Marinus Christensen's Birth Family

Marinus Christensen was adopted as a small child in Denmark by Jens Christensen and Karen Marie Johannesen. Not long afterward they went to America. Jens died as they crossed the Great Plains so Marinus grew up in the home of his sister and brother-in-law Mary and Ove Oveson. When he died, his son could not give the name of Marinus's parents for the death certificate.

Now, we have easy access to Danish records. The records show the birth of a child named Marinus Marcusen, just a few days after the family remembered, but in the correct rural community.

The official recorded as parents, "The unmarried Kirsten Marie Johansen, 21 years, from Kjæret, and the assumed father, bachelor Anton Marcusen from Smedegaard." Anton Marcusen appears to be Anton Marqvordsen. It's not the same surname, but he appears to be the only Anton from their rural area. In the 1860s Anton appears to have had two illegitimate sons with Kirsten (Christian and Marinus), one illegitimate daughter with Ane Kathrine Jensdatter (Petrine Marie), and then a legal family in the 1870s with Hanne Laurine Christensen.

There is still some conjecture involved in these conclusions, but here's an additional bit of evidence. Marinus was adopted by a family and taken to the US. He eventually lived most of his life in Arizona. His probable half-sister and her husband and children moved to the US in 1898 and settled in North Dakota. Her descendants who have done DNA testing show up as relatives. Here is a picture shared by her family. Note her resemblance to Marinus!

Identified as "Back row George Jensen, John, Ed, Arthur, Henry. Front row Chris, father Chris Jensen, Dagmar, Maida (mother), Alma." From Ancestry, courtesy of jazzslider, Jens and Helen Christensen, and Steve Page. 

Here are a couple of pictures of Marinus to compare.

And the probable half-brother and half-sister a little larger. They have a lot of shared facial features!

When FamilySearch Makes Changes

John Morgan's FamilySearch Family Tree entry is blocked from changes because he was a Latter-day Saint general authority. FamilySearch blocks changes to certain notable people whose entries tend to become the target of either malicious changes or adoring but not genealogically significant content.

In order to make changes to a closed entry, you have to contact FamilySearch, and I've never bothered sending in information on John Morgan. Someone did recently, so he is better sourced than he was before.

However, FamilySearch just made an unfortunate change at someone's request. John Morgan had one legal wife, Helen Melvina Groesbeck, two plural wives, Annie Smith and Mary Ann Linton, and at least two women sealed to him after their deaths including Mary Elizabeth Kilgore.

The given explanation when someone removed Mary Elizabeth Kilgore from the family is "Incorrect relationship. Not married in life."

Severing the relationship without understanding the history and adding an explanation of the temple work done by the Morgan and Kilgore families to preserve the family connection certainly is not malicious, but it is ignorant in a way that ends up being malicious.

It's truly unfortunate that the change was requested without also adding something to document this familial link, and it is doubly unfortunate that FamilySearch agreed to the change and made it without also documenting what happened.

Ignorance all around.

If you see these kind of Latter-day Saint connections where families had someone sealed into their families — their form of adoption — please preserve the relationships, either in the Family Tree or in the Memories sections for the people involved. Please do not vandalize entries without understanding what was happening.

Here is what you would read to understand the nineteenth century practice of Latter-day Saint adoptive sealings.

Stapley, Jonathan A., "Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism" (Summer 2011). Journal of Mormon History. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1885588

John Tanner's Mission: Sources

In the ongoing effort to move the content from this blog over to FamilySearch Family Tree, I compiled the information here and added some new information to a document called John Tanner's Mission: Sources. You can view and download it here:

John Tanner's Mission: Sources