Back to Back to Adam

Thomas Cole, The Garden of Eden 1828

The FamilySearch.org Family Tree recently expanded their searches back to 900 A.D. Previously, almost all searches were confined to about the mid- to early 1500s. Why the expansion in the search capabilities? Those of us living in European derived countries will immediately think of European Royalty and be alarmed at the extension. Why would we want to add searches into records going back into Royalty? This automatically opens up another huge avenue for duplication and imaginary pedigrees. But wait. There are places in the world where valid pedigrees go back further than 900 A.D and this includes countries such as China, Korea, and Japan. The cut-off stopped some researchers from finding valid connections. 

But what about the imaginary pedigrees that are all over the FamilySearch Family Tree that go much further back than just to 900 A.D. It has been a while since I wrote about this subject. In past posts, I have referenced an old article I have quoted a number of times. Here is the link to the article and my earlier quote. 

In an article in The Ensign Magazine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for February, 1984, Robert C. Gunderson, Senior Royalty Research Specialist of the Church Genealogical Department wrote a short article entitled "I've heard that some people have extended their ancestral lines back to Adam." He states, "In thirty-five years of genealogical research, I have yet to see a pedigree back to Adam that can be documented. By assignment, I have reviewed hundreds of pedigrees over the years. I have not found one where each connection on the pedigree can be justified by evidence from contemporary documents. In my opinion it is not even possible to verify historically a connected European pedigree earlier than the time of the Merovingian Kings (c. a.d. 450–a.d. 752). Every pedigree I have seen which attempts to bridge the gap between that time and the biblical pedigree appears to be based on questionable tradition, or at worst, plain fabrication. Generally, these pedigrees offer no evidence as to the origin of the information, or they cite a vague source."

Now someone sent me a link to another more recent article; "In my family records I found an interesting genealogy that ties us into one line of European royalty going through Charlemagne back to one Antenor, King of the Cimmerians, then to Judah, and thence through Abraham and Noah to Adam. Can you tell me how reliable lineages such as these are?" The answer comes from a genealogist and an author I have long admired and to whom I credit much of the beginnings of my interest and knowledge about genealogical research, Val D. Greenwood, temple ordinance specialist for the Genealogical Department of the Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I will not quote the entire article. You need to read it for yourself. My writing about the subject does not seem to have much effect. 

Back on March 4, 2016, the Brigham Young University Family History Library was starting a new series of webinars. One of the first webinars I did was "Why you can't trace your ancestry back to Adam." It has about 5,000 views, much less than some of my more popular videos. The comments bring up so more interesting issues such as the reliability of translations and such. 

I can say with certainty after many years of helping thousands of people with genealogical questions, that I have seen very few accurately documented pedigrees that extend back past the early 1700s. Of my own overly researched lines, the longest verified pedigrees go back to the 1600s and stop. That is all. I have no royal lines, Now, if you look at the Family Tree for my lines, some of them do go back to Adam. I have spent some time pruning off those lines, but that is a life-long pursuit and not one for those who tire easily.