The following is another thought-provoking article by my Friend, Tom Fiske.
Today I received an email from a man named Vic who is writing a book. He thanked me for help that I have given him over the 
past two years. And it is true. I gave him family photos and inside information that he could never have gotten any other way. I had the only copies. And the hero of his book, or at least one of the stars, was gay and had no descendants to leave information to.
I was glad to give Vic the information. It was given to me by a woman named Betty. I thought it was kind of poignant that I met the woman who loved my second cousin Bill all her life. Even though Betty was married and lived a fast-paced social life she loved a gay man who could not return her affection. They were kids together in Kansas City’s more upscale area, and always kept up with each other over the years until Bill died in 1967.
In one pile of papers Betty gave me, there is a hand-written note made by a wealthy New York City resident who said that Bill was dead and that he had notified one of the Roosevelts, Rosa Ponselle, André Kostelanetz, Lily Pons and other luminaries of the New York philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera set. Betty was one of that group with Cousin Bill. Such names were important in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s in New York City.
Bill treated Betty well and was always a gentleman toward her, as far as I could tell. Her husband was a lawyer for a world famous psychologist, so he was no novice among well-known people. Although in photos he does not seem pleased to be in Bill’s presence. Some kind of tension dwelt among them.
I wish I had known Bill. While he was a stranger to me, Bill’s mother and my mother were not only cousins, but friends. I lived a thousand miles away and never got to know cousin Bill or his mother.
At this point in my life I have written 9.75 books and know I will not get to write about Cousin Bill. There is no reason for me to squirrel away information the writer Vic needed for his book. Betty was glad to find me, a family member who wanted information about Bill, and I was glad to hand copies of it to Vic for his use. So the passage of such genealogical data could be described as a study in gratitude.
What would I have done if I were intending to write about Cousin Bill? I know that his former partner and the guy who inherited Bill’s wealth lives within 50 miles of me today. He won’t talk to me, but if he did, I might be inclined to write a saga about Bill, his rather wild ancestors and how the family line ran out with Bill in 1967. I thought about it long and hard, but decided to let it go in favor of other projects.
If I were writing about Bill, I would tell the author Vic that I was working on such a project and he would understand. Still, I might be willing to share some specific items with him, but much less than I wound up sharing. And my conscience would not be damaged.
After all, I don’t owe the rest of the world’s writers my materials. To share or not to share—that is the question. But it is not a moral imperative. I share a lot as it is. As time goes on I find I have shared a great deal of information without knowing it. I find my data in corners and crevices of the Internet. I do not put information on the ‘Net, so I know that someone else took it, called it his or her own, and left it out for all to see.
In spite of “forced sharing,” it seems to me that genealogists are a grateful lot, quite often helping each other with information about techniques and copies of things. As I think back some twenty years when computer information was not as freely available as it now is, I recall the folks at the local LDS family history library in Pasadena, California. It was bursting at the seams with books and films and people who were eager to help me get started. I have not forgotten how nice they were. While visiting there, I helped a lady find her Polish Jewish ancestors and even connected her with Leland Meitzler who published one or two of her research articles in his magazine. She was a better writer than I was, unfortunately, but I managed to overlook that because she had good information to share.
We sometimes owe our progress to other people. One of my genealogical maxims is “The secret to genealogy is finding the person who has done all the work.” When that person is generous, our jobs are much easier. Fortunately, I have found a bunch of those people. Even more fortunately, those people were right in their facts. So I can accurately say that I owe most of my progress to other people.
I give credit when I can and I obtain permission to reproduce the property of others. The fact that I did not find all my materials myself does not keep me up at night. I sleep well because I know who recognized the importance of the information and who melded it all together into one persuasive story. That takes a small amount of talent and sometimes courage to stick your neck out with a reasonable hypothesis when everyone else is hiding behind a collection of “I don’t knows” and “no real proofs.”
I even think I know the real author of this article. And I’m going to sleep well tonight.