A couple of years ago, I found a photo of a young man in military uniform mixed up with photos from my father’s family from England. Still riding the “high” I got from tracking down where my great-grandmother (on my father’s mother’s side) came from, I decided it belonged to her half-brother Frank Bailey, who died in WW I. I posted it on Facebook and my Aunt Helen immediately replied that it was “Donald” in his Marines uniform, her father and my grandfather on the *other* side of the family. Unfortunately, I had already posted it to a World War I remembrance website under Frank Bailey’s profile. After that, the photo made it to his Find a Grave profile and his Wikitree profile. I wrote to someone who has created a website on the U. S. Marines in China to confirm that the man in the photo is indeed wearing a U.S. Marine’s uniform.
Once the uniform was confirmed, then I got to go back and try to remove it from everywhere it’s posted. Fixing the Wikitree post was easy, since I’m the manager. For the remembrance website and Find A Grave, I had to email requests to the moderators. It was a learning experience.
I learned:
- to check with experts, whether they are my older relatives or a military uniform enthusiast, before labeling and uploading family information/media I’m not sure about.
- Once that photo/factoid/etc. gets loose, you have to work fast to keep it from spreading to where it doesn’t belong!
As to how I found Frank Bailey in the first place, that’s a story for another time.
Newtown Genealogy 