Just what qualifies as proving a family line in submitting names for temple work? In researching I am finding that very few family trees I've seen submitted by Mormons on sights such as Ancestry.com are backed up by primary sources. I'm starting to realize that what Mormons mean by "doing their genealogy" is going to sites such as this, searching names and plugging in the data they find that others have copied. Very frequently you get down to an ancestor whose data is all based on conjecture and assumption; with no real records to back up these.

+1000!

Even as an exMo, I love family history -- but I have this thing about accuracy and fact.

I completely agree that Mormons have NO IDEA how to do genealogy properly. I'm constantly horrified by the mistakes I find, such as children being born before their parents reached reproductive age or after the mother's death, marriage dates before the birth date or after the death date, etc.

A lot of these problems come from assumptions and from not examining the records carefully (when they bother to consult original sources at all), They assume that the two oldest people in a household on a census record, for example, are the bio parents of all the younger people in that household -- even when the record states otherwise.

Many people enter also hearsay and family stories as fact without bothering to check records.

Most of the time, they just assume all data entered by others is correct and based on evidence, so they download like monkeys on crack and continue to perpetuate errors.

Records are so easily available online now that there's just no excuse for this kind of laziness.

That is so true. Everybody hated me when I debunked the family history that has been passed down in my family since forever. No, the X line with the GA is not descended from British royalty, however they were involved in the Yazoo land fraud. Don't shoot the messenger. Oh yeah, and the Roman Catholic line of coal miners that owned the saloon? Actually, they're the ones who worked in Castle Hohenzollern.

This Mormon ancestor married his 16 year old stepdaughter, and that Mormon ancestor also had mother-daughter threesome marriages. This ancestor met the missionaries in hospital after he shot himself in the foot when he was in the Danish military. This ancestor had an affair with the babysitter who was a Mormon, so they ran off to Utah with two of the kids.

Anything else you'd like to know?

Some of the information can be incorrect too. After my grandmother passed, she was baptized as a man. When I went to the temple to correct the information they practically interrogated me..."Are you sure she's female?" "Yes, she gave birth to my mother."
I mean, if my grandmother wasn't female, then that would have made her a homosexual since she married a man.

And how on earth can anyone be expected to trace any family line back any further than a few generations? TSSC doctrine says that in the second coming Jesus will take care of the rest...

So I mentioned once in Relief Society something like, "Let's think critically here: how are we supposed to collect all the information of every human who has ever lived on earth when records for the majority of these people don't even exist? And if the gaps will be filled in at the Second Coming, why are we so concerned about gathering all of this impossible information?"

That week the RS pres sent out an email announcing the topic of our next lesson, encouraging everyone to read the lesson ahead of time so that any comments we share in class may be for "the edification of others."

My Mormon roommate was shocked when I started doing genealogy. I said, "Hey, heathens have ancestors, too." However, I quickly ran into the problem of unsubstantiated connections as well. I was quite sad to have to prune the entire noble Danish branch when I double checked the connection and discovered the key link died childless and it was the sibling who married the Danish nobleman. On the other hand, I've confirmed connections to Colonial governors and actual pirates, so I'm content.

Wow. As a never-Mo, even one that HAAATES Mormonism, you have this notion that, as much of a heretical cult as they are, the Mormons have genealogy nailed...that no one does it better. Wow. This just burst my bubble.

The mormon reputation for expertise in the field of genealogy seriously needs debunking overall.

Mormons in general, and the LDS Church in particular, are actually damaging genealogical research. They need to be called out.

And she put it to me this way: Mistakes get made by the best of researchers, and she saw it as important to correct those when they were discovered.

She remarked about the attitude at the genealogy library and said once the information was in their data bases, "it was chiseled in stone" (confirming what Saxgirl says above).

Given that "doing the work" is seen as a duty, it would appear that accuracy is secondary, and there's a culture of defensiveness (more "elephant in the living room") that has evolved.

Incidentally the "cabdriver nickname" for the Family History Library is "The Root Cellar."

It used to be (the 1970s) that primary sources, "secondary" sources, and such were required for submission of temple names by individuals. You had to look FIRST for the primary sources (birth, death, marriage certificates), then if that was not available, secondary sources (like census records) could be used). They had pink and white colored forms wherein at the bottom all sources had to be listed...a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, a census record (with the film and page number, etc.), etc.

Now-a-days, yes you can basically just make up stuff, if you wanted to. I don't think most people do, but it used to be pretty hard to get names "approved". It would take months after submission. Of course now it is done on-line and the rigorous rules were done away with.

It's mostly about "turning the hearts of the children" unto the church. It's busy work for most people but another thing the church can make members feel guilty about.

My favorite family tree story is where my brother insisted that a child born three months after the wedding of a highly revered pioneer stock ancestor MUST be a transcription error. Because none of OUR ancestors would have premarital sex. No no no no no!

I keep hearing rumors that they've cleaned the more outrageous items out of the IGI or whatever it's called now. Because I've got a printout that shows the dates of the ordination work down for the god Thor and his parents, Oden and Frigga. This was part of the traditional family history for the Danish noble family I found. I like to pull it out and show people who claim the genealogy records are always reliable.

I had family members who took serveral lines back many many gerneations (14 on some lines). If you can tie into a well documented family line it helps. My wife is really good at family history and has helped people find information online from sources in Europe and USA. She has found lots of mistakes in the groupsheets of both our families that have been entered down through the years, some of them pretty funny, but it's not a problem unique to Mormon sources, it happens with others who did research and were not professional researchers.

We have visited sites where our ancestors lived many generations ago and have an idea of how we came to be who we are. This has really crystallized my frustration over the Church gathering working class people from all over Europe to come to Utah and set up Zion. To be honest life was pretty bleak where they came from, so although the Church was a scam, it probably put a lot of people on a better course. I have great great grandfathers who were pillars of the Church and others who were famous apostates... helps you keep lifes great tapestry in perspective.

same old mormon story .....
my pedigree is better than your pedigree ...

to print out their family history. Supposedly, their printer was broken. I think the real reason was that the final result took the better part of a ream of paper.

Anyway, I couldn't help leafing through it out of curiosity and while I was still relatively TBM, I could hardly keep from laughing. According to this family's printout, their family tree contained just about any famous person you ever heard of in either history or literature.

Among the ones I remember: El Cid, Charlemagne, Christopher Columbus, several English kings ranging from Plantagenets to Tudors, and George Washington.

While it MAY be possible, color me "skeptical."

Descendents of royalty generally didn't emigrate to the USA.

What bothers me most is that they just choose to accept the Mormon genealogist's name entries as if the whole body of descendants had given their permission.

Never had any mormon ask me for permission. For example my great-grandfather.

I've done quite a lot of genealogy after leaving the morg. The shoddy work done by many mormons is frustrating. I've also looked into IGI cards and found some of my ancestors, each entered several times for baptism, sealing and endowment - the whole schpiel in their temples. What's the point if they won't respect accuracy.

I started to look into my families history and my TBM mom was so proud. It took me two days to see that no one had sourced any of it. I gave it up afterwards.
My family have one of those patriarchal genealogical lines down to Adam, and DM tried to get me excited about it. At least until I pointed out that the person listed as my great great grandpa was actually the second husband married after the kids were born, so beyond him the whole thing was inaccurate.

Tell me about it. My mother has discovered that we are related to the Norse god Odin, that appearantly came from somewhere east and established himself as king in bronze age Uppsala. While the rest of Sweden doesn't even have legendary kings from before around 700 AD she has appearantly stumbled on someone's imaginary histories tracing back to before the BC era. I'm guessing it won't take that long until she finds we're related to Jesus aswell.

Nomonotloggedin,

Can I join your family? It is SO much more interesting than mine. The worst I have found so far is a drunk who bashed his wife. BUT the plucky lady divorced him (in the 1890s no less!) and married again.

While there are a few 'premature' births (including my father born 2 months after my grandparents wedding), nothing else, other than thier emmigration to Australia is any NEARLY as intersting as yours!!

What bothers me about doing LDS genealogy is they all they care about are the names and dates. I guess this is so they can get them turned in to the church. But when an ancestor has a written journal including details that are not "faith-promoting", those stories seem to get edited out of their history. For instance, one ancestor was discovered to be a horse thief. Strange how that never is mentioned at the family reunions when the name comes up.

I have also seen lines that loop back upon themselves. I haven't figured out how this worked yet, maybe time travel?

My understanding is that Temple Work releases the Missionaries in the next life to go knock on your ancestors door to preach the Gospel. Obviously this means there are your predecessors in a previous life doing Temple work which, in turn, leads to the Missionaries knocking on your door. The inspiration Missionaries claim about where they go knocking is the Holy Ghost letting them know the moment the dead dunking etc has been completed.

It's on a long a continuous loop, which we like to refer to as Eternity.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2013 08:44AM by Stumbling.

People with little time and about half of them with below average ability are encouraged to do something - in this case genealogy - which is painfully obvious is beyond their ability or nature. The work is often expensive, detail oriented, exacting, investigative and analytical. Not everyone has the personal skills or resources for that but yet they are still encouraged to do it with no accountability as to their accuracy. I think most mean well, it's just beyond them. Like long division.

As for faith promoting and truth bent like light, I think the oddest thing I have seen was reading a family reunion type website which published some ancestor's ( of their's) journal word for word. It included the counsel of his then Stake President in Star Valley, a one George Osmond ( yeah, of that family) encouraging him to post-manifesto go polygamous in Mexico. Brutally honest about the pain it caused his first and much older wife as they did. And then the next thing you know, someone came in and totally rewrote the story. Goodbye Osmond involvement. Goodbye polygamy. Goodbye first wife's unhappiness. Insert fictional couldn't-be-further-from-the truth story of utopian pioneering.

Mormon truth.
Facts just aren't important. Why in the heck would accurate birthdates be?

A fairly ditzy older cousin whom we barely know somehow had my living mom sealed to my dad's great great grandfather. I was amused but annoyed as a TBM to find such a stupid error. Ironically my dad is now exmo. So maybe this cousin was inspired after all to set my mom up with someone else? Haha

Hey, another descendant of Odin here! My patrimonial line is traceable back to a certain Norman baron who was purportedly descended from Norwegian kings, and those kings in turn had a family mythology that led back into the mists of time to the ruler of Valhalla and of the Norse pantheon. Great stuff! Glad to read in this thread that someone's dutifully done the temple work for old Odin and his crew.

Recently I Googled "how many humans have ever lived" and was led to a site that informed me that the population-statistics boys and girls have unleashed their computers and reproduction models on this question and come up with the answer: 100 billion people, more or less! Of whom only 7 billion or so are currently above the ground. It made it all the more blindingly obvious that the task of "baptizing everyone that has ever lived" is so completely impossible, in the sense that the lives of probably 90+ % of all those forebears were never recorded in any way, shape, or form, that it beggars description.

On the other hand, years ago I enjoyed quite a few pleasant hours in the Family History Center in SLC doing the kind of research that is actually possible, not only on my decent but obscure ancestors over the last few centuries but also on the family background of a German nobleman that I was writing something about and some of his equally pedigreed contemporaries. For that I am grateful. But yeah, most people probably lack the historical sense to do a great job with their extended genealogies, or even the accuracy in dealing with archival records.

Jayzus.

I have crazy TBM in-laws who are geneology freaks. One Christmas they sent their annual holiday post card to my parents here in Florida. We have a gigantic, extended Catholic family and we all gather at my folks beach house for the holidays.

My sibs and I have always had a tradition where we read all my parents' Christmas cards together. We catch up on our childhood friends and their extended families. We read, and pass, and gossip, and reminisce, and laugh.

Well, when it got to my in-laws card, there were puzzled looks, raised eyebrows, and DEAD SILENCE as it got passed around. The in-laws' card finally got to me. Roughly, it said:

"Merry Christmas to our loved ones near and far as we remember the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We are well. Edward and I have been busy this year in our callings as Stake Geneology Specialists.

In addition to assisting our brothers and sisters in the Gospel with their family history research, we have made great progress of our own. Edward and I have managed to TRACE TWO LINES ALL THE WAY BACK TO ADAM!!!

Christmas blessings and a Happy New Year to all!"

Ummmmmmmmmm . . . crickets chirping.

;o)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2013 12:18PM by shannon.

Complete conjecture, but the decreasing scrutiny on genealogy within the Church may be due to the reality that they desperately need more names for the Temples. I've heard - no proof yet - that the Church recycles names within the Temples as they don't have enough to give everyone a unique name every time they attend for the endowment sessions.

Oh - and this is my first post - been lurking for about 6 months...