public domain. However, passing on information which you may not want to discuss or which may be inaccurate (as others have pointed out, they may just have lifted information from other people's family trees which may contain mistakes), and saying things to vulnerable family members which may be upsetting to them, is not on.

I think there's a balance to be struck between building an extended family tree based on publicly available information, which is fine, and using that information in a way that could come across as nosy and intrusive to people who are not interested in your genealogy research, which is not fine.

I would just discuss this with your DD and ignore your SIL and her husband.

Lol. Maybe I'm related to you both.

My great great grandfather was a wealthy, well-educated German who came to London in the 1880s and ended up marrying my cockney great great grandmother. They lived in Stepney, a stone's throw from where the other side of my family had been living for generations.

Like your family, it doesn't much matter where you come from if you all end up living in the same kind of ordinary houses in the same kind of ordinary places in the end.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom our families were probably under an hour’s walk apart. My Grand Grandfather on my Dad’s side was a glass blower

Aww that is beautiful. I should really write it down. I only have my Dad’s sister who is in a care home and 97 to ask about my Dad’s family.

@Mummyoflittledragon there was a lot of phone contact up until recently. SIL is currently not speaking to DD2 over some other shemozzle. Personally I’d say Hallelujah but DD2 is breaking her heart over it. My husband is doing a big F. all to back DD2 up . This family tree stuff happened a few months back but I’m still salty at how SIL husband reacted when I said he had his facts wrong. Using this thread to see if they really are as crackers as I think they are. Conclusion they are really odd, it’s not me is it.