Policy
Records and documents
The archive needs documents to be credible. Some of those documents can never be shown. The way through is to separate the original, which is held privately, from what the archive is willing to state about it.
The rule
Original held. Finding published.
Open
Public records about people long deceased — census pages, deeds, probate files, wills, tax rolls. These are reproduced in full, with a citation, because they are already public documents and no living person's information appears in them.
Restricted
Modern records, and records that name a living person alongside deceased subjects. No image is published. The archive states the type of document, the issuing authority, the date, what it establishes, and who checked it — enough for another researcher to request the same record from the same office.
Sealed
Anything carrying a living person's identifying numbers, medical, financial, or contact information. Nothing about the document appears publicly. It exists only to support a conclusion, and the conclusion cites it as a restricted family record held privately.
Practice
What the archive does, in every case
No document about a living person is published
Not the image, not a redacted image, not the certificate number. Consent to be named in this archive is not consent to have one's paperwork posted, and the two are kept separate.
Where a modern record establishes a link in the lineage, the archive publishes the conclusion and states plainly that the underlying record is held privately.
Originals are held, not hosted
Restricted and sealed originals are kept in private storage with no public address. They cannot be reached by guessing a URL, and they are not served to the site.
Only the editor and founder accounts can open one, each opening is recorded with a reason, and researchers can see that a record exists without being able to open the file.
Verification does not require publication
A reader does not have to take the archive's word for it. Every restricted record carries the issuing jurisdiction and the identifying detail needed to order a certified copy through the proper channel, by anyone entitled to request it.
This is the standard practice of archives and courts: a finding aid describes what is held; access to the item itself is governed separately.
Contributions are quarantined on arrival
Nothing sent through the contribution form reaches the public site automatically. Submissions land unpublished and unreviewed in private storage until the founder classifies them.
Please do not send Social Security numbers, account numbers, medical records, or records about living people who have not agreed. Anything of that kind is placed under a permanent hold and never published.
Removal and correction
A living person who appears in this archive may ask to be withdrawn from public view at any time, and the withdrawal is made on the next publication pass.
Factual errors are corrected and logged openly. Documented historical conduct is corrected when it is wrong; it is not deleted because it is uncomfortable.
Related
This page states the archive's own handling practice. It is not legal advice, and it does not claim compliance with any particular statute or certification.