Monday, May 11, 2020

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