[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Church Records of Latter Day Saints

[Gary Warner]

Jennifer,

This is not the place to have a religious discussion, but suffice it 
to say that you are dead wrong on just about everything you say in your email.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) does 
not have its OWN records of anyone on line.   What they have instead 
at www.familyseach.org is data submitted by many people, and people 
being what they are, there are indeed many errors in the 
submittals.    The question is, would you rather have no data to look 
at, or data that sometimes has errors in it.

The Family History Library (FHL) used to try to ensure the accuracy 
of the submittals many years ago, but found that many people never 
made any submittals of any family history data, simply because they 
could not adequately document what they had to submit to meet the FHL 
standard of submittal.    When the FHL relaxed its submittal 
standards, that is when errors were made by people with good 
intentions.  These people sometimes had little more than family 
stories to go on.    Even with just family stories, however, there is 
often a lot of truth mixed with fiction, so if the person who is 
looking at the data is knowledgeable and can discern the truth from 
the fiction, there is still much to be gained by having the flawed data.

Even in original records, the pastor making the record sometimes made 
mistakes, some of them small, some of them very significant.    What 
all of us need to do is not rely on just one source for information, 
but keep an open mind about how a name or place is spelled, or even 
who was the father or child of someone else.      If all data was 
reliable, then we would indeed be more successful in our quest to 
find information on our ancestors.     The quality of the mystery, 
and the joy of discovery would, however, would be greatly diminished.

Gary Warner
SGGEE

At 10:04 AM 06/27/06, Jennifer K. Walker wrote:
>I have found the records of the Mormon Church/Latter Day Saints to be full
>of errors.  I have checked and rechecked much of the information that is
>there, and ultimately have concluded that, as far as my research is
>concerned, their records are not reliable.
>
>I discussed this with a distant cousin of mine who was also researching our
>family, after she converted to the Mormon Church.  She made the point that
>new converts MUST research their family in order to become members (in an
>effort to pray for all those who have died previously, so that they can be
>brought into Heaven.)  As a result many of those who have submitted their
>records have done so hastily and without much scrutiny of the records.  It
>is these records which are maintained by the church.
>
>Jennifer Walker
>---------------------------
>
>Message: 2
>Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:48:57 -0400
>From: "Ray Bloch" <rbloch at columbus.rr.com>
>Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Article in WSJ
>To: "ger-poland-volhynia" <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
>Message-ID: <001f01c69994$44abb0f0$5101a8c0 at SHARPDOMAIN.sharpenv.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="koi8-r"
>
>To all members:
>
>June 22, 2006 in the Wall Street Journal, Page D1
>
>Article entitled:  "New Ways to Dig For Your Roots Online"
>
>In the third paragraph it states the following:
>
>"In recent months, FamilySearch.org, a free site sponsored by the Church of
>Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, has been expanding its collection of
>birth, marriage, death, census and other records.  It has also begun a
>massive project to digitize billions of records previously avilable only on
>microfilm, particularly civil, church and local records.  It plans to make
>those available online beginning early next year."
>
>I thought this might be of interest for those of us who have spent time
>waiting for microfilms to arrive at our local Family History Centers.  This
>technology will allow us the ability to scour the records in the Family
>History Library from our computers at home.
>
>Ray Bloch
>
>
>
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