Imaginative Genealogies
Or Why I Don't Do European Genealogy

Working for more than twenty years on discovering the descendants, of our known 17th century ancestors, i.e., our cousins, and identifying almost six thousand of them I have paid no attention to the European roots of the the family. I am just now realizing I have had no interest in working back to our European roots.

By my calculation, with nine generations of Tests in America there are 192 different ancestors we could trace back to Europe on the Test side of the family (there would be an additional 64 if we could identify Laura Armstrong's biological parents) and 16 more lines on the Miller side. There is a tremendous amount of work available to be done.

Consider the numbers. John Test came to America in 1675. He is just one of 256 Test ancestors of my generation. To trace back one more generation to European roots would entail finding genealogical data on 512 additional people. To go another generation entails researching 1,024 more people. These numbers are a vast understatement of the task. To effectively identify those 512 of the first generation we must also identify their brothers and their children which would increase that 512 number by a factor of ten.

But nothing requires us to investigate the European origins of every one of our ancestors. We may pick who to investigate. But even this involves problems. Civil records in England extend back to 1837. Most of our ancestors came over before this date. John Test came from London in 1675. He married Grace Woolley who was born in Rhode Island in 1666. That is actually enough for me. If you want a clue into our European origins one place to look is familysearch.org. Others on that site say that the Woolley family can be traced back to about 1125. My only interest in this line is a certain Thomas Revell whose daughter married John Wooley around 1556. I wonder if this Revell is an ancestor to the Thomas Revell who knew John Test as early as 1681 when John Test was made sheriff at Upland and Thomas Revell served as the clerk of the court.

The central feature of this familysearch.org is a one world tree. Everyone works on the the same family tree contributing new family members and new citations to documentary evidence to corroborate those discoveries. Every contribution can be edited or deleted by anyone else. Actually, no name may be deleted but names may be disconnected from one family and connected to another family or simply left without any established connection to any family.

My experience with American generalogy shows that mistakes on this site are rampant. Until the last couple of years or so, I considered familysearch.org as a joke and paid very little attention to it. When mistakes are corrected it is not uncommon for someone to edit the corrections with new mistakes. So in some sense it resembles Wikipedia. Unfortunately the genealogy site has legions of contributors motivated more by something resembling religious enthusiasm than a desire for accuracy.

Familysearch.com is a genealogy website owned by a nonprofit entity closely tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints better known as the Mormans. The focus of the site consists of a one world family tree. Mormans consider themselves obligated by God to trace everyone’s genealogy and record them on this family tree. They believe that genealogy is necessary to save souls. Families will be eternally united in heaven but only if the individual members of the family can be identified by name and properly located on this family tree can be saved and their relationship to the family sealed by proxy in a sacred temple ceremony. Some Mormans believe that God calls them to find lost souls and that God guides them in this search. Thus, they too readily jump to unwarranted conclusions contradicted by standards of objective evaluation of evidence. https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/family-tree-adam-eve/

Genealogy is affected by forgeries, fakes, and frauds. Numerous fraudulent genealogies are known to exist and can be found not just online but in any major genealogical library. Not all erroneous genealogies however, are the result of fraud. Some are the result of armchair historians, family-tree climbers, and professionals who make innocent mistakes.

A good example of an innocent mistake occurred with John Test in various editions of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. In one edition he is listed as born on 25 Feb 1802. This is the date of birth of one of his cousins with the same name. Subsequent editions say he was born in 1771 -- the year another of his cousins with the same name was born. In 2019 the mistake was corrected. He was born about 1781.

These three cousins with the same name lived near Salem, New Jersey. The point is that you cannot trace the ancestry of a person without careful consideration of other possible candidates.

Gustave Anjou is the most famous author of fraudulent genealogies. A glance at worldcat.org shows some 164 of his books scattered in libraries all over the world. Born in Sweden, Anjou made a fortune creating phony pedigrees for wealthy clients. Anjou used an impressive array of legitimate citations interspersed with references to either non-existent documents or to forged documents. Clients were consistently pleased with the authoritative look of the product of his research but also pleased to discover their supposed connection to royalty.

One of our cousins was one of Anjou’s victimes. In 1948 Herbert Marion Bacon published a well–researched narrative account of the Bacon family in New Jersey and along with a collection of genealogical data on the Bacon family in America. He included a section on the English origins of the family compiled by Gustave Anjou which Herbert Bacon judged to be “well authenticated and substantiated”. It also contained references to non-existent documents to support royal linage.