That depends on what is endogamy. In his video on the subject, History Fanatics defines that term too loosely, and he really didn't want input from us that you're being too vague and throwing several things under the same definitiion, and leaving out some things entirely . I do suspect that a key source of this problem is the excessive use of jargon. Usually using the word endogamy is not at all helpful. I have never seen the term fail to contribute more confusion than understanding. The word endogamy could actually be Greek for all the practical conveyance of specific meaning it usually does. Instead of throwing around terms like endogamy, genealogists, family historians, anthropologists and historians need to simply clearly state in that case what specifically happened. In each of my examples below, some of which are endogamy and some of them the above blogger only says they are, you end up understanding exactly what happened without the word endogamy being used even once. In my direct experience, inbreeding, where people are descended from the same ancestors more than once, and in some populations descended from the same people 9 times isn't uncommon, does increase the chances that descendants of shared ancestors in the early 17th century will have matching DNA. My Gardners and my Raymonds are my favote example, both early Massachusetts settlers. The problem where an entire population is so either closely or distantly inbred it's actually impossible to pin down where the DNA came from is something I've run into just twice. One is a situation we've heard stereotypes about, but doubted it actually happened in real life. A town full of extremely inbred people. A guy, a member of the Dehart DNA project at Family Tree DNA that I administer, was from a small Appalachian community and wanted to know which Dehart was his great grandfather. He descended from the same Dehart 3x great grandparents who settled of that place six times, and that was true of most of his other ancestors as well. I couldn't sort out who was his great grandfather. The other is Swiss Germans in northern Baden Wurttemburg and Rhineland-Pfalz, they just all seem to carry the same small DNA segment, and it can't be pinned to a family. A lot of very different families with traceably unrelated histories who came through that area carry that segment. It's very frustrating. I wuld dearly love to know if its roots are Celtic, or Germanic, or perhaps just Swiss Mennonite... This DNA segment is confined to that region, which didn't change demographically between the 5th century and the 16th. So, like, when I see it, or by this time when I see certain surnames, well, maybe they're descended from my Burkharts, or maybe they're descended from my Weiss 3x great grandfather who was born on the Swiss=German border, or maybe they descend from his wife, who came from some place in Baden-Wurttenburg and that could account for the large number of matches I have from the Kreichgau and adjacent Rhineland-Pfalz (narrow strip of land across the river), but, see here, my father has four ancestors who lived in the Kreichgau plus the famlies in Rhineland-Pfalz who share their DNA segments... I have a LOT of matches with ancestors who lived in and near the Kreichgau I can't make a traceable connection with their pedigrees. Now, you do have to realize that most people from the Kreichgau and neighboring regions came to teh U.S. between 1720 and 1850, and most of my genetic connections in New England connect at ancestors who were born between 1570 and 1630. And those people share 10 to 55 cM segments with me, not 6 cM segments. In New England the biggest problem is that everyone with old New England ancestry shares a dozen or so ancestors. New England DNA can usually be pinned to an emigrant family, it just takes tracing a lot of trees until you whittle down the families connected to your DNA segment to just one. I have only one case where due to constant intermarriages between descendants of a group of families, I only have it whittled down to a couple of families. One of them probably but not necessarily accounts for the DNA, I just have no apparent way so far to discern which one. The two families did occasionally directly marry each other, and it is possible some people have a segment that consists of DNA from both families. DNA matches who descend from just one of the two families may exist, but I have yet to find any. I have just one group of families where I've not made any effort to pin down the DNA, though experience suggests it's more than likely Gardner. My great grandmother descended from her Raymond great grandparents three times due to first cousin marriages. Her Raymond great grandparents belonged to a group of famlies that had married each other for generations; Raymond, Davis, Hubbard and Rice. William Raymond and Mercy Davis descended from each of these families just once. But my DNA matches are full of people who descend from all four families. I mark them as Raymond Davis Hubbard Rice. There just doesn't seem to be a point to trying to pin down that DNA. My experience with semi-old DNA suggests that probably that DNA combined into hard and fast segments composed of DNA from all four families and then that got passed down. The segments wouldn't track further than this group of families. That is probably a microexample of what happens in true endogamy, where a number of people intermarried constantly and their DNA blended so now the descendants of an entire population all carry it. The way he defined endogamy, it should be the two examples where an entire population literally carry the same DNA segments and it is not possible to use DNA to sort out lineages in a family tree,, but I believe the example he used is Old New England, where people often share multiple ancestors, but someone with time and patience can perfectly sort out which DNA segments came from which families! And he confused endogamy with pedigree collapse, which applies to Old New England pedigrees. I descend from entire blocks of my ancestry more than once. No wonder people here seem very confused on what is endogmany. In Mormon territory, which is'nt teh same thing as Utah, you can easily run into problems with peoples' actual ancestors not being the ones documented on paper, and unless famly history has been passed down on who were the actual parents, which frequently does exist, there is simply no way to sort it out. Genetic information is useless without good trees to know what is what. It doesn't take actual endogamy to end up confused and unable to trace lineages. It didn't always happen. My Cloward-Pluck DNA lineages, though high caste Mormons who were personally close to the Prophet, somehow just didn't do a lot of plural marriages.
I was excited to see this episode. Recently I discovered that my husband is descended from some of the Mormon Pioneers also that were married in Nauvoo, IL in 1843 and 1844. Apparently, wife number one started calling herself a widow according to the following census data. However, thrulines partnered with DNA results are proving he and wife number one kept having children until he left Illinois/Iowa completely. I have had to do a lot of research and digging to better understand what all was happening, LDS church history, and trying to understand if maybe wife number #1 was either intentionally left behind or if she or her parents had a change of religion and were trying to distance themselves from her husband. The LDS church records I have found state there were no known children from his first marriage and his second wife is well praised. I can find both marriage records for Nauvoo, but then there is little mention of his first wife anywhere else. He didn’t live in Nauvoo itself with either wife. This was all happening at the same time as Joseph Smith was killed and Brigham Young took over early 1840s and up until about 1850 when he and wife 2 and their children left Iowa then for Utah where they are well documented from thereon in Kaysville and Salt Lake, Utah. * Any chance you could do a segment to help anyone else who has not been brought up LDS and finds themselves now needing to better understand more of the “more difficult” stuff from that time period? George Colemere 1814-1879. From Shropshire, England. 1st marriage - to Rebecca Hill. Daughter of Robert and Ann Hill of Rosbury/Bosbury, Herefordshire, England. The family had children baptized in another faith and appear to have converted to the LDS church with John Hill maybe doing missionary work himself. The family immigrated through New Orleans and lived around Rock Island, IL. Rebecca married George Colemere in Nauvoo, Illinois 15 Feb 1843. The two have three children. 1845, 1846, and 1848 birth years. George married Rachel Burgess who allegedly had worked in Joseph Smith’s home a few years earlier (possibly in OH before IL) on 3 Nov 1844. She was born in England and immigrated with her family. After her marriage, they began having children around 1845 - 1865. It appears that after having to leave Illinois and before they did the pioneer trek out to Utah, they lived in Iowa for a while. I am not sure the two wives ever lived together or if George had his first wife return to her family and he visited her there is Rock Island to avoid suspicion of polygamy. I want to be respectful around this issue and in better understanding the church history and these individuals roles in that at the time. I am not sure where to go to seek additional assistance as most everyone was documented super super well from there and since George did not live in Nauvoo, his children with Rebecca Hill do not appear to have been recognized by the LDS church. With DNA proving they are, it feels like I am swimming a bit upstream as I am trying to document well but adding things that go against what was traditionally thought true for many years prior to the DNA information. Can anyone point me in a direction to better understand all of the complexities involved in this situation respectfully? Thanks.
The time period you are talking about was just when polygamy was starting to be taught semi-openly. Because of this, there were lots of arrangements. One good thing that you mentioned is the LDS church was very good at keeping records, so if Rebecca doesn't show up later in Utah, she likely stayed in IL. Another thing to bear in mind is that divorce was allowed (and in many respects a lot easier to gain a divorce in the LDS polygamist society). However, throughout the US we can see examples of divorced women claiming to be widows. Probably due to stigma. If George had left for Utah with his other wife, and she didn't go because they had a "divorce" (basically a mutual agreement to part ways without involving the law), then she might claim later to be widowed and avoid any stigma from being divorced (afterall, he was no longer around and it was unlikely he would be returning).
Three of my four paternal 2nd great grandfathers were polygamist Mormon Pioneers. The four families also maried into each other. A lot. It gets very confusing. Apparently early Mormon endogogomy is a thing? I tell everyone I don't have a family tree, I have a family forest, & it's covered in kudzo...
You're analogy makes a lot of sense. Let me correct one term - it isn't necessarily Mormon endogamy rather that tree collapse. Most pioneer communities (regardless of religious affiliations) will have this happen with early settlers because there aren't many people to marry and propagate the population with. So, yes, early LDS church tree collapse is a thing.
Lots of successive marriages in my line that goes back to New France ( Quebec). I found that I am related to both wives because they both had children with him. There are so many that did this that I have 4500 matches that are 2nd cousins and beyond. Your videos have helped me a lot. I also have a surprise ethnicity of Indian from India from taking a DNA test I bought at Walgreens, Family DNA, ancestry. It's in the section of the store that also has paternity tests they also make. No one ever talks about this test. It did talk about Oceana and I was able to find cousins in Australia, so it seems Legit. It offers migration routes but no matches. it hasn't updated since I took it in 2015. I use the matches from Family Tree DNA with it.
Susan, I've gotten a taste of what you are dealing with while helping a half second cousin attempt to cut through the Gordian knot that is his maternal side from Louisiana, some being French, some not. Wow, is it a mess. But be aware that the fact that your male ancestor had children by two wives does not in any way make you related to both wives. You may well be related to both for other reasons, however. If you are descended from a child of wife A AND from a child of wife B, that would make both wives your ancestors, though from what you say, it doesn't sound like that is the case. If you are descended only from wife A (whether she is first or second is irrelevant; hence my saying "wife A" rather than "wife 1",) but wife B is related to either wife A OR to your male ancestor, that would make wife B also related to you. But if none of those cases hold true, then you are not related to wife B, only to her children, who are then half uncles or aunts, with their descendants being your half cousins.
It seems similar to the pedigree collapse you see in isolated immigrant communities and wealthy families too. I don't have any Mormon ancestry but I do have a couple instances similar to what you described but given the time period and location, its easy to see why. They all occurred in either isolated families of fairly recent immigration status in the mid 1800s or they were very wealthy families in the 1700 and early 1800s.
There isn't exaclty a name for a descendant that generated numerous half-relationships for persons. It's not exactly the same as tree collapse or endogamy but has similar challenges to be sure.
When you have pedigree collapse, how can you tease out the individual parents? I suspect my great great grandparents were siblings either full or half as both is a possibility. I can only weed out seven 2x great grandparent couples. How can I figure out who those last two great great grandparent couples are? Any suggestions? Or do you have a video on this subject?
I have a large family tree with few dna matches, due to the large majority of them are extremely religious - they don't believe in or subscribe to taking DNA tests. My parents & their siblings are all deceased. If the younger descendants refuse to take DNA tests, I won't have many DNA matches.
That happened to me, too. One branch of my tree is old order Mennonite, and I doubt they will be taking DNA tests any time soon! So I basically have zero matches on that branch.
I'm sorry that you're running into this obstacle to genetic genealogy. I didn't know that religion played a role in abstaining from the testing. I know fear of what someone will do with the results does. That's a first for me.
It appears that my father had a son at fourteen ( never knew about before doing a DNA test) then married someone ar nineteen and had two children, a girl and a boy and after she died married my mother. How does this complicate my test?
Are there signs when your match has a family of pedigree collapse? Or would it not affect anything you see in your own tree? I ask because in my own tree there is no to little pedigree collapse. And while I have found a few instances where my grandfather has a double fourth cousin, or a match had grandparents that were 2nd or 3rd cousins on the same line. I have had very few and far in between. So I am wondering if there is anything I should keep an eye out to be aware of.
I am not aware of any affect on your line. Since you are likely related to each match through a particular line, if you don't have pedigree collapse but a match does, it is likely on a line that you are not related through.
It means you're half-related to a lot of people. Typically you share half the number in cntmrgns in Dan that you would normally with a person of that degree of related-ness such as other third cousins or fourth cousins. A similar thing happens when you have an ancestor that had a lot of children by one spouse, outlived them, and then had a lot of children by their second spouse. This is the case for me , and the dna match amount in cmgs does show this,f or example, on my paternal grandmother's side with her grandfather (and her birth surname). I'm half related to all those people descended from that 4ggf's later second wife.
I have hundreds of matches who are probably 5th cousins, who descend from one family that became Mormon and followed the Prophet to Utah. So, Catherine Pluck the daughter of George Adam Pluck, one of two Pluck families that lived near Jesse Dehaven's family, married Jacob Cloward and they became Mormons and followed the Prophet across the country to Utah. Mary Magdalen Pluck, my three times great grandmother, has no known parents. But, the Mormons only have George Adam Pluck's younger children. Mary Magdalen fits into this family in the 1790 census. So I wanted to know whether the fact that atleast half of all descendants of Jacob Cloward and Catherine Pluck that I can identify match my DNA, has a bearing on the closeness of the relationship. Normally 50% of 4th cousins have matching DNA, and 10% of 5th cousins; it drops off quickly. If Mary Magdalene and Catherine were sisters, which is the closest they could be related, their descendants are 5th cousins, often once or twice removed, because my own line consistently married late and many of my matches are a generation or two younger than me. Should I assume that my Cloward relatives descend from the Clowards more times than the record shows? There was a period when I keep reading that people had more wives but officially they had just one, and wives got passed from man to man, so the official record is no record of who was married to who when or who fathered whose child. Another thing that could affect the number of matches I am getting from this one family, is obviously that both Mormons have more accessible genealogies, and, they are far more likely than anyone else to do DNA testing. On the other hand, the other ancestors I have an exceptional lot of matches to, though not as many, simply had a lot of children. My 3x great grandmother was one of 19 children by two wives. One other thing, my Cloward matches actually did all of this without a lot of plural wives. Neither families with 24 children nor any record of it often survives. Occasionally family stories hand down a story about wife exchanges. The Clowards were high caste Mormons and personally close to the Prophet, but they apparently didn't often marry more than one wife. I wonder if perhaps it didn't work for them. Those large households had to be able to play well together. Mary Magdalen Pluck's descendants were prone to family fractures and new houses being built because of inlaws not getting along. Her descendants also tended to be spirited women with backbones.
Maybe. The problem comes with extrapolating averages to actual people. It may be that the Cloward descendants you are looking at happened by chance to have passed down the same segments. While another Cloward family did not (you wouldn't know because they never show up on your list).
Somewhat related, is strictly a genealogical question, involving serial wives and or serial husbands tied to a major war effort. I have found some interesting cases where in a town with an active military base, one woman marries several men over a very short period of time and has even the same clerks and/or other officials handle the paperwork. Surely they must have recognized the name if not the person. Divorce records have always been absent. This is mostly a woman marrying 3-6 men...sometimes months apart. Occasionally a fellow marries several women over a short period of time as well. Is this work related? I do have theories, but some not influence opinions. Yes, some of this is indeed in Las Vegas which might be some other motivation. What is going on?
Interesting topic. My Mormon bump in my Thrulines was not quite so dramatic as it was my 5th great grand parents' other daughter who had a daughter that became a Morman, and also married another Mormon first before they separated, she moving into a 2nd marriage to a more devout Mormon also of higher stature...as his the 2nd? wife of five or six. I have not tried to untie this Gordian Knot as trying to work DNA matches will be problematic enough to procrastinate. My first cousin five times removed was the oldest in age, but his second wife. All the wives lived to see the birth of his alleged last child and almost all wives outlived him. While the official record marriage dates were separate enough that he ages of children are probably used to guess that child's mother's identity and I think it is a safe bet to expect some of the assumptions by genealogists, are incorrect. I still don't trust records. There were some 30 children involved....and my first cousin 5x was young enough to have been a possible mother to about 8 were it not for the short periods separating 'blessed events' Any of the later wives could have been an actual mother to any of the remainder. Only DNA has a chance of proving likely motherhood. I have looked neither at endogamy nor pedigree collapse, which could make the 'filing' of real biological parenthood, near impossible. Just a comment. No question buried in all that.
I'm also a descendant of Lindsey Anderson Brady - making us half 4th cousins. To compare.. 213 thrulines connections on him with 13 children represented, which is what you had. But contrary to yours, I have an additional 3rd great grandparent with over 700 thruline connections (and with his father 1400 thruline connections).. so the Brady's are not the most significant matches on my list. The other ancestor's descendants are.
But I've also interacted with a clustering expert who specializes in endogamy. Interestingly the way the matrix lays out for polygamy looks a lot like endogamy - because in both cases - everybody is related to each other somehow with super huge clusters - just that endogamy is more diffuse.
Howdy Cousin! I didn't go back a generation so I didn't highlight that previous generations likely have even more matches. Trying to keep things simple here.
Hi like this video. My Mother side of my family we are members of The Church Of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. I'm 1st cousin 4th removed from Joseph Smith Jr. Most of my 4th Great Grandfathers to 2nd Great Grandfathers were polygamist. My highest ancestor thrulines is my 3rd Great Grandfather Amasa Mason Lyman Sr with 539 DNA matches.
As a descendent of lines with one marriage after another I have discovered that I am related to...all of their wives?! because he is the common ancestor. correct?
Related by marriage, yes. But that is the same as saying that I am related to my brother's wife. Usually, with genealogy relationships, we are concerned with blood relatives (the old term before genetics was known).
Very useful and clear explanation! I hope one day the time will come when the methods and algorithms of genetic companies will be so advanced that they can make an accurate estimate of the relatives of their users and their common ancestors.
That is the dream to be sure. However, genetic testing alone won't solve the problem. We have to add genealogical records. And that requires more human participation. Since genealogy isn't that popular, I don't know when that will happen. ruclips.net/video/Aa-p5VoQuuI/видео.html
Thank you for discussing this. I have run across a couple in my daughters fathers side and I just found one on my side that was connected to Warren Jeffs 😬
Might be bogus, like all the people Ancestry reckons were born or died in the vicinity of Sulawesi, Indonesia, when such a thing couldn't possibly have occurred.
With legal polygamy you at least get a paper trail to document the the DNA discoveries. I have one great-grandfather who sired at least three children out of wedlock as well as two or more in wedlock. To make things even more complicated, one of the illegitimate offspring took on the family name of a completely different man when my great-grandmother got married. Ain't family research fun? 🤪
The ancestor does not have to have been a polygamist... I have one who had children with 3 women... He was born in dec 1818 (his dad was born in aug 1784). His first child was born in mar 1841... He got married to his wife (not the mother of his child) in oct 1841 and they had 10 children together... the oldest born in jul 1842 and the youngest in jul 1857. the next youngest child (son) of his wife was born on 14 nov 1855. Then he had a child with a woman born in 1835 their son was born on 11 nov 1855 3 days before his next to youngest child with his wife. What I (and my son) laugh about is this: Jonas has 259 descendants of witch 221 are alive today. His child (out of marriage with the young woman) has 240 descendants of them 221 are alive today... Now the 10th child of Jonas had 3 children. One of his 2 daughters had 1 child who is still alive and his only son had 11 children with his wife. The descendants of his are (236) 220 alive... As far as I know the youngest one was born last august.
You're absolutely right. That's why I didn't label the video "How polygamists complicate DNA results", but rather a person with multiple partners. I have polygamists in my family tree and that's why I shared what I have access to. However, there are many viewers who have expressed that they have situations similar to yours and how it can make things challenging but interesting.
❗ Polygamy doesn't have the same genetic impact as endogamy 👉🏼 ruclips.net/video/Wlq_a-gdf9k/видео.html
That depends on what is endogamy. In his video on the subject, History Fanatics defines that term too loosely, and he really didn't want input from us that you're being too vague and throwing several things under the same definitiion, and leaving out some things entirely .
I do suspect that a key source of this problem is the excessive use of jargon. Usually using the word endogamy is not at all helpful. I have never seen the term fail to contribute more confusion than understanding. The word endogamy could actually be Greek for all the practical conveyance of specific meaning it usually does. Instead of throwing around terms like endogamy, genealogists, family historians, anthropologists and historians need to simply clearly state in that case what specifically happened. In each of my examples below, some of which are endogamy and some of them the above blogger only says they are, you end up understanding exactly what happened without the word endogamy being used even once.
In my direct experience, inbreeding, where people are descended from the same ancestors more than once, and in some populations descended from the same people 9 times isn't uncommon, does increase the chances that descendants of shared ancestors in the early 17th century will have matching DNA. My Gardners and my Raymonds are my favote example, both early Massachusetts settlers.
The problem where an entire population is so either closely or distantly inbred it's actually impossible to pin down where the DNA came from is something I've run into just twice. One is a situation we've heard stereotypes about, but doubted it actually happened in real life. A town full of extremely inbred people. A guy, a member of the Dehart DNA project at Family Tree DNA that I administer, was from a small Appalachian community and wanted to know which Dehart was his great grandfather. He descended from the same Dehart 3x great grandparents who settled of that place six times, and that was true of most of his other ancestors as well. I couldn't sort out who was his great grandfather.
The other is Swiss Germans in northern Baden Wurttemburg and Rhineland-Pfalz, they just all seem to carry the same small DNA segment, and it can't be pinned to a family. A lot of very different families with traceably unrelated histories who came through that area carry that segment. It's very frustrating. I wuld dearly love to know if its roots are Celtic, or Germanic, or perhaps just Swiss Mennonite... This DNA segment is confined to that region, which didn't change demographically between the 5th century and the 16th. So, like, when I see it, or by this time when I see certain surnames, well, maybe they're descended from my Burkharts, or maybe they're descended from my Weiss 3x great grandfather who was born on the Swiss=German border, or maybe they descend from his wife, who came from some place in Baden-Wurttenburg and that could account for the large number of matches I have from the Kreichgau and adjacent Rhineland-Pfalz (narrow strip of land across the river), but, see here, my father has four ancestors who lived in the Kreichgau plus the famlies in Rhineland-Pfalz who share their DNA segments... I have a LOT of matches with ancestors who lived in and near the Kreichgau I can't make a traceable connection with their pedigrees. Now, you do have to realize that most people from the Kreichgau and neighboring regions came to teh U.S. between 1720 and 1850, and most of my genetic connections in New England connect at ancestors who were born between 1570 and 1630. And those people share 10 to 55 cM segments with me, not 6 cM segments.
In New England the biggest problem is that everyone with old New England ancestry shares a dozen or so ancestors. New England DNA can usually be pinned to an emigrant family, it just takes tracing a lot of trees until you whittle down the families connected to your DNA segment to just one. I have only one case where due to constant intermarriages between descendants of a group of families, I only have it whittled down to a couple of families. One of them probably but not necessarily accounts for the DNA, I just have no apparent way so far to discern which one. The two families did occasionally directly marry each other, and it is possible some people have a segment that consists of DNA from both families. DNA matches who descend from just one of the two families may exist, but I have yet to find any.
I have just one group of families where I've not made any effort to pin down the DNA, though experience suggests it's more than likely Gardner. My great grandmother descended from her Raymond great grandparents three times due to first cousin marriages. Her Raymond great grandparents belonged to a group of famlies that had married each other for generations; Raymond, Davis, Hubbard and Rice. William Raymond and Mercy Davis descended from each of these families just once. But my DNA matches are full of people who descend from all four families. I mark them as Raymond Davis Hubbard Rice. There just doesn't seem to be a point to trying to pin down that DNA. My experience with semi-old DNA suggests that probably that DNA combined into hard and fast segments composed of DNA from all four families and then that got passed down. The segments wouldn't track further than this group of families. That is probably a microexample of what happens in true endogamy, where a number of people intermarried constantly and their DNA blended so now the descendants of an entire population all carry it.
The way he defined endogamy, it should be the two examples where an entire population literally carry the same DNA segments and it is not possible to use DNA to sort out lineages in a family tree,, but I believe the example he used is Old New England, where people often share multiple ancestors, but someone with time and patience can perfectly sort out which DNA segments came from which families! And he confused endogamy with pedigree collapse, which applies to Old New England pedigrees. I descend from entire blocks of my ancestry more than once. No wonder people here seem very confused on what is endogmany.
In Mormon territory, which is'nt teh same thing as Utah, you can easily run into problems with peoples' actual ancestors not being the ones documented on paper, and unless famly history has been passed down on who were the actual parents, which frequently does exist, there is simply no way to sort it out. Genetic information is useless without good trees to know what is what. It doesn't take actual endogamy to end up confused and unable to trace lineages. It didn't always happen. My Cloward-Pluck DNA lineages, though high caste Mormons who were personally close to the Prophet, somehow just didn't do a lot of plural marriages.
Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge.
I was excited to see this episode. Recently I discovered that my husband is descended from some of the Mormon Pioneers also that were married in Nauvoo, IL in 1843 and 1844. Apparently, wife number one started calling herself a widow according to the following census data. However, thrulines partnered with DNA results are proving he and wife number one kept having children until he left Illinois/Iowa completely.
I have had to do a lot of research and digging to better understand what all was happening, LDS church history, and trying to understand if maybe wife number #1 was either intentionally left behind or if she or her parents had a change of religion and were trying to distance themselves from her husband.
The LDS church records I have found state there were no known children from his first marriage and his second wife is well praised. I can find both marriage records for Nauvoo, but then there is little mention of his first wife anywhere else. He didn’t live in Nauvoo itself with either wife. This was all happening at the same time as Joseph Smith was killed and Brigham Young took over early 1840s and up until about 1850 when he and wife 2 and their children left Iowa then for Utah where they are well documented from thereon in Kaysville and Salt Lake, Utah.
* Any chance you could do a segment to help anyone else who has not been brought up LDS and finds themselves now needing to better understand more of the “more difficult” stuff from that time period?
George Colemere 1814-1879. From Shropshire, England.
1st marriage - to Rebecca Hill. Daughter of Robert and Ann Hill of Rosbury/Bosbury, Herefordshire, England. The family had children baptized in another faith and appear to have converted to the LDS church with John Hill maybe doing missionary work himself. The family immigrated through New Orleans and lived around Rock Island, IL.
Rebecca married George Colemere in Nauvoo, Illinois 15 Feb 1843.
The two have three children. 1845, 1846, and 1848 birth years.
George married Rachel Burgess who allegedly had worked in Joseph Smith’s home a few years earlier (possibly in OH before IL) on 3 Nov 1844. She was born in England and immigrated with her family. After her marriage, they began having children around 1845 - 1865. It appears that after having to leave Illinois and before they did the pioneer trek out to Utah, they lived in Iowa for a while.
I am not sure the two wives ever lived together or if George had his first wife return to her family and he visited her there is Rock Island to avoid suspicion of polygamy.
I want to be respectful around this issue and in better understanding the church history and these individuals roles in that at the time. I am not sure where to go to seek additional assistance as most everyone was documented super super well from there and since George did not live in Nauvoo, his children with Rebecca Hill do not appear to have been recognized by the LDS church. With DNA proving they are, it feels like I am swimming a bit upstream as I am trying to document well but adding things that go against what was traditionally thought true for many years prior to the DNA information.
Can anyone point me in a direction to better understand all of the complexities involved in this situation respectfully?
Thanks.
The time period you are talking about was just when polygamy was starting to be taught semi-openly. Because of this, there were lots of arrangements. One good thing that you mentioned is the LDS church was very good at keeping records, so if Rebecca doesn't show up later in Utah, she likely stayed in IL.
Another thing to bear in mind is that divorce was allowed (and in many respects a lot easier to gain a divorce in the LDS polygamist society). However, throughout the US we can see examples of divorced women claiming to be widows. Probably due to stigma. If George had left for Utah with his other wife, and she didn't go because they had a "divorce" (basically a mutual agreement to part ways without involving the law), then she might claim later to be widowed and avoid any stigma from being divorced (afterall, he was no longer around and it was unlikely he would be returning).
Three of my four paternal 2nd great grandfathers were polygamist Mormon Pioneers. The four families also maried into each other. A lot. It gets very confusing. Apparently early Mormon endogogomy is a thing?
I tell everyone I don't have a family tree, I have a family forest, & it's covered in kudzo...
You're analogy makes a lot of sense.
Let me correct one term - it isn't necessarily Mormon endogamy rather that tree collapse. Most pioneer communities (regardless of religious affiliations) will have this happen with early settlers because there aren't many people to marry and propagate the population with. So, yes, early LDS church tree collapse is a thing.
Lots of successive marriages in my line that goes back to New France ( Quebec). I found that I am related to both wives because they both had children with him. There are so many that did this that I have 4500 matches that are 2nd cousins and beyond. Your videos have helped me a lot. I also have a surprise ethnicity of Indian from India from taking a DNA test I bought at Walgreens, Family DNA, ancestry. It's in the section of the store that also has paternity tests they also make. No one ever talks about this test. It did talk about Oceana and I was able to find cousins in Australia, so it seems Legit. It offers migration routes but no matches. it hasn't updated since I took it in 2015. I use the matches from Family Tree DNA with it.
Thanks for sharing how your ancestor has multiple partners and how it impacts your DNA
Susan, I've gotten a taste of what you are dealing with while helping a half second cousin attempt to cut through the Gordian knot that is his maternal side from Louisiana, some being French, some not. Wow, is it a mess. But be aware that the fact that your male ancestor had children by two wives does not in any way make you related to both wives. You may well be related to both for other reasons, however. If you are descended from a child of wife A AND from a child of wife B, that would make both wives your ancestors, though from what you say, it doesn't sound like that is the case. If you are descended only from wife A (whether she is first or second is irrelevant; hence my saying "wife A" rather than "wife 1",) but wife B is related to either wife A OR to your male ancestor, that would make wife B also related to you. But if none of those cases hold true, then you are not related to wife B, only to her children, who are then half uncles or aunts, with their descendants being your half cousins.
It seems similar to the pedigree collapse you see in isolated immigrant communities and wealthy families too. I don't have any Mormon ancestry but I do have a couple instances similar to what you described but given the time period and location, its easy to see why. They all occurred in either isolated families of fairly recent immigration status in the mid 1800s or they were very wealthy families in the 1700 and early 1800s.
There isn't exaclty a name for a descendant that generated numerous half-relationships for persons. It's not exactly the same as tree collapse or endogamy but has similar challenges to be sure.
When you have pedigree collapse, how can you tease out the individual parents? I suspect my great great grandparents were siblings either full or half as both is a possibility. I can only weed out seven 2x great grandparent couples. How can I figure out who those last two great great grandparent couples are? Any suggestions? Or do you have a video on this subject?
I have a large family tree with few dna matches, due to the large majority of them are extremely religious - they don't believe in or subscribe to taking DNA tests. My parents & their siblings are all deceased. If the younger descendants refuse to take DNA tests, I won't have many DNA matches.
That happened to me, too. One branch of my tree is old order Mennonite, and I doubt they will be taking DNA tests any time soon! So I basically have zero matches on that branch.
I'm sorry that you're running into this obstacle to genetic genealogy. I didn't know that religion played a role in abstaining from the testing. I know fear of what someone will do with the results does. That's a first for me.
It appears that my father had a son at fourteen ( never knew about before doing a DNA test) then married someone ar nineteen and had two children, a girl and a boy and after she died married my mother. How does this complicate my test?
Wow! My 5th great grandfather with the 22 children has a large number of DNA matches. 282 matches.
That's terrific.
Are there signs when your match has a family of pedigree collapse? Or would it not affect anything you see in your own tree?
I ask because in my own tree there is no to little pedigree collapse. And while I have found a few instances where my grandfather has a double fourth cousin, or a match had grandparents that were 2nd or 3rd cousins on the same line. I have had very few and far in between. So I am wondering if there is anything I should keep an eye out to be aware of.
I am not aware of any affect on your line. Since you are likely related to each match through a particular line, if you don't have pedigree collapse but a match does, it is likely on a line that you are not related through.
It means you're half-related to a lot of people. Typically you share half the number in cntmrgns in Dan that you would normally with a person of that degree of related-ness such as other third cousins or fourth cousins. A similar thing happens when you have an ancestor that had a lot of children by one spouse, outlived them, and then had a lot of children by their second spouse. This is the case for me , and the dna match amount in cmgs does show this,f or example, on my paternal grandmother's side with her grandfather (and her birth surname). I'm half related to all those people descended from that 4ggf's later second wife.
That is correct. A lot of 1/2 relatives to be sure.
I have hundreds of matches who are probably 5th cousins, who descend from one family that became Mormon and followed the Prophet to Utah. So, Catherine Pluck the daughter of George Adam Pluck, one of two Pluck families that lived near Jesse Dehaven's family, married Jacob Cloward and they became Mormons and followed the Prophet across the country to Utah. Mary Magdalen Pluck, my three times great grandmother, has no known parents. But, the Mormons only have George Adam Pluck's younger children. Mary Magdalen fits into this family in the 1790 census.
So I wanted to know whether the fact that atleast half of all descendants of Jacob Cloward and Catherine Pluck that I can identify match my DNA, has a bearing on the closeness of the relationship. Normally 50% of 4th cousins have matching DNA, and 10% of 5th cousins; it drops off quickly. If Mary Magdalene and Catherine were sisters, which is the closest they could be related, their descendants are 5th cousins, often once or twice removed, because my own line consistently married late and many of my matches are a generation or two younger than me. Should I assume that my Cloward relatives descend from the Clowards more times than the record shows? There was a period when I keep reading that people had more wives but officially they had just one, and wives got passed from man to man, so the official record is no record of who was married to who when or who fathered whose child.
Another thing that could affect the number of matches I am getting from this one family, is obviously that both Mormons have more accessible genealogies, and, they are far more likely than anyone else to do DNA testing.
On the other hand, the other ancestors I have an exceptional lot of matches to, though not as many, simply had a lot of children. My 3x great grandmother was one of 19 children by two wives.
One other thing, my Cloward matches actually did all of this without a lot of plural wives. Neither families with 24 children nor any record of it often survives. Occasionally family stories hand down a story about wife exchanges. The Clowards were high caste Mormons and personally close to the Prophet, but they apparently didn't often marry more than one wife. I wonder if perhaps it didn't work for them. Those large households had to be able to play well together. Mary Magdalen Pluck's descendants were prone to family fractures and new houses being built because of inlaws not getting along. Her descendants also tended to be spirited women with backbones.
Maybe. The problem comes with extrapolating averages to actual people. It may be that the Cloward descendants you are looking at happened by chance to have passed down the same segments. While another Cloward family did not (you wouldn't know because they never show up on your list).
My third great grandfather Orum Ephraim Bates has 684 DNA matches. So this episode was interesting to me.
Awesome!
Somewhat related, is strictly a genealogical question, involving serial wives and or serial husbands tied to a major war effort. I have found some interesting cases where in a town with an active military base, one woman marries several men over a very short period of time and has even the same clerks and/or other officials handle the paperwork. Surely they must have recognized the name if not the person. Divorce records have always been absent. This is mostly a woman marrying 3-6 men...sometimes months apart. Occasionally a fellow marries several women over a short period of time as well. Is this work related? I do have theories, but some not influence opinions. Yes, some of this is indeed in Las Vegas which might be some other motivation. What is going on?
Interesting topic. My Mormon bump in my Thrulines was not quite so dramatic as it was my 5th great grand parents' other daughter who had a daughter that became a Morman, and also married another Mormon first before they separated, she moving into a 2nd marriage to a more devout Mormon also of higher stature...as his the 2nd? wife of five or six. I have not tried to untie this Gordian Knot as trying to work DNA matches will be problematic enough to procrastinate. My first cousin five times removed was the oldest in age, but his second wife. All the wives lived to see the birth of his alleged last child and almost all wives outlived him. While the official record marriage dates were separate enough that he ages of children are probably used to guess that child's mother's identity and I think it is a safe bet to expect some of the assumptions by genealogists, are incorrect. I still don't trust records. There were some 30 children involved....and my first cousin 5x was young enough to have been a possible mother to about 8 were it not for the short periods separating 'blessed events' Any of the later wives could have been an actual mother to any of the remainder. Only DNA has a chance of proving likely motherhood. I have looked neither at endogamy nor pedigree collapse, which could make the 'filing' of real biological parenthood, near impossible. Just a comment. No question buried in all that.
I'm also a descendant of Lindsey Anderson Brady - making us half 4th cousins. To compare.. 213 thrulines connections on him with 13 children represented, which is what you had. But contrary to yours, I have an additional 3rd great grandparent with over 700 thruline connections (and with his father 1400 thruline connections).. so the Brady's are not the most significant matches on my list. The other ancestor's descendants are.
But I've also interacted with a clustering expert who specializes in endogamy. Interestingly the way the matrix lays out for polygamy looks a lot like endogamy - because in both cases - everybody is related to each other somehow with super huge clusters - just that endogamy is more diffuse.
Howdy Cousin!
I didn't go back a generation so I didn't highlight that previous generations likely have even more matches. Trying to keep things simple here.
Polygamy muxed with endogamy is so much fun....
I bet.
Add in some adoptions, NPEs, and ancestors with names like Smith and Jones for a blast...
where is the thrulines video??
I placed the link in the description box. But here's the playlist ruclips.net/p/PLcVx-GSCjcdm9FKEWYkGhtOMIZjfAhVgP
My grandmother was a Brady.
Hi like this video. My Mother side of my family we are members of The Church Of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. I'm 1st cousin 4th removed from Joseph Smith Jr. Most of my 4th Great Grandfathers to 2nd Great Grandfathers were polygamist. My highest ancestor thrulines is my 3rd Great Grandfather Amasa Mason Lyman Sr with 539 DNA matches.
As a descendent of lines with one marriage after another I have discovered that I am related to...all of their wives?! because he is the common ancestor. correct?
Related by marriage, yes. But that is the same as saying that I am related to my brother's wife. Usually, with genealogy relationships, we are concerned with blood relatives (the old term before genetics was known).
I have found that if they had children, then the children are half cousins with the father being the same. That how they are 2-4th or 3-5th cousins?
Very useful and clear explanation! I hope one day the time will come when the methods and algorithms of genetic companies will be so advanced that they can make an accurate estimate of the relatives of their users and their common ancestors.
That is the dream to be sure. However, genetic testing alone won't solve the problem. We have to add genealogical records. And that requires more human participation. Since genealogy isn't that popular, I don't know when that will happen. ruclips.net/video/Aa-p5VoQuuI/видео.html
Thank you for discussing this. I have run across a couple in my daughters fathers side and I just found one on my side that was connected to Warren Jeffs 😬
Glad you liked this video.
A lot of spouses died in Madeira Portugal in history. I am running into it alot. Both males and females.
Might be bogus, like all the people Ancestry reckons were born or died in the vicinity of Sulawesi, Indonesia, when such a thing couldn't possibly have occurred.
With legal polygamy you at least get a paper trail to document the the DNA discoveries. I have one great-grandfather who sired at least three children out of wedlock as well as two or more in wedlock. To make things even more complicated, one of the illegitimate offspring took on the family name of a completely different man when my great-grandmother got married.
Ain't family research fun? 🤪
Wow. Yes, documented polygamy helps sorting the branches easier. Illegitimate relationships are a challenge when a man was prolific.
The ancestor does not have to have been a polygamist... I have one who had children with 3 women... He was born in dec 1818 (his dad was born in aug 1784).
His first child was born in mar 1841...
He got married to his wife (not the mother of his child) in oct 1841 and they had 10 children together... the oldest born in jul 1842 and the youngest in jul 1857. the next youngest child (son) of his wife was born on 14 nov 1855.
Then he had a child with a woman born in 1835 their son was born on 11 nov 1855 3 days before his next to youngest child with his wife.
What I (and my son) laugh about is this:
Jonas has 259 descendants of witch 221 are alive today.
His child (out of marriage with the young woman) has 240 descendants of them 221 are alive today...
Now the 10th child of Jonas had 3 children. One of his 2 daughters had 1 child who is still alive and his only son had 11 children with his wife. The descendants of his are (236) 220 alive... As far as I know the youngest one was born last august.
You're absolutely right. That's why I didn't label the video "How polygamists complicate DNA results", but rather a person with multiple partners. I have polygamists in my family tree and that's why I shared what I have access to. However, there are many viewers who have expressed that they have situations similar to yours and how it can make things challenging but interesting.
"A" polygamist? bro i got 2 of em in my bloodline
Multiple partners isn't only polygamy. But you're not alone in having more than one in your family tree.