oliver_denom wrote: ↑Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:56 am
Just This Guy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 15, 2018 2:35 pm
However, I tend to take that with a major grain of salt. When my dad researches family history, he seems to link to the most interesting possible ancestor, not the most likely. So I think there is very high likelihood of error in that family tree. That does bring up concerns with this whole amature genealogy thing the church pushes. When you have a whole bunch of average joe's out doing this with little to no training and even less cross checking, there is a huge potential for error.
Speaking of errors in one's family tree, DNA testing has thrown a major wrench into the whole ordeal. While the church's doctrine is open to the idea of adoption, there's still a lot of doctrinal emphasis on literal blood relations. As more and more people get tested, they are finding out that their biological fathers aren't who they thought they were. For generations, people would have adulterous or out of wedlock relations, and they had no solid way of determining who the biological father was. In other cases, I've especially seen this here in the south, families would just take in children and rename them as their own. The adoptions weren't recorded, and in some cases were actively hidden.
Even if you do trace a genealogy back three hundred years, then it would be patently absurd to think that there wasn't at least one case where the parents aren't who they said they were. Nine generations involves 512 people assuming there's no kissing cousins. This sort of work is a hobby, and after a certain point, can't be taken as an actual history of genetic transfer. I'd be willing to bet that 2/3 rds of the population couldn't even go back three generations before hitting something like this.
This kind of story telling ignores a basic fundamental truth. All living human beings are descended from basically the same small group of people. People within each ethnicity are more closely related, but what's a few thousand years in the scheme of things? There's nothing genetically special about any given human verses another.
My grandmother was heavy into genealogy and she used to rant about some of our “dead end” lines, and how various branches of the extended family of descendants of guy X who was the illegitimate son of woman Y who later married a jerk, at least according to the son, so the son runs away and later joins the church. So, the armature genealogists guess, maybe this guy was the father of woman Y, lets seal them. Another line of this large extended family thinks, maybe this other guy was the father. Let’s seal them. After 8 generations in the church, woman Y is sealed to 35 different men, who never married her while she was alive, but she is not sealed to the guy she did marry, because the guy X didn’t like his step father. Another guy, we will just call toad was a street orphan in Paris. At 5 years old, he stowed away of a ship coming to America, about 1820 some odd. When the sailors found him, they asked his name. He told them Peter. Peter what? He didn’t know his last name or the names of his parents. So, the sailors named him Toad for a last name, cause he was so small. So, the sailors drop him off in America at an orphanage. Now, remember the sailors named him cause he didn’t know. He joined the church and also has lots of descendants. So, now if you go look on the Church genealogy site, he is sealed to his parents. Some idiot found somebody with a last name resembling the French for “toad” who lived in Paris about the right time, and although there is no record of a child named Peter, and this couple was wealthy enough that they would have left their orphan child money, so he would not end up as a street urchin, but the name was similar, so they HAVE to be the parents, right? Remember who gave Peter his last name? Yeah, sure those people are the right parents.
My grandfather is almost bald from tearing out her hair. And we have about ten such stories...all sealed to people who could, maybe, possibly, be the parents, we’ll, they were in a city of several million about the right time, so let’s seal them in case.
As for do I descend from Royality, King Duncan—- murdered by Macbeth, Charlamain, William the Conqueror. Other “royalty” people on the Mayflower, singer of Declaration of Independence, Mormon royalty. Hand cart pioneers, cattle rustlers, horse thieves. Anyone impressed? I know i’m not.
?