I'm not obsessed, but it's interesting.

Some of my lines go back to the 1500s. Is that a typical? Tracing for 10 generations, one would have 1024 great grandparents - not considering "pedigree collapse".

How far back does an average TBM trace their lineage?

Same here. Although it's rather fun to see where my family came from, along with any notables in the family tree, I did come to realize that after a certain number of generations, family relationships are essentially meaningless.

Most of my lines peter out in the 1400s.

The exception being a knighted line back to the 1200s and a dubious connection to royalty.

Fun thing. I am related to myself through William Bradford, a pilgrim from Plymouth.

On Dad's side we descend from his first wife and on Mom's through his second wife.

The collapse of the tree is interesting.

I'm a Bradford descendant as well, though his 2nd wife. Hello, cousin! :)

I did this as a hobby during the pandemic. Yes it was interesting and found some remote relatives from the 1500s. Trying to search for a 3rd or 4th cousin when you get a hit on 23andme or ancestry is almost impossible.

If you're a Lamanite, of a certain age, you get to your grandparents, and then all is lost. So three generations...

But my TBM daughter gets four generations, and her TBM son gets five generations! How exciting!

My father's family came from Hartford Ct to Utah via The Ship Brooklyn voyage.

Thanks to some research of my own and locating a tree to which my research led I have my paternal line to shortly after 1300 and connections to some notable families and one well known infamous family. One ancestor was part of ".. we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.."

I was fascinated by genealogy in a general sense but have no faith in it on a personal level. Doesn’t the vagaries of the biological imperative rather moot our specific twig than not?

Generally, I trust that my lines on both sides go back to Ireland and Scotland and so am probably Celtic. But I don’t put much trust in the specific names on the branch.

For example, one grandfather fathered 22 children with my grandmother, 16 of which survived. But after both of them had passed, we learned that my grandfather also fathered three more children with my grandmother’s sister. It was quite the Family Reunion when these three showed up to claim kin!

My mother's side was Mormon so I had many polygamous relatives. One had 3 wives and 10 kids from each. Of course he died before his wives. <insert joke here>

ChurchCo busy-work.

Mine goes back to the 1300’s. When people say that they have traced their line back to Adam...it’s a crock. Even the church website says that it’s impossible.

I traced mine back to the first bacteria

And now I, zelf the apostate, being of the tribe of Levi, which makes me an auto bishop, have been moves by the spirit to call Lots wife to the stand to bear her testimony.

LW lifts her veil to attest, in the Holy of Holies, to the awesome power of Zelph the Lamanite warrior.








PS: My bill, suitably discounted, is in the mail. ;-)

There's at least one silly claim of a morganatic marriage that resulted in Bishop Herman op den Graeff, that sends one of my lines into the Habsburgs. This is utter rubbish.

Another line gets into a morass of half-baked claims to Welsh royalty. Again garbage.

A third tries to make a Mayflower connection where one isn't - and trust me, I've contacted those Mayflower people. They have the highest of bars for proof, and worse they charge you to confirm your findings.

And finally, a fourth one imagines a connection to Pocahontas.


Almost all of these lines are argued from rank speculation, so caveat lector.

Tyson

One of my second cousins from the second wife traced our common ancestor back to Adam and beyond. Kind of embarrassing that this is online

My cousin traced back to a royal line.

Then that back to Roman times.

Then that to the middle east where....

He connected to some nobility in the Judah royal family.

Then it was a hop skip and a jump to Solomon and David and back to Abraham Isaac and Jacob then Voila! Noah to Adam.

But the kicker. He made a book of all this and wanted family to buy it.

Everyone’s genealogy goes back about 4 billion years. Paperwork documenting said genealogy can typically be traced back a few centuries or less. The accuracy of records is highly variable.

Paternity can be misrepresented in records. Even maternity is sometimes misrepresented. Typos happen. Adoptions, formal or informal, happen. Church birth registries get destroyed in floods or fires. The farther back the records go, the more likely it is that large parts do not match reality.