John Tanner's Family Bible

Ron Tanner somehow found and added pictures of John Tanner's family Bible to FamilySearch Family Tree. Since I work with nineteenth century documents almost daily, I can attest that this is an original record, and made by someone with intimate knowledge of the Tanner family. (Either that or it was made by someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Tanner family and nineteenth-century spelling variations, and the counterfeiting skills of Mark Hoffman, and such a dark horse should undoubtedly be counterfeiting something of higher value than this, museum piece as it is.)

There are about half a dozen different handwritings in this record, but most of the first inscriptions are the same handwriting, probably John Tanner's.

[678]

FAMILY RECORD.

BIRTHS.

John Tanner was born August 15th 1778

Taberthy Bently was born August the 23 1780

Lydia Stewart was born November th 18 1783

Elisha Bently Tanner was born March th 23 1801

William Stewart Tanner was born October the 27 1802

Mathilda Tanner was born September the 14 1804

Willard Tanner was born October the 29 1806

Sidney Tanner was born April the 1 1809

John Joshua Tanner was born December the 19 1811

Romela Tanner was born April the 1 1814

BIRTHS.

Nathan Tanner was borne May the 14 1815

Edward and Edwin Tanner was born October th 3 1817

Mariah Loisa Tanner was born November th 28 1818

Martin Henery Tanner was born March the 21 1822

Albert M. Tanner was born April the 4 1825

[Elizabeth's children carried over from the other page]

Sarah Tanner was Born July the 19 — 1840

Francis Tanner was born mach the 10 — 1843

[the last looks like the same hand as the Sidney Tanner letter from San Bernardino]

[679]

FAMILY RECORD.

BIRTHS.

Elise Beswick was born November 28 — 1803

Myron Tanner was Born June th 4 in the year of our Lord 1826

Seth Benjamin Tanner was born March th 6 — 1828

Fremon Everton Tanner was born Jen [January] th 3 1830

Joseph Tanner was born June th 11 — 1833

Philomely Tanner was Born March th 10 1835

David Dan Tanner was born feb th 8 1838

DEATHS.

Taberthy Tanner died Aprial the 9 1801


Willard Tanner died August the 12 1807


Romela Tanner died April the 16 1814

Edwin Tanner died October the 8 1817

Edward Tanner died October the 21 1817



Philomely Tanner Died May th 28 1838.

[680]

FAMILY RECORD.

DEATHS.

Lydia Tanner died may the 31 1825

Francis Tanner died June the 5th 1844

John Tanner died april the 13th 1850

Sariah Tanner Died March the 12 1853

Elisha Bently Tanner Died March 11. 1858.

William Stewart Tanner Died [1875]

DEATHS.

Matilda Tanner Randall died April 17. 1888. in Kirtland Ohio.

Albert Miles Tanner Died. [1879]

The Mysterious Pardon

...Pardon Tanner, that is.

Every so often, someone compares his or her personal family records to John Tanner's FamilySearch Family Tree entry and discovers that their copy of the family records has a child of John and Lydia Tanner named Pardon Tanner, born 1820. Pardon is not in Family Tree, so they go ahead and add him.

The problem is that as far as anyone has been able to discover, he does not exist. My dad removed him from the family tree today. I've removed him from the family before, as has Karen Bray Keeley.

Here is my explanation for removing him from the family, as added to John Tanner and Pardon Tanner's discussion section:

John and Lydia Stewart Tanner did not have a son named Pardon. There are no known trustworthy records for the existence of this child. RonT provided a copy of the family bible in the Memories section above. The family bible lists Lydia's children as: William, Mathilda, Willard, Sidney, John Joshua, Romela, Nathan, Edward, Edwin, Maria Loisa, Martan Henery, and Albert. (All spellings from the record.) Lists of the family from the 19th and early 20th centuries do not mention a child named Pardon, and sources within the family state that John and Lydia had twelve children.

John Tanner had a brother named Pardon Tanner (L6G9-6S3), born 1791. William Tefft Tanner (LZY8-STR) and Lydia Foster (LHRF-CWS) had a child named Pardon Tanner (MBPD-GH5), born 1820, died 1824. Elizabeth Tanner and Newman Perkins had a child Pardon Perkins (K236-P41), born 1824.

William and Lydia Tanner's son is probably the Pardon mistakenly placed into the John and Lydia Tanner family.

I don't know who first speculated that John and Lydia had a son named Pardon. A Pardon Tanner was sealed as a child to John Tanner and Lydia Stewart on September 2, 1975 in the Logan Utah LDS Temple. I have never seen a valid reason for anyone doing that. No one has ever provided documentation.

Until someone can provide an actual document from the nineteenth century (burial or church record) showing his existence that proves that he is the son of John and Lydia and not of Joshua and Thankful or William and Lydia or Elizabeth and Newman, please do not add him to the family.

A reliable and contemporaneous source would be one created at the time this purported child was born or died. Lacking an actual record of his birth or death, a family record created in the 1800s would work, something like a family Bible. The family Bible record provided by Ron Tanner does not show a child named Pardon.

I will add the images of the family Bible in a subsequent post.

This "Pardon" was most likely created by someone thinking William and Lydia Foster Tanner's child belonged to John and Lydia Stewart Tanner, or perhaps someone speculating the existence of a child in the 3-1/2 year gap between Louisa Maria and Martin Henry. There may have been a child at this time, but without any record to prove his existence, we can't create historical reality by speculation.

• • •

Although no temple work needs to be done for this family, here are some things that do need to be done.

(1) Source and correct all entries for all children and grandchildren and their families. Please do not make changes unless you have documentation to back up your changes. Documentation does not include personal genealogical records, unless you have family records created at the time of the events, but documentation does include vital and government and church records and certain histories. 

(2) Collect and write biographies for all family members, including the women, and place them in the "Stories" section of each entry. Collect and add photographs from family members and historical societies such as Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Remember to include a note about where you got the story or picture and get permission if anything is still in copyright. 

(3) Research and source related families such as the Bentlys and Stewarts and Beswicks and Teffts. 

(4) There are plenty more sources available on John Tanner and his family including tax and government and land and military and church and legal records. Many of these require more work to find than a quick search on FamilySearch, but they are available and should be added as sources to Family Tree.

This was originally posted on February 15, 2015. Since I wrote it, Pardon has been added again to the family (perhaps more than once?) so I expanded the explanation to reflect the family Bible that Ron Tanner somehow located and added to John Tanner's entry.

"Washington County Farm" by UpstateNYer - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons—http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_County_Farm.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Washington_County_Farm.jpg

Finding John Tanner among the Country Roads and Farms of Greenwich, New York

From Flickr, used as is.

Sometime in 1810, perhaps in the later half of the year after the harvest was over, a census taker followed the winding country roads of Greenwich, New York, to provide an accurate list of all the inhabitants of the town, black or white, free or slave.

The census taker recorded two John Tanners in Greenwich, both men with families of about the same age.

Unfortunately neither entry matches our Tanner family genealogy. The most likely scenario is that the second John Tanner is ours, since he is listed close to his mother Thankful, but neither entry is a perfect match.

Here are the numbers. The first group is how the Tanner family should have looked in the census, based on the genealogy. The next group is a John Tanner family living with two free blacks. The third group is the John Tanner family living close to the widowed Thankful Tanner. Neither family has slaves; by 1810 there were only eight left in Greenwich.

Note that extra individuals in the family do not matter one way or the other since families were often more fluid than today due to early deaths. The more concerning data points would be the lack of small children who should have been at home with their mother.

FAMILY HISTORY

Males

Under 10  2-3 William (age 7-8), Sidney (age 1), possibly Elisha (age 9-10) unless he was living with the Bentlys

Under 16  0-1 possibly Elisha (age 9-10)

Under 26  0

Under 45  1   John Tanner (age 31-32)

Females

Under 10  1  Matilda (age 5-6)

Under 16  0

Under 26 0

Under 45  1  Lydia Tanner (age 26-27)

OPTION 1 (Page 4, bottom half, line 6)

Males

Under 10  2

Under 16  1

Under 26 0

Under 45  1

Females

Under 10  0

Under 16   0

Under 26   1

Under 45   1

Free blacks 2

Slaves  0

OPTION 2 (Page 5, top half, line 14)

Males

Under 10  1

Under 16  1

Under 26 0

Under 45  1

Females

Under 10  2

Under 16  0

Under 26 0

Under 45  1

Free blacks 0

Slaves  0

MUSINGS

The first entry works if Elisha was counted as 10, Matilda was put in the wrong age group, and the Tanners had two free blacks living with them. The second entry works if Elisha was counted as 10 years old and the census taker accidentally recorded one of the little boys as a girl.

Note that Thankful's entry is strange: she is listed in the under-45 category, but she was actually in her 50s. She also has four boys ages 10-26 living with her (Pardon, Francis, Joshua, and William) and one girl under 10 (perhaps a granddaughter; could this be Matilda?).

Another option is that John Tanner was living elsewhere, but this is not supported by the family history or by any online indexed copy of the US Census. If anyone wanted to read through the entire Washington County Census to check for a wrongly-indexed entry, the easiest way would be to read the copy at archive.org:

Washington County Census

Washington County starts on page 291 and goes through 379. Greenwich is at the very end, and the concluding page of the census (381) notes that it was filed on February 7, 1811.

Another avenue of investigation would be to figure out the identity of the other John Tanner and decide out if he is an obvious match for one of the census records.

CONCLUSION

This is a case where we do not have enough data to make a final decision, but since John was shown farming his father's land in the tax records, it's likely that he was located close to his mother, if we can assume that the census was geographical in nature.

.

.

“...men before whose sturdy strokes the forest fell...”

A little church history for a Sunday morning.

While in the history of that church there may be incidents which will cause a smile from their quaintness, or a sigh and a tear from their illiberality, there is one feature of its past that stands out prominent and bold, and entitles it to unqualified respect: [the] church has never shrunk from the performance of disagreeable duties. Mistaken, unjust, cruel, it may sometimes have been; weak and vacillating it has never been. People respect and admire strength of principle and purpose, and this church grew strong in numbers from strong adherence to the rigid morality of the Bible. The men who formed the church, were men before whose sturdy strokes the forest fell; who braved the dangers of pioneer life with steady persistence, and who put into their church relationship the same earnestness that characterized them in their secular affairs...

The Tanner family came from this strong religious heritage and has kept many elements of the culture through many generations.

This passage is from a history of Bottskill Baptist Church in Greenwich, New York, where the Tanner and Stewart families worshipped before the Tanners moved to Warren County and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and moved west.


The picture of Greenwich in eastern New York is from Flickr, used as is under a Creative Commons license.

Notable Relatives: General Authorities and General Officers of the Church [updated]

Since General Conference is coming up, here's a list of the general authorities and officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are descended from the ancestors featured on this blog. If you know of others, please leave a note in the comments so I can add them to the list.

The first nine mentioned are relatives of Wallace Tanner (Francis Marion Lyman through Delbert Stapley). The next three are relatives of Maxine Morgan Tanner (her grandfather John Morgan, as well as Frank Gibbons and Timothy Dyches). The last four are relatives of Beverly Glade Wessman (Marion G. Romney, Royden G. Derrick, LeGrand Curtis Jr., and May Green Hinckley).

Kind Angels Watch Her Sleeping Dust...

There was a picture of Lydia Tanner's gravestone on FindaGrave, but the poem was not readable, so I put out a request on FindAGrave for a new picture. A kind local volunteer, Thomas Moné, took a lovely clear photo, used here by permission.

The inscription says, in typical early 19th century language:

In memory of

LYDIA TANNER

consort of John Tanner,

who died May 31st 1825,

aged 41 years, 6 months

& 13 days.

Kind angels watch her sleeping dust,

Till Jesus comes to raise the just.

Then may she wake in sweet surprise.

And in her saviour's image rise.

The poem was used on gravestones in the 19th century as widely as the American South and Australia. I haven't been able to track down its origin, but it was in print in an 1860s memorial catalog.

The willow-tree-and-urn motif on the top of the gravestone became common in the late 18th century. It symbolized, simply, mourning.

Lydia Stewart Tanner: A Short But Useful Life

I am continuing to write Life Sketches for entries in FamilySearch Family Tree. Here is the biography for Lydia Stewart Tanner, the wife of John Tanner.

Lydia Stewart was born on November 18, 1783. Her oldest son's death record states that she was born in Greenwich, New York. There was no Greenwich in 1783, so if she was born in the area, it would have been in Argyle, Charlotte County, New York.

Lydia’s parents, William Stewart and Amy Huntington or Hutton Stewart, probably migrated from Massachusetts to the new settlements in Charlotte (later Washington) County, New York, in the late 1700s. They settled in the town of Argyle, later Greenwich. Many of the settlers of the area, including the Stewarts, were staunch Baptists or Seventh-Day Baptists.

Lydia married John Tanner in 1801 after his first wife died in childbirth. She was the mother to one stepson, Elisha, and twelve children: William, Matilda, Willard, Sidney, John Joshua, Romelia, Nathan, Edward, Edwin, Louisa Maria, Martin Henry, and Albert. (Some sources list a thirteenth child, Pardon, but we have not yet seen any contemporaneous family documentation, and histories including that of Francis M. Lyman do not mention him.) Elisha and eight of her children lived to adulthood.

Around 1818, after the death of their twins Edward and Edwin, Lydia and John moved about 40 miles to settle on the west side of Lake George, first to the North West Bay, then to the town of Bolton. There, through their hard work, they built a beautiful home and owned many acres of timberland. John and his sons would have kept busy with raising stock and dairy herds, lumbering, processing timber, growing and maintaining orchards, and running a hotel. Lydia would have kept busy raising her large family, spinning yarn, weaving cloth, and helping run the hotel. Her son Nathan said, “In those days women turned the wheel by hand or foot that spun our yarn and made our cloth. We were a hard working and hard handed family. None of our means was willed to us, but earned by hard work and economy. My father used to say he enjoyed accumulating property around him, and if it could be spent wisely, it would prove a blessing. If spent otherwise, it would prove a curse.”

Lydia may have suffered complications from the birth of her last child, because two months after Albert was born, she died at Bolton, Warren, New York on May 31, 1825. She is buried in the Bolton Rural Cemetery. Her gravestone says: “Lydia Tanner, consort of John Tanner, who died May 31st 1825, aged 41 years, 6 months & 13 days.”

Both of her parents died after she did and are buried in the cemetery of the Bottskill Baptist Church in Greenwich, New York.

Several years after her death, her husband and his third wife, Elizabeth Beswick, and many of her children joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) and moved west. But not all of them helped settle the West; some remained in New York and Ohio. By the time her children died, their families stretched from New York City to California. Many of her descendants have given years of service to the Mormon church, both in leadership and missionary work, including four who served as apostles: Francis M. Lyman, Hugh B. Brown, Richard R. Lyman, and N. Eldon Tanner. Lydia Stewart Tanner’s descendants have left a legacy of intelligence, service, and devotion.

Picture of Lake George from Wikipedia. The 1796 map of the Lake George area is from David Rumsey Maps. 1820 United States Census from Bolton, Warren, New York from FamilySearch. Picture of Lydia's gravestone courtesy of Thomas Dunne at FindAGrave.

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities

In this continuation of a long-running series about a daguerreotype now in the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, I continue to look at the identity of the boy standing in the back of the picture. For previous installments of the series, see the links at the bottom of this post.

When I resumed the series this week, I assumed that the boy in the back was correctly identified as Myron Tanner. However, the more I looked into the history of the daguerreotype, the more I realized there were other options.

Before reviewing Elizabeth's other sons, I will review the history of another John Tanner son, who was similar in age to Myron Tanner. He's not in the picture, but it is worth mentioning that he was considered.

Possibility 2: Albert Miles Tanner (1825-1879)

John Tanner's second wife, Lydia Stewart Tanner, died in New York in 1825 after the birth of her twelfth child, Albert Miles Tanner. Several months later, John Tanner married Elizabeth Beswick. She helped take care of his six minor children, and not long afterwards, she gave birth to a son, Myron.

Myron and his slightly older half-brother, Albert Miles, were close in age, and the family history suggests that the two of them did not get along and that the conflicts led to some long-standing family difficulties.

Albert accompanied the family to Kirtland, Missouri, and Iowa. Like Myron, Albert served in the Mormon Battalion (Company E), but unlike Myron, he made it to California. He rejoined the family in Utah and then went with them to California where he helped build the San Bernardino settlement and served as constable for the community.

Albert married Lovina Bickmore. The two had nine children as they moved up and down the Pacific Coast. Albert was said to have served as the first sheriff of Sacramento, California. Albert died in 1879:

... of blood poisoning in his leg after it was amputated... The cause was a stagecoach accident. According to the newspaper account, he had been racing against the postal driver's stagecoach when his coach overturned, pinning his leg underneath. Albert ran the Tanner Express line in Santa Paula, CA at the time. [Source.]

At least one of Albert's children followed the profession so common in the Tanner family: his oldest son was a lawyer in early Southern California.

There is only one known picture of Albert Miles Tanner.

Albert Miles Tanner. From John Tanner and His Family, 283. 

If the picture was taken in 1844, Albert was about the right age to be the boy in the picture, but he does not look like the boy in the picture. The boy in the picture bears a strong resemblance to Elizabeth Beswick Tanner, and since Albert was not Elizabeth's son, we can eliminate him as a real possibility.

Possibility 3: Elizabeth Beswick Tanner's Other Sons

The daguerreotype could have been taken in Great Salt Lake City or San Bernardino. This allows the possibility that one of Elizabeth Beswick Tanner's younger sons is the boy in the picture. The options are:

• Seth Benjamin Tanner (1828-1918)
• Freeman Everton Tanner (1830-1918)
• Joseph Smith Tanner (1833-1910)
• David Dan Tanner (1838-1918)

The options narrow down very quickly when you look at pictures of the four sons. Two of them had the narrower Tanner face, rather than the more heavy-set Beswick face and distinctive Beswick mouth.

First, here is Seth Tanner. He has the narrower Tanner face. He would have been 16 years old at the first possible date for the daguerreotype.

Next is Freeman Tanner. He also has the narrower Tanner face, and from having looked at many pictures of the Tanner family, I think this is what John Tanner must have looked like. Freeman would have been 14 years old at the first possible daguerreotype date.

The third option is Joseph Smith Tanner. He is the first one of the four to have that distinctive Beswick face that shows up on the boy standing in the back of the daguerreotype. If you are familiar with the T.C. Christensen film about the Tanner family, Treasure in Heaven, Joseph Smith is the only child mentioned by name in the production. Joseph would have been 11 years old at the earliest date for the daguerreotype.

And last is David Dan Tanner. Unfortunately, I cannot find a picture of Dan without a full beard, but in any case he probably would have been too young to be the boy in the daguerreotype, since he would have been six years old at the first possible date, and just twelve at the next possible date. If the daguerreotype was much later than 1853, he would have been a possibility.

To keep the post fairly brief, I will not review any of their biographies, although I may come back and add them later, but logistically they could all have been in any of the right locations for the daguerreotype. After they all arrived in Utah Territory, they seemed to remain more or less in the same area until Myron and Seth left for the gold fields in California sometime after John Tanner died. Myron and Seth didn't seem to spend long at the mines and by 1852 or 1853, most of the family was together in the San Bernardino settlement.

Links to Posts in the Tanner Family Daguerreotype Series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back: First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back: Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 9: Summary

Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story [Updated]

This was originally posted on November 13, 2009. Since I have made significant revisions I am reposting it. Please note a 2014 summary of the state of the genealogical research in the family: (William Tanner Lives Again.)

Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story is a short film from director T.C. Christensen. It tells the story of John Tanner, a Mormon pioneer who gave his fortune to help establish The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its early days. It is a visually beautiful, emotional production, is fairly accurate to family accounts, and is easy to watch at about 20 minutes long.

Additional Media Resources

Here's a story about the movie from KSL [Utah filmmaker creates movie about his ancestor].

Here's a Deseret News story about the producer, T.C. Christensen [T.C. Christensen: the man, the movies and stories that matter.]

From time to time the film is shown on BYU-TV.

The film is available on a collection about the history of the Church [Doctrine and Covenants Visual Resource DVDs, item 08042000] and through Deseret Book and other retailers.

Short Biography of John Tanner

John Tanner was born in Rhode Island on August 15, 1778. When he was a child, his family joined many relatives on a great migration from Washington County, Rhode Island, to Washington County, New York.

The Lake George, New York, area in 1796.
Washington County is to the east of Lake George; Warren County is to the west.

Around 1800 he married Tabitha Bently. She died in 1801 after giving birth to their son, Elisha Bently Tanner.

John Tanner married, second, Lydia Stewart, and they had twelve children. Around 1818 the family moved to Bolton, Warren County, on the other side of Lake George. There Lydia died and John Tanner married Elizabeth Beswick. John and Elizabeth had eight children, making a total of 21 children in the Tanner family, fourteen of them living to adulthood.

John Tanner and his family were strong Baptists, but in 1832 he and many members of his family joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They sold their homes and land in New York and moved to Kirtland, where they helped with the building of the Kirtland Temple, then to Missouri, then to Iowa (across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo), and from there to Utah Territory, where John Tanner died in South Cottonwood, Utah Territory, on April 13, 1850.

The Salt Lake Valley in 1852.

Additional Genealogical Resources

My father and I are continuing to add accurate genealogical and historical information to this blog about the Tanner family and other related families. (Some of the information I posted about the family in 2007 and 2008 may be based on questionable secondary sources and needs to be edited and updated.)

Here is John Tanner's biography from Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah with notes about what is correct and incorrect in the biography.

Here is a photograph of John Tanner's original hand-written birth record from Hopkinton, Rhode Island.

Here is information about the Tanner family in colonial times and going back to England: The Colonial Heritage of the John Tanner Family

The John Tanner Family Association

As discussed in the comments, there was previously a John Tanner Family Association. It appears to be no longer operational. It would be great if a group of descendants would start a John Tanner Family Association. It's a large and influential although very widespread family, and there should be enough initiative and resources to start such an organization to collect family information and finance genealogical and historical research since so much of the widely available genealogy and history is unfortunately inaccurate.

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype

There are no known photographs of John Tanner.

Don't miss my series about the Tanner Family Daguerreotype. (For an explanation, see here and here.)

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back — First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 8: Response from CHL about Fire Damage
Part 9: Conclusion

Please read the posts and comments to the final posts for details about the identification. As noted there, the most likely identification for the people in the following picture is:

Sitting, left to right: Myron Tanner, Elizabeth Beswick Tanner, Louisa Maria Tanner Lyman. Standing: Joseph Smith Tanner.

Individuals of Unusual Size (IOUS)

First the answer, and then the question.

From: [...]
Subject: Need Records Merged
Date: February 27, 2013 9:28:23 AM EST
To: [...] 

Dear Amy Tanner Thiriot,
RE:   John Tanner  KWJ1-K2F and MMM9-MM1
        Lydia Stewart  M5XK-TBR and LC3X-WJ5
Thank you for contacting FamilySearch Support.  Your concern deals with individuals of unusual size (IOUS) record.  There is not an easy solution at this time.  Currently our database can not handle records of this size. We kindly ask for your patience and understanding until increased functionalities become available in new FamilySearch.  At a future time, the expectation is that you, as the patron, will be able to independently resolve these issues as tools and technology are improved.
Sincerely,
FamilySearch Data Administration
----------------------
(CaseID:[...])
----------------------

Several days ago Claudia, the Tanner cousin who donated the Tanner Family Daguerreotype to the Church History Library, contacted me because someone had put a picture of John Joshua Tanner in one of John Tanner's FamilySearch Family Tree entries. For some reason it looked like I had added the picture. Although I hadn't, I told her I'd try and figure out how to get it off.

While looking at John Tanner's duplicate entries as listed in the email above, I decided to make sure the data in both his entries matched and see if his two entries would merge, since that might be the fastest way to deal with the picture.

They wouldn't merge.