I was never a mormon who did family history. I like learning about ancestors, but not doing family trees/baptism stuff.

My question for those of you who did... what is the purpose of putting short term marriages on a person when no children resulted from the marriage? I had 2 short term marriages (dont ask) and my family is insisting they are listed on the history. My sister and I got into an argument about it. Any input?

1 it's public record data

2 you don't control what others find pertinent. You've expressed your opinion; it was disregarded.

I would let it drop because there's nothing to win because of #1.

And filter my relationship with them going forward because of #2.

I had a distant cousin who introduced me to genealogical work when we were both students at BYU. On a trip to the genealogical library in SLC, I copied pages and pages of family records.

When I showed them to my cousin, he saw that I had copied a record of his dad's first marriage, which had produced one child and an early divorce, many years previous.

He said that the family did not recognize that marriage, and would I please delete it from my records...

The marriages, although short-term, are nonetheless actual events that occurred. A reasonable argument can be made that to ignore them is in a sense to whitewash history and compromise accuracy.

Also, if short-term marriages w/out children are left out, then what about longer-term marriages w/out children; who decides what the dividing line is? Three months, six, a year or two? There won't ever be unanimous agreement on that.

That's what she said. I mean, I guess it's true. But at the same time, a 3 month marriage? Do they also list annulments? What use do people have for that?

Sure, why not? Those 3-mo marriages happened for a reason. At the time, the couple presumably had no idea it wouldn't last, and expected it to be a long-term situation.

If the goal is to present an honest and complete record, "truth" if you will, then yes, in the interest of integrity I would expect all such events to be recorded and presented. Even the annulments. But that's just me.

If I were to read a history in which they had been excised, and then subsequently learned of them, I'd start questioning just how reliable the history was and/or the competence of the compilers. What else might the writers be hiding, were they simply not up to the task of finding all the data, or making a value judgment due to some preconceived bias?

So many important life benchmarks that go unrecorded!

Good thing ghawd records EVERYTHING!

According to Mormon thinking (sic), Once a woman is sealed to a Priesthood holder, it is for time and all eternity. Unless there is a cancellation of Sealing, the woman is one of his spirit wives, unless he chooses not to call her forth in the millennium.