You may have heard of the TV show [i]Who do You Think You Are[/i], apparently a lot of normal people are interested in researching their family history. That TV show is probably intended to get people interested in family research by paying celebrity actors & actresses to pretend to be amazed to discover mildly interesting facts about their predecessors. I've never watched or even WANTED to watch the show, but I've seen the commercials.

After being steeped in Mormonism for 18 years, even the words "genealogy" & "family history" make me anxious & I'd rather run in the opposite direction. I remember being so obedient & diligent when the earliest computer software came out, I'd painstakingly enter every family member & every date & birthplace, marriage dates, death dates into a database & print it all out, but everyone I asked had no idea how I was supposed to submit that information for temple work! It turned out everyone who taught me how to use the software was just going through the motions and few people ever gave a damn to ever submit info to temples!

If I hadn't been drilled in the importance of tracing back all my family lines to Adam & Eve, and feeling guilty when I couldn't...if I had never been Mormon...modern genealogy on the internet might have been fun.

I might've been interested in this stuff if being Mormon hadn't sucked all the fun out of it.

Good point. Although in my case at the time LDS entered my life, it kinda saved me. But it eventually brainwashed me and took my life in a direction I never would've chosen. Having fun was sinful. I felt guilty all the time. Lightmindedness & loud laughter were sinful. Being human became sinful. Aaagh!

II feel the same way about it. It was just another chore on a long list of chores they have. I never quite got round to doing that one.

My mother spent endless hours every Sunday afternoon working on that stuff. Computers came along, and made all of that hard work for nothing. All that crap done on the manual typewriter was a drudge. I could never figure out why she was so obsessed. She couldn't stand most of her relatives.

I was looking at the family sheet she did for me. OH brother. She had me married to someone I was never married to. She had my husbands name spelled wrong, my kids names were spelled wrong, and their birthdays were wrong. I don't have to worry about being dead dunked, nobody will know who I am.

In my case, I'll always be interested in genealogy -- especially my family history. I did not know my bio father, and that's OK. But I do want to know more about who I am and where I came from.
I've done the ancestry.com DNA and found all kinds of surprises. I'm less of what I thought I was, and not even any part of what I expected. I'm related to over a dozen countries in Europe and the British Isles. I had no idea.
One of my adult children did her DNA test also and it's very surprising to see what she got from me and her father!

The LDS Church has massive records. I find them valuable! I went to the library in SLC many years ago. It was an amazing place.

I like to watch all of the shows that trace a person's genealogy whether it's finding lost family members, or going to other countries to find relatives and history.

I never felt guilty or shame about anything in the LDS Church teachings. Just did not impact me that way.
I am not about to give them any power of what I want to research and know. I'll use any record that has value.

The majority of information that I have found did not come directly from the LDS Church but from relatives that did massive research, (unknown to me at the time), including all kinds of personal records.

Different strokes for different folks!

+1

I felt that way for a long time, but I've recently begun to rediscover an interest in my family history for my own reasons. I've even started to see my pioneer and polygamous ancestors as a colorful bit of history rather than a curse.

Pista Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I felt that way for a long time, but I've recently
> begun to rediscover an interest in my family
> history for my own reasons. I've even started to
> see my pioneer and polygamous ancestors as a
> colorful bit of history rather than a curse.

That's the way I've come to view it. One of my cousins who is older than me and been out of LDS for longer than I've been told me that there's quite a few of our cousins who've left (which was a revelation to me.) And that he cherishes the heritage and history of the folklore of the church, but that's where he parts paths and is able to relegate his Mormon upbringing to his past, without losing his humanity or connectedness to our ancestry.

His mother (one of my favorite aunts,) was a salt of the earth LDS, and true blue TBM for her lifetime. He may be the only one of her eight children who have left, but knowing there are other cousins who have (most of whom he referred to are considerably older than I,) was reassuring to hear. It's nice to know our numbers are growing.

I enjoy learning about my heritage and history, and sharing it with my family. Plus meeting living relatives I didn't know I had is also rewarding.

Family history brings to life the past in a way that studying from textbooks cannot do.


:)

That's one area of my former LDS life that I didn't delve into much back then and now it has become fun for me. The way I see it they can't take away my heritage and I will do it just for me. I actually have some family group sheets that have all the ordinances to check off...I plan on using them for first drafts to make sure I have the info right and then enter the names into the computer and then scrap those sheets. Even though I disagree with and think Mormonism is a sham I just sort of laugh it off and go about my business. ;o)

I hated the idea of genealogy for most of my life. My mom was an avid genealogist from the age of ten - she didn't join the church until well after she married my dad. Her parents were both orphans, and my mom spent much of her early life trying to find relatives as she didn't have any growing up.

She would drag me along on her junkets to libraries and courthouses, and cemeteries to do research, in the days before internet. I didn't mind tagging along, but the research she poured into it was a turn-off.

Fast forward to 2011, and out of the blue I got hooked (well into my fifties by then.) I came home from work at my night shift, tired and bored, but curious to see what I might find by googling a name off a centuries old family tree on my wall at home. No info on it other than names that meant nothing to me other than they were German Jewish from Old German ancestry.

Once I started connecting dots I met Jewish cousins didn't know I had. Learned massive amounts of information on that side as well as my Mormon side - the history that began to unfold took me by storm. I felt like I was a traveler on the Wayback Machine from Sherman and Mr. Peabody fame. I've been to the Wars of the Roses, the Revolutionary War, the Holocaust, to Anne Frank, and the rebirth of Israel from the ashes of WWII.

One of my cousins was responsible for getting Anne Frank's diary published. Otto wasn't going to without the insistence of my cousin that he MUST to preserve it as a record of Anne's own testimony. Another cousin was the AP reporter/director for Israel from 1942 through 1968, and covered three major Israeli wars during those years. His mom died in one of the gas chambers as did her siblings. He was able to escape with his life as a young reporter/socialist fleeing Germany. He was among some of the first cousins I learned of that led to the discovery of some living ones, still in Israel.

I've met other genealogists in my family who have amassed great wealth of information, which makes my job that much easier. My mother's information was impressive considering she gathered what she had before there was internet. Much of her work is now stored on heritage sites because of her dedication. That's pretty neat to discover.

And I started out hating it. There's so much more to genealogy than what LDS uses it for. It can be fun!

I'm able to join the Daughters of the American Revolution I learned after finding out at least two of my direct ancestors fought in the Rev. War. I used to dream about that as a child, after we studied it in history class in 4th grade. With all our Mormon genealogy already recorded, it wasn't commonly known until I did my own research, starting in 2011.

So it's been a worthwhile adventure, all in all. :)

It's something I hope to do more with in retirement, God willing.

It's a fun and practical hobby (again - this is from someone who didn't have a sliver of interest in it until barely five years ago.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2016 08:57PM by Amyjo.

Yeah, the IGI is still of importance. As an un-excommunicated member I have used it to see what others have discovered - and its good. My home teacher is a patriarch (and he hasn't progressed beyond c45/c90 tapes)- beat that!
Anyway, my sister in law, a true believer,is always adding and doing corrections to it - did you know you can add photos Ect. to the system, its amazing but you do need your membership number.

Genealogy never held much appeal to me. My grandmother was really into it though. It was mildly interesting to hear about my ancestors, but not enough so to really want to engage in hours and hours of painstaking research.

For a long time it was just one more thing to feel guilty about failing to do. It's great to just simply not care anymore and to not have to worry about some dead ancestor languishing away in Spirit Prison because of my negligence.

Ghawd, what a bunch of bullshit. How did I believe in it all so sincerely for so many years?

The truth is that 100 years from now, 99.999% of us will be all but forgotten. Our names may appear in some register or a few documents, but that's about it. We will be forgotten. So I am not nearly so concerned nowadays with what my legacy will be. I am content to live for today, choose those things which bring me joy, and try to make life better for a few other people as well. And eventually, I will move on - on to another life or to a hole in the ground. Either way, I won't care whether I am remembered here or not.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2016 04:59AM by Strength in the Loins.

In my case thank goodness I did my genealogy. I have had frustration at times on my dad's side of the family and then the family secrets on my mom's side of the family. I thought for years I had a genetic heart issue. Chest pain could mean instant death. My brother's died in their 40's, some of their children died at the same age. When I hit 50, I thought well any day now. Then I found out my dad was married before at 18 and had my 2 brothers. His first wife died in childbirth. Married my mom 2 years later and had my sister and me( I came when my mom was 48). I also thought my grandfather, on my mom's side, died at 45 of a heart attack. Not true, he ran off with a lady and left my grandmother with 6 kids.He died in his 80's! No heart issues. Then I found out all these years later, my dad left me mineral rights and I decided to sell. The landman could not find certain documents that would link me to the land. My family was not good at leaving wills. Well, I had them. What would have taken months took 6 weeks. I always found it fun, but I realized in certain situations it was essential.

What I have always wanted in family history is to find the stories and write them out so my kids will love them. Every time I started trying to do that, I'd get called as a genealogy worker and have to drop my personal project in favor of typing in church names to church programs. I really started to feel angry that I couldn't just do it my own way and be left in peace.

I figured the church way was God's way, so I'd try again and again... I even did a family history "internship" at our ward. I have never felt such a "stupor of thought." Seriously, brain cells died. I somehow just couldn't learn a thing there, it was awful.

Then we left the church, and I can finally do it my way! Now it is fun.

One of the reasons why Judaism has survived down through the annals of time, and is the oldest living nomadic religious tribe that has done so, is because of its connection to its past. It reveres and remembers its ancestors, and cherishes their memories, one after another. Collectively and individually.

Every Jew is a part of the same tribe wherever we are in the world. We are connected to each other, and to our past. That is why is very important in Judaism. That is why the bible is filled with the genealogy of its ancestors, from the very beginning of time. To the birth of Judaism with Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob on down.

It's that connectedness that makes Jews stand on the Sabbath to honor and remember every living soul that perished in the Holocaust, and remember loved ones anniversaries of births, deaths, and marriages each year.

Even secular Jews stand in solidarity with religious observant Jews. And most remain true to honoring the traditions of their forefathers and ancestors through keeping family histories intact.

My great great grandfathers centuries back were book printers and publishers of Hebrew prayer books and the Talmud in Germany. Their descendants who were still many of them book printers for many decades (no longer,) prepared family trees to give to their posterity. Some of those lovingly hand scripted trees survived the Holocaust.

My cousin who was the AP director for Israel, fled Germany with one of the family trees rolled up into a cardboard tube. When the Nazis stopped him at the border they had no idea of its intrinsic value or would have surely destroyed it. It was his most prized possession he was able to flee Germany with, besides his life.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2016 10:50AM by Amyjo.

One of the parts of family history is that of history itself. Another part is that of what such ancestors did and what they thought. Still another is that of inherited traits including susceptibility for illnesses. I can trace some back centuries because many of my ancestors lived where records were well kept. My weakest ancestral line is my surname. I will someday know more but even having traveled to Scotland to search, I have been unable to find a line because my ancestor was orphaned.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2016 12:17PM by rhgc.

Never having been a Mormon, I've only ever done genealogy for my own entertainment. C'mon! Finding out that the reason no one talked about a great-grandfather was because of the whole murder-suicide thing? Finding out that a great-great-grandmother was married 6 times (not counting living with and having 8 kids with her first "husband" and then trying to claim his Civil War pension when he died) and supported herself by "living on an island in the river known for prostitution and gambling", followed by being a fortune-teller? Now *that's* family history worth having! :D

And, no, not a single, solitary one of them was Mormon.

For me, Mormonism ruined journalling because after I converted, it became a chore and no longer something I did to relax. As a result, I haven't kept a journal after I left the cult, nor have I really had a desire to keep a blog because I know I would never update it.

As for genealogy, my biological family on both sides is nevermo, and there's a legend on my dad's side where a great grandpa allegedly survived the 1918 flu by getting drunk on whiskey when he started getting the symptoms. My mom's side of the family has been in the US longer than my dad's side, who came with the other Irish Catholics escaping the potato famine. My mom's ancestors were most likely living in the US when it was just 13 colonies.

I'm going to add a post scrip to my comments.
I've found that when we have negative thoughts and feelings about the LDS Church/Mormonism, it's almost impossible to find any value in any of it.
In my case, it took a lot of time for me to come to a more neutral position, more objective after I had been able to remove the emotional bond.
Now, after many years, I am able to see the positives, the teachings that assisted me as well as those that were useless.

I think it's about letting go. It was for me.Old song lyrics often pop into my head. This is one that I recall:
"Accentuate The Positive"

You've got to accentuate the positive
eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
But don't mess with mister inbetween....etc...

Silly little tunes often helped me make a change in my thinking. Changing my thoughts was very powerful.

but I got turned off genealogy big time when I was a Mormon. I went to the local genealogy library once, and hit on some material from my German grandmother's line. One of the library people insisted on hanging over my shoulder at the microfilm reader and tried to tell me what I was looking at.

For one thing, I have a very well-defined sense of personal space. I DO NOT LIKE people hanging over my shoulder. If I can smell somebody's exhalations, they are TOO CLOSE.

For another, he was trying to tell me how to read the funny handwriting in the German records (and getting it wrong half the time.) I minored in German at university, and while some of that horrible handwriting is very difficult to decipher, I already had many of my Grandma's old records, and could make my way through them. And I had studied the stuff in school. I kept telling the guy, "I've got this. I've taken classes in it."

I would jot down what the record said, and he would tell me, "No, that isn't right." I had copied the various things out, using the ancient script, so I could check it against my textbooks later.

He was so irritating that I finally had to close my notebooks and dictionaries, thank him very coldly, and leave.

If he had just left me alone (and it wasn't like I didn't give him plenty of opportunities), I probably could have spent a very enjoyable afternoon wrangling through that material. I love anything having to do with language, and this had to do with my Grandma's family, so it was inherently interesting. But the clown just would not leave me alone.

I became interested in genealogy when I was a little girl

and my precious grandmother would tell me stories about

some of our more recent ancestors. The church had nothing

to do with it. I've done a bunch and learned alot about

our ancestors and their lives and I found it to be really

interesting. I'm so glad I never gave any of it to the

church.

that was my answer above.... I don't know what happened.

What I like about genealogy is that my ancestors don't know where I live.

Pssssss... I told your ancestors where you live.

I've stated many times before, that it wasn't Joseph Smith, but rather Brigham Young and my family history (ancestor's diaries and town pioneer histories) that made me start to read. I ancestors were part of the Arizona Mormon Pioneers (Joseph City, Taylor, Heber, AZ [others too]).

Anyway things like the polygamous marriages that took place after the proclamation, the whole United Order, the cancelling of my Great-Great Grandparents sealing in 1911 by J.F.S. even though Great-Great Grandfather died in 1889 with all 3 of his wives listed on his headstone?!?! etc...

I started reading up on the EVIL B.Y. The Mormon Reformation 1856-57, the ordering of members to leave their family and properties to settle little villages all the way down to the 12 Colonias in Mexico so that Leaders of the Church would have an escape route and stop points on their ride down to Mexico.

So I'm very, very thankful I actually started reading all of those old diaries and life stories and questioning such directions from church leaders.

It's a personal thing.

I got interested in genealogy while I was still TBM, but leaving the church did not change my interest in it.

A few years ago I started working diligently on my never-mo wife's genealogy, and I was able to write up her family history going back 60 generations, including many famous historical figures. I made copies for all her siblings. I enjoyed doing it very much.

But I did it because it was interesting.

It would be a shame to let Mormonism keep you from doing something that is a fascinating hobby.