Family tree

zinnat · July 31, 2015, 3:30am

I thought that I should verify my assumption.

How many posters are aware of their family tree?

Means, how many posters know beyond their grandparents, their names, their place and what they used to do?

I am taking here for granted that everyone knows at least upto their grandparents.

With love,
Sanjay

The_Golden_Turd · July 31, 2015, 3:41am

On my mothers side, back to before the american revolution, but only reliably in north america, Europe… Eh.

This isn’t to say I can trace every branch though. The US is highly nomadic, and people could move half a continent one or twice a generation.

We have enough documents around I can tell their births and deaths, religion, occupation, offspring, business, and sometimes biographical details if famous, or books they wrote.

I know people who can trace their ancestry reliably back to byzantine emperors. One idiot I know decorated the only picture of his house with his Greek lineages traced back several generations from a island off turkey, its lines become very dense, his ancestor from a hundred years ago in the center, every one listed after that.

A lot of people went into the process of making you, don’t fucking let them down.

zinnat · August 1, 2015, 5:42pm

Just checked this thread.

It seems to me that my assumption was right.

With love,
Sanjay

Magnus_Anderson · August 1, 2015, 6:50pm

Very aware. I am quarter-Montenegrin, and Montenegrins are notorious for a strong family tradition and obsession with family trees, proven by the fact that my Montenegrin ancestors are the only ones with an elaborate family tree and all the relevant documentation (history, photos, etc.) that is still being maintained. The rest, Serbs and Herzegovinians, much less so, I can only trace them up to 3rd generation great-grandparent, and mostly upwards.

Arminius · August 1, 2015, 6:51pm

I know much about approximately 100 generations of my forebears / ancestors and of genealogy in general.

Mithus · August 1, 2015, 8:52pm

My cousin once did some genealogical research. I can go back until the 13th generation. But he couldn’t figure out which professions our ancestors had. I only know their names, dates and places of birth, to whom they have been married and the dates and places of their deaths. From the 14th generation I only know two names and the notation that they were born between 1510 and 1520.

zinnat · August 2, 2015, 1:42pm

I am more concerned about the systems in place in the western societies for genealogy rather than individual efforts.

How much an ordinary person can know about his/her forefathers without much personal effort? Merely some rare individual awareness does not matter.

With love,
Sanjay

The_Golden_Turd · August 3, 2015, 1:40am

Mormons have a religion that requires them to convert people in a pyramid scheme, they have to get so many before they get their own heaven, and a ranking system stems from this.

The loophole is, they are allowed to baptise dead members of their family, no matter how far back, and some just baptise anyone.

This requires a lot of genealogical tracing. They make you fill out complex forms when you visit their church, its like the IRS. They tried making me do it when I visited, gave up after page two.

We also have websites that contribute to this, some free, some paid. My grandfather had done a lot of research, but others from other branches did too.

We also have family reunions. Can grow quite large at times here in the states. Most people know something, but few know every ancestral lineage. We still put emphasis on paternal names as lineage, but its dying off- once equality of property rights were passed to both sexes, and promingenture as a institution governing inheritance started fading, people started paying less attention to it. No inherent reason to pick the male side over the female side.

zinnat · August 3, 2015, 3:51pm

Mormonism seems to be good religion, except polygamy. It is much like evolved Christianity.

But, my guess is as it is merely two century old religion, they cannot trace beyond that.

Does any other religious subset also has some genealogical system in place?

With love,
Sanjay

zinnat · August 5, 2015, 3:49am

I know up to my great grandparents, but I can know upto 4-5 centuries back without much effort if I want.

All I have to do, is to go to my family pundit/priest at Haridwar and pay his charges. He has all the records and can make a chart for me for some generations. My family pundit told me, when I visited him last time at the death of my aunt, that he can provide me the family tree up to 16 generations back, if I am interested and ready to pay the fees he asked.

With love,
Sanjay

zinnat · August 5, 2015, 3:59am

Genealogical records are handwritten and maintained like this.

tribuneindia.com/2007/200709 … m/soc1.jpg

The_Golden_Turd · August 5, 2015, 5:03am

I think genetic profiles will dominate more in the future, it can theoretically link you up with anyone in a database and tell you who your really related to, not who your maternal lineage swears up and down your related to to your clueless male “ancestors”. Plus the issue with adoptions.

Some gene tests supposedly can show a image of what your parents and grand parents looked like. I’ve yet to see it, but read about it two months or so back, guess we will have alot of odd looking, computer generated imagery used in rape and child paternity cases. Does a person have to give a DNA sample if they are a defendant and had facial surgery?

Oh… the Mormon religion is directly descended from Swedenborg’s religion, so is actually a hundred years older than commonly believed.

exmormon.org/mormon/mormon034.htm

I’ve often wondered where Smith got his descriptions of the afterlife as first described in Section 76 of the D&C.

In D. Michael Quinn’s excellent book “Early Mormonism and the Magic World View,” he gives a very fascinating source of Smith’s “revelations.” Quinn offers an exhaustive examination of the sources for the 1832 D&C Section 76 “Vision” of the “three degrees of glory.”

In fact, Smith’s descripton of the “Celestial Kingdom” was not only a copy from earlier written works, but also VERY controversial to the Latter-Day Saints.

The diaries of Orson Pratt and John Murdock from the 1830’s record their efforts to reassure members who questioned the 1832 vision of heaven. The two men described countless excommunications of Mormons, including branch presidents, who denounced “the degress of glory” as a “satanic revelation.” Even Brigham Young had a hard time with it at first and described it as “a trial to many.”

Why were Mormons choking on this idea of three heavens?

Quinn explains that it’s because members correctly recognized it as coming from the occult. The only other sources of separate degrees in heaven came from occult writers during and before Smith’s time.

For example, in 1784 a man by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg wrote a book about his visions of the afterlife. Swedenborg insisted: “There are three heavens,” described as “entirely distinct from each other.” He called the highest heaven “the Celestial Kingdom,” and stated that the inhabitants of the three heavens corresponded to the “sun, moon and stars.”

By Joseph Smith’s own statements, he was familiar with Swedenborg’s writtings. Smith told a convert by the name of Edward Hunter that “Emanuel Swedenborg had a view of the world to come, but for daily food he perished.” In other words, Smith liked Swedenborg’s concepts of the afterlife, but criticized him for not profiting from them.

I was so fascinated by the connection that Quinn documented, that I bought a copy of Swedenborg’s book myself from Amazon.com. It’s called "Heaven and Hell and Its Wonders and was written way before Joseph Smith. Yet it describes the three Mormon degrees of glory to the tee, along with many other concepts including “the veil,” “sprit prison,” “celestial marriage,” and more.

Not only does Quinn make a strong case that Smith knew all about Swedenborg’s ideas, but he also shows that his book “Heaven and Hell and Its Wonders” was a book in Smith’s hometown library since 1817. Quinn also writes that “Nine miles from Smith’s farm, in 1826 the Canandaigua newspaper also advertised Swedenborg’s book for sale. The bookstore offered Swedenborg’s publications for as little as 37 cents.”

If you ever want to know details about the Mormon afterlife, read Swedenborg’s book. Smith liberally plagarized from it to come up with his D&C “visions” of the celestial, telestial and terrestrial kingdoms. But Swedenborg’s works are definately the originals.

Subject: FOR THE RECORD…
Date: Jan 16 23:04
Author: Deconstructor
Mail Address:

Nowhere have I said that Swedenborg was the first one to suggest three heavens in the afterlife. Yes, some early gnostics compared heaven to the trinity and suggested each figure in the godhead pertained to a level. That’s not my point.

Anyone who has actually read Swedenborg’s book "Heaven and Hell and Its Wonders will recognize that Smith plagarized many names and ideas. There’s all kinds of parallels between the 1778 English translation of Swedenborg’s book and Smith’s preaching of the 1830s.

My point isn’t that Swedenborg was the first to suggest three heavens, but that he was the true orgin of terminology that ended up in Mormonism.

For example, Swedenborg writes about:

the “Celestial Kingdom”

after death, all people go to a waiting place called “The Spirit World” divided into a “Spirit Prison” for the unbaptized and a “Paradise” for the baptized

Angels from the Celestial Kingdom are naked except for a white robe/garment given to them by “The Lord” which shines and glimers (See the late-1830 “First Vision” description of Moroni)

Sprits and angels are in human form and one can converse with them “as one man to another.” No singing, wings or halos.

The “Sprit World” is this earth, but we cannot see the spirits because of “the veil”.

Marriage exist only in the highest Celesital Kingdom.

Granted, Swedenborg’s book is almost 500 pages and Smith did not plagarize the whole thing. But since Smith admitted to reading this work, it’s likely Smith borrowed key concepts in order to come up with D&C Section 76.

There really is very little in Mormon scipture detailing the afterlife, wheras Swedenborg dedicated a whole book to it. There was plenty for Smith to take from for his purposes.

I was getting repeatedly hit by them for a while at the door, so gave up on my pacifistic tolerance and broke some hearts, and they kept sending higher ranking guys to me, and they kept leaving upset. Nobody bothers me now (Jehovah’s Witnesses dodge this pkace, refuse to approach, and the Hare Krishna’s never come up here any more, never were door to door people, just take a bus stop, which is less annoying than knocking in a door admittedly, unless your trying to catch a bus).