My father considered himself a geneology genius. However, he got my birthday wrong in his family chart and the names of both of my children are incorrect. Perhaps that means we'll be lost in the cracks and get to stay in one of the happier more fun-filled kingdoms of Heaven. Hopefully, this means we'll dodge spending eternity with the smug high and mighty TBM side of the family.

I brought that premise up years and years ago to my mother, who was the house genealogist. Her response was priceless Mormonism: "I guess that will all get sorted out in Heaven..."

LOL!

The short biographies included in my family history are all very "upbeat." It seems as if everyone was devoted to the Lord and the building up of the kingdom. Everyone was quite perfect--no flaws at all!!

It does take a bit of sleuthing to piece together the polygamous marriages. Some bios mention only one wife...others mention wives but conveniently leave out the chronology.

Errors of omission, mostly. There are ancestors that I heard a lot about growing up, and there were ancestors that I knew almost nothing about. The latter almost always turned out to have histories that are embarrassing to the Mormon church.

Anything juicy? Anything dire?

Most are tragic. One Swiss family had four daughters. The family arrived poor in Utah, having spent everything to get there. As soon as they arrived, the daughters were all married off to polygamists in different towns and at least two daughters died in their 20s. I'm going from memory.

One Mormon kidnapped his two daughters from his ex-wife and boarded a ship to America before she could stop him. One girl died along with the father en route to Utah. The other was married off to her polygamist step-father when she got to be 16. My family records lied about her age, saying she was 17. The polygamist also dead-married the other girl who died on the plains.

Another family received fraudulent Revolutionary War land bounties in Georgia, which were later sold at public auction due to nonpayment of taxes. They were also involved with the State of Franklin fiasco. They were probably involved in the Yazoo Land Fraud, but I'm still researching that. They arrived in Missouri before the Louisiana purchase with Spanish land grants. Then some of their kids caught the Mormon bus when it came through, and others were bitter anti-Mormons living at Shoal Creek. This bunch "had the pioneer spirit" according to my family's history.

One ancestor was in the Danish army. He shot himself in the foot, and while he was in hospital, he met the Mormon missionaries and was converted. (I just like to tell that one.)

LOL!

The only story I can recall is how one ancestral group picked the wrong side in the Revolutionary War, and then had to move to Canada.

No ancient history with the Mormons, though: my parents were the Latter-day Dodos.

I have found dozens. Not only in research done by my own family genealogists, but also in genealogical information on the Internet.

My mother was an adopted child. As an adult I learned from a family relative (who had been present when the baby was picked up at the home for unwed mothers) that she was born in Ogden, Utah. The family records have her born in Salt Lake City. When I gave this information to my brother so that he could correct his records, he replied, "Well, the church records show her birthplace as Salt Lake, so I'll just leave it at that."

I have found records posted by Mormons where the person died 157 years after his date of birth. Where two children of a family with the same first name are born on the same day in different towns. Where the ancestor is one of the Norse gods. Where a family of eight children are all born in towns with the same name in different states (supposedly the family moved back and forth every year or so, but always to a town with the same name).

NEVER trust the accuracy of Mormon genealogical records.

A distant cousin of mine listed our great great grandmother's name incorrectly on a genealogy site a few years ago. I have since seen that this woman has been baptised and endowed under the false name by some other member of the site. Recently I discovered her real name, but I won't be making any corrections...

I've talked about before. I need to find my grandfather's history my aunt gave me for Christmas. I was told my ggmother was married to my polygamist ggfather in 1909 or 1908 and my mother was born in 1932. My grandparents didn't get married until they were about 30.

So--the dates I've been given don't add up.

My boyfriend--whose ggfather was a danite--who was excommunicated and left Utah when BY was still alive (so my boyfriend was never mormon)--I gave him some stuff I got at the genealogy library and he showed it to his parents. His dad said it was all wrong--especially the pictures.

A distant cousin of mine is one of those TBMs who thinks he gets more status from being descended from certain people. So, he basically lied on the family record and indicated that the man who was actually a several "greats" uncle is actually his direct-line ancestor instead.

I remember trying to get SLC to change that, and they actually refused, even after I presented documentation.

Not exactly a record keeping problem, but more of a misidentification problem. When I was a kid, my mom always told me that my g-g-grandmother's uncle was this man who's a historical figure. Well, it was something I didn't ever talk about with anyone because I didn't think what she told me rung true. & it turned out it didn't. Last year, I did a quick fact check, & my family definitely isn't related to this historical figure. What astounds me is that during the time my mom told me this as a kid, she had already done a lot of genealogy, so I don't understand her mistake. I'm also wondering who in the hell of the older deceased family members perpetuated this lie.

DNA analysis can indicate some--irregularities--shall we say, in paternity.

More-conundrums-for-sorting-out-in-the-millenium-ly yrs,

S

Look at your tree hard enough and far enough back and you'll start seeing crazy things all over the place, like children who are 30 years older than their parents.

1. Yep, one of my ancestors was a norse god!
2. Another has been baptized for slight differences in towns (because the lines changed for the towns) and years (only a year or two apart) and sealed to different husbands.
3. When my uncle was born the doc couldn't remember the name of the newborn correctly and put the name of my uncle's older brother on the birth certificate. This was caught until my uncle went to get a passport!
4. My DW got my date of birth wrong on a couple of our children's birth certificate - year (off by one) and date of month (off by one day).
5. One line traces back to Adam.
6. I hope the other records are correct.....

In my records, mostly compiled by my grandmother, one couple's marriage was listed as occuring in 1827 in Salt Lake City.

hmm? I'm pretty sure the year is right ....

My father in law wrote his autobiography a few years ago, and rightly so because he truly is the most interesting man in the world. :)


Anyway, in one chapter he mentions his sister and her husband. A few chapters later, the sister has moved to another country and has a different husband! There was no explanation of what happened to husband number one. I asked him about it and he clarified, but he didn't see the need to add the info. to his book.

My goodness yes.
SLC has my father's birthday wrong. I called them to correct it and was told that they would not be interested in correcting the information because of the bookkeeping involved.
I told them "Then screw you" and hung up.

The truth:
Girl married at a VERY young age to older man who had many other wives. She was between 12-14. Conflicting records.
All the info on her parents and back are correct and linked.
Girl fell in love with his oldest son.
Older man divorced girl and married her to his son.
She was sons only wife through out their lives.

This was correctly shown for years.

Now, it looks like:
Girl with no background and a different number was married to the older man.
Girls correct info shows up when you look at her married to son.
None of the current info ties these two together even though they are the same person.

I don't know if a member of the family did it or someone else.

The original source records of one of our highly revered early Mormon ancestors lists the birthdate of the first child as considerably less than 9 months after the parents' marriage date.

Uh, a goodly percentage of marriages occurred while the woman was pregnant. Indeed, even in more recent times this was quite common. In Plymouth, MA, I looked at marriages from January to April of about 1960 and found 40% had children within eight months of the marriage! And this was where they both married and had the children in the town, rather than a marriage or birth away so it wouldn't show in the town records.

In law school a professor noted that in Utah a substantial proportion had children a little less than nine months after the marriage (like seven or eight months) - indicating that they did not know for sure of pregnancy but had been sexually active and were quickly married. This was in the 1960s. Elsewhere, marriages were called "shotgun weddings". The births were, of course, "premature".

BTW, the statistics do not include weddings where the bride was pregnant and miscarried thought she was and the couple married under that idea. Given the rate of miscarriage, we can expect in many cases that half of all marriages were based on pregnancy. The result was that very few illegitimate births occurred.

LDS records say that I'm a descendant of Ole King Cole and a Roman named Cordia.

My wife has our genealogy back to Adam.

I'm guessing one or two mistakes slipped in along the way!!!

Reviewing my geneology on my mom's side, in the middle of a sea of legitimate names and dates is the person, "unknown spanish boy".



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2012 03:43PM by suckafoo.

Oh hell yes! I have done quite a bit of delving into my family genealogy for the family history aspect. I refuse to submit any names for temple work, though. From my observations, TSCC has no monopoly on improbable and erroneous genealogy work submitted by amateur genealogists. Nevertheless, I cannot look at the church genealogy website without becoming very angry. The ignorance and arrogance there is unmatched anywhere. When the church rolled out the New Family Search genealogy website, I found that I was married to my father who died in 1964 and I am the mother of brother who is a year younger than me. My father is alive and well at present and of course, we’ve never been married and I didn’t become a mother at 13 months of age. I tried to correct these mistakes and found the information came from Church Records and could only be changed by Church headquarters in SL. My father was successful in getting himself brought back to life and we are no longer married according to the Church. I have been trying to get my brother off my records for over 5 years now - calling Church Records in SL who passed it off onto my ward clerk. Several ward clerks later, my current ward clerk told me he took care of it, but the church genealogy still says my brother is my son! Even my TBM husband is disgusted. The computer program for New Family Search has linked together all sorts of blunderous genealogy connections so it is a total mess for people like me who have many many far flung LDS relatives submitting their wonky genealogy work. My mom told me that a recent RS or SS lesson mentioned that there would be special ministering angels in the millennium to straighten out the erroneous genealogy records. Isn’t that convenient?

THe family charts new family search change when another user makes changes. So that keeps changing my own chart to names with incorrect names and dates. I keep having to change mine back to the correct names. I think alot of mormons researching family history dont base new finds on facts but on good feelings. They think i have a good feeling grandpa was born on this date in this place with no facts to back it up. The spirit told me he was born here they might say.

@StrayMutt and rhgc

And so much for Mormons (and others) believing in the sanctity of marriage ordained by God as having always been the norm. In some European communities, it was common (and expected) that a couple would live together before a church marriage. In a farming society, where they depended on a large number of children to help, a couple needed to prove they could have children. Once the female became pregnant, proving they could have children, then they married, so the first child was usually born about 5 or 6 months after the church marriage. If she wasn't pregnant in a year or so, then they usually split up.

He believes all our Mormon ancestors were perfect. The non-Mormon ones, well, og course they were flawed, but not our Pioneer Stock®!

It is a given that these records are messed up. I have looked in old records just for amateur historical research and death records etc are so messed up and inaccurate it is funny. Some may have been "hedged" by the clerks who wrote them. A "lady" may die with the cause of death left out but a woman of low birth will have "alcoholism" or "suicide" dutifully written in.

My sister is big on the geneaology thing and it is sad to hear her accept so many dates as Gospel but then she is doing it for these people's salvation so it is wishful thinking. Good to know there will be a bureaucracy in Heaven to sort this all out.