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Super Contributor
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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

On 1/26/2014 ennui1 said:

My family information is there, and no one ever submitted anything. They cull the obituaries and other public records. They don't ask.

If the information is already "out there" on other sources i.e. obituaries and public records, then what is the complaint? They aren't doing anything nefarious by "culling" these public records, they are just making it easier for someone to find out about their heritage by putting the records in one central location. No different from the library having back issues of newspapers on microfiche or having biography books in the stacks.

As for finding "Black sheep" in the family, I would hate to think I was only descended from perfect people (graduates of 1st class Harvard, Governors of Massachusetts, 1st Ministers of Abington and Bridgewater Ma., and FLOTUS Abigail Smith Adams for example). What fun would that be? I've also found a Salem witch (and the judge that hanged her), an CW army deserter, a few "wonton women"Wink, a murder/suicide (see aforementioned "wonton woman" and add "jealous husband"), and a few other "jailbirds" (love when a Census lists "Inmate" on it).

ancestry.com has helped be sew a crazy quilt with some slipped stitches in it.

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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

What I find disturbing is how the census treated orphans inside orphanages. One of my relatives grew up in an orphanage and I've searched the 1940 census and he is no where to be found. Were orphanages counted among the census takers? Does anyone know?

☼The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. GBShaw☼
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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

On 1/25/2014 ~foundinlv~ said: <h4>Jewish Holocaust victims[edit]</h4>

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints performs vicarious baptisms for individuals regardless of their race, gender, creed, religion, or morality. Some members of the LDS Church have been baptized for both victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler, contrary to Church policy.[42] Some Jewish Holocaust survivors and some Jewish organizations have objected to this practice.

The LDS Church has urged members to submit the names of only their own ancestors for ordinances, and to request permission of surviving family members of people who have died within the past 95 years.[43] Hundreds of thousands of improperly submitted names not adhering to this policy have been removed from the records of the church.[44] Latter-day Saint apostle Boyd K. Packer has stated the LDS Church is clear that it uses the public records it collects for temple ordinance work.[45]

Despite the guidelines, some members of the church have submitted names without adequate permission. In December 2002, independent researcher Helen Radkey published a report showing that, following a 1995 promise from the church to remove Jewish Holocaust victims from its International Genealogical Index, the church's database included the names of about 19,000 who had a 40 to 50 percent chance "to be Holocaust victims ... in Russia, Poland, France, and Austria."[46][47] Genealogist Bernard Kouchel conducted a search of the International Genealogical Index, and discovered that many well known Jews had been vicariously baptized, including Maimonides, Albert Einstein, and Irving Berlin, without family permission.[48][49]

Church official D. Todd Christofferson told the New York Times that the church expends massive amounts of resources attempting to purge improperly submitted names, but that it is not feasible to expect the church to find each and every last one, and that the agreement in 1995 did not place this type of responsibility on the centralized church leadership.[50]

Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke out against the vicarious baptism of Holocaust perpetrators and victims in the mid-1990s and again in the 2000s when they discovered the practice, which they consider insensitive to the living and the dead, was continuing.[51][52] The associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Abraham Cooper, complained that infamous figures such as Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun appeared on LDS genealogical records: "Whether official or not, the fact remains that this is exactly the kind of activity that enraged and hurt, really, so many victims of the Holocaust and caused alarm in the Jewish community."[53][54]

In 2008, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors announced that, since church members had repeatedly violated previous agreements, it would no longer negotiate with the church to try to prevent vicarious baptism. Speaking on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Ernest Michel, a Holocaust survivor who reported on the Nuremberg Trials,[55][dead link] speaking as the honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, called on the LDS Church to "implement a mechanism to undo what [they] have done", and declared that the LDS Church had repeatedly violated their agreements, and that talks with Mormon leaders were now ended. Jewish groups, he said, would now turn to the court of public opinion for justice.[56] Michel called the practice a revision of history that plays into the hands of Holocaust deniers, stating: "They tell me, that my parents' Jewishness has not been altered but ... 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?"[56]

Church officials, in response, stated that the church does not teach that vicarious baptisms coerce deceased persons to become Mormons, nor does the church add those names to its list of church members.[57][58] Church officials have also stated that, in accordance with the 1995 agreement, it has removed more than 300,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims from its databases, as well as subsequently removing names later identified by Jewish groups. Church officials have also stated that a new version of the database, New FamilySearch, has been developed and is currently being implemented that would help prevent the submission of Holocaust victim names for temple ordinances.[59]

In February 2012, the issue re-emerged after it was found that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were added to the genealogical database.[60] Shortly afterward, news stories announced that Anne Frank had been baptized by proxy for the ninth time, at a Latter-day Saint temple in the Dominican Republic.[61]

source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead

Is this true? I never heard of this happening.

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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

Yes, it is true.

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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

On 1/26/2014 Lila Belle said:

Yes, it is true.

Wow. I had no idea.

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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

We belong to it. I don't use it, but my 89 year old mother uses it to look up deceased family members and old friends. She has learned a lot about the family from that site. She has never had any problems.

A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal. ~~ Steve Maraboli
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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

As long as distant cousins don't make it 'public', sometimes circulating around the world. Who knows what the others (and their teens) are doing on this and other social sites.

'More or less', 'Right or wrong', 'In general', and 'Just thinking out loud ' (as usual).
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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

On 1/26/2014 JustJazzmom said:

What I find disturbing is how the census treated orphans inside orphanages. One of my relatives grew up in an orphanage and I've searched the 1940 census and he is no where to be found. Were orphanages counted among the census takers? Does anyone know?

I found one grandmother and her sister in an Orphan Asylum in Maine in the 1910 Census. Interestingly, they weren't orphans., But that's another story. They were also listed as "Inmates" which threw me for a bit.

Do you know the name of the Orphanage? Where it was? IF so, do a Census search not by your ancestor's name but by town and street address. They should be included in the records.

Also, if you know a relative lived in a certain place but can't get the specifics, try just last name, or just first name, name of another a relative of theirs. Spelling on original census forms is often phonetic and even when it is correct, it could be transcribed wrong to the internet records. Widen your search criteria. Also, even if you know their age, search for at least a 2 year range. Depending on time of year, the age of the person could be recorded off by that much.

I have a female ancestor, Isadore, which is more often a man's name. Census takers would either check off "male" or change her name to Isabel or something more feminine. She's been a hard one to track down.

Good Luck.

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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

On 1/26/2014 ROMARY said:

As long as distant cousins don't make it 'public', sometimes circulating around the world. Who knows what the others (and their teens) are doing on this and other social sites.

I'm not ready to lump ancestry.com with FREE sites such as FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc. . I don't think many teenagers are going to pay $100+ a year to join just to share family history with strangers.

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Re: Ancestry Com: Any Potential Harm/Risk In Participating There?

On 1/26/2014 Linders Back said:
On 1/26/2014 ennui1 said:

My family information is there, and no one ever submitted anything. They cull the obituaries and other public records. They don't ask.

If the information is already "out there" on other sources i.e. obituaries and public records, then what is the complaint? They aren't doing anything nefarious by "culling" these public records,

I wasn't complaining. The OP asked what we thought about her submitting information, and my point is that they take the information anyway, without asking.