Family History Woes

The Genealogue recently pointed me to this interesting story. Apparently, a family historian named Delia published to her blog a quotation from her grandmother's diary and is now being sued by other family members for copyright infringements and defamation.

The story raises interesting questions, particularly for those of us who have published letters and documents to the web or in other formats. However, I think that there is still hope for us.

To begin with, you can almost always publish a portion of a work under the "fair use" clause to the copyright law. Otherwise, critics, teachers and others would never be able to use quotations from works they cite. The exact amount that can be used has never been precisely defined, but based on the fact that Delia apparently only used a paragraph, she's probably okay.

I haven't just published a portion of these works, however. In general, I've published the entirety of the letters, diaries and so forth. Which brings me to my next thought, one that applies to what I've published, but not to what Delia published.

In general, genealogists are discouraged from publishing any information about the living, particularly online. For privacy reasons, it seems apparent why birth dates, maiden names, etc. shouldn't be easy to find online.

However, it seems to me that we should also be extremely careful about what we publish that involves the living: anything written by someone living obviously and anything written ABOUT someone living. This is particularly true if what was written might be controversial. What Delia published was a quotation from her grandmother that applied to a living individual, and which was not terribly favorable to that individual. You can see how that would rankle (whether or not there is a legal case).

In general, I have made it my practice to leave out anything on my site that was written by someone living or that is about someone living. Sometimes this has been hard. Still, the closest I have gotten to knowingly publishing about the living is publishing The Letter from Mother which includes some not-very-flattering portraits of "recently" departed family members (recently in this case meaning that some people in my family still remember them).

In terms of other copyright laws, I hope that I haven't broken them. I always volunteer to take down information if the copyright holder asks (no one ever has). Just contact me!

Early Postcards

I've scanned in a few of the early postcards that I have in my collection and added them to my Family Documents. You can see a brief slideshow of the postcards here.

As noted on the page, the postcards date from January 1905 to January 1913. Some are black and white illustrations or photos; many are in color. All but one were mailed, and they are identified by publisher (when noted), postmark date and place, as well as by title. Most of these come from the Scott girls to one another and to their grandmother, Rachel Aber Plaisted.

Many of the postcards are postmarked both from where they were mailed and "rec'd" at the post office to which they were mailed. I've only noted the "from" date and location, but can tell you that the recipient usually received the postcard the next day. Pretty fast!



One cent stamps were used on all the postcards. Three different stamps were used: two of Benjamin Franklin (one a profile and one straight-ahead) and one of the profile of George Washington. The Benjamin Franklin straight-ahead was issued by the USPS in 1903, and was used on my postcards from 1905 through 1908. The profile of Franklin was introduced in 1908, and the Washington profile in 1912. Only the last postcard I have uses the Washington stamp. All of these stamps are quite common, but could have been helpful in dating the postcards. (Information on stamps from the excellent website: 1847USA)

There are a few postcards from other locations (the earliest is from Pikes Peak, CO), but most come from upstate New York. Many are from where the Scott girls went to college, so several normal schools (training schools for teachers) are represented, including Keuka College, Geneseo Normal School and (NY) State Normal School at Oneonta. Syracuse University and the town also figure in several postcards. Greenwood, New York is where Rachel Aber Plaisted lived. Some seem to be vacation postcards.

The postcard seems to have been invented in Hungary in the 1870s. In the U.S., advertising cards were quite popular for collecting and trading throughout the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, and although not exactly "postcards" in the modern sense since they weren't mailed, did give a hint of what was to come. I have many of these in my collection as well, and will be scanning them into another album at some point in the future.

The first modern postcard, prestamped with a one-cent stamp, appeared in the U.S. in 1873 released by the US Postal Service. Not until 1898 were private firms allowed to create the postcards, and even then postcards were not allowed to have writing on the address side. This wasn't allowed until 1907, when a divided back was created. After this, the use of postcards exploded. Only two of my cards pre-date the divided back era. These cards were sent from Pike's Peak, Colorado in 1905 and Keuka College in NY (probably 1905-6).

Germany is where many of my cards were printed, and apparently was the site of most postcard printing in the world. At the time, Germany had they finest printing techniques for working with colors. With the onset of World War I, therefore, postcards became more difficult to obtain in the U.S. until American companies began building their own printing technologies.

(Most of the postcard history derives from here.)

Hoax Letters, W.C. Fields, and a Giant Mystery

I have a family documents conundrum which just gets more and more interesting the more I learn. It began with a family letter from 1939 that couldn't be attached to any relatives, despite the salutation "Dear cousin". This spring, I posted the text of the letter on-line, and within a few weeks had been contacted by someone entirely unrelated who had a very similar letter.

Now I have discovered that W.C. Fields, the famous comedian, also had a letter like this, which has been posthumously credited to a niece.

I am baffled. The letter is very humorous, and I have to think it must be a hoax. But its origins are still mysterious. What is the history of "chain letters" and "spam" before the Internet? Could this have been some kind of propaganda?

Please read the whole story, and if you know more (or if you have a similar letter), please contact me!

Ethics & Letters

A large part of my family history site has recently become the Family Documents & Stories section. In fact, these two areas are among the most frequently visited of the site.

I have to wonder however about the ethical dilemmas posed by publishing some of these documents even after the death of everyone involved. For example, in several of the letters to Rose Plaisted, her suitors specifically requested her to "Burn when read". Well, clearly, she didn't. And, in fact, those letters were passed from her daughters to her granddaughter to my mother... three generations who didn't destroy them. So whose ethical dilemma is that? Of course, prior to me, the letters were in a box, not published for all to see. Still, how could I resist? They're hysterical!

Of possibly more concern is the more recent skeletons in the closet... the people who are remembered by those who are still living. For example, I quote my great-aunt, Eva Scott, in The Letter from "Mother". She clearly didn't mean for anyone to see that letter, especially not anyone in her family. How was she to know that her suitor was saving his correspondence and would donate it to Cornell upon his death? (The irony being that she is one of Rose's daughters and didn't destroy that correspondence).

I guess the lesson here is that sometimes our letters come back to haunt us. I recently heard from a friend of mine from high school. She still has packets of letters that I wrote to her. I can only imagine what I might have said.

What do you think? Where are the ethical boundaries?