About 25 years ago Americans Ezra Hill and his wife, Louise, compiled a family geneology naming about 2 thousand people, going back in one case to 1225 AD. It was crudely self-published and mailed to various family members.
The Hills are both now deceased, although they have descendants. Because of copyright issues and possible family sensitivities, I have not published this more widely. I don't believe anyone else has done so, either.
But I believe the general public should know this exists.
Most of the people included are Americans descended from northern European Protestants. Many were indentured servants kidnapped and brought to the Virginia colonies before American Independence. They generally settled in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Kansas.
Does anyone know what the rights are of all the people named in this work, and whether it can be made public? Or do privacy laws and sensibilities forbid such openness?
Please let me know what you think.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.252.48.11 (talk • contribs)
- I'm sorry nobody has replied to this sooner. Maybe a glitch in the notification system.
- Facts are not "copyrightable". So you could create articles for any or all of the named individuals (omitting those known or presumed to be still living) and copy the bare facts (names, dates, places) from the book. Extracts from the book's text could be included in quotation marks on appropriate pages with an acknowledgment of the source.
- For thousands of people, that's a bit of a task for one person, but maybe your relatives can join in. Some of us volunteers have created thousands of pages, so it can be done.
- What you could easily do to publicize the existence of the book is to create an article here, naming and summarizing it, perhaps listing the surnames and settlement counties. (And that page can be a short link on those acknowledgment pages.) This forum has probably already been indexed by Google so that "Dimmitt-Hill" will pop up in web searches, but the more names you can spell out here the better.
- There's a good chance that many of the people listed are already on Familypedia. Several of our enthusiasts have created articles for a substantial proportion of early immigrants to North America. Maybe you will see some familiar names if you look at Category:United States immigrant ancestors or just search the site for names of listed people from earlier centuries. You and your relatives might be able to add data to some existing articles.
- It's very pleasing that you want to share that publication with the public and have considered Familypedia as an outlet. Some of us will be happy to try to help.
- -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:47, November 20, 2015 (UTC)