The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Tracing lineage back to Adam not realistic goal
This column was published Sept. 1, 1996
One of my lines has been traced to Adam.
Well - not Adam, dresser of gardens, husband of Eve. Adam Charnock, who was born in 1306 and married Joan Molyneux.
As for tracing one's genealogy to that earlier Adam, my Grandpa Day had a suitable expression. It was: "Horse Feathers!"
It can't be done.
For quite some time the notion of writing a column on genealogies that run all the way back to Adam and Eve has been stuck in my mental cobwebs. Then, recently, while cruising the World Wide Web, I stumbled onto the New Jerusalem pages where the topic was thrown in my face.
My first reaction to the New Jerusalem pages was, "Wow!" They look great. And they contain some great information. And then I read: "Our resident GENEALOGY LADY has traced genealogy lines from today back to ADAM of the Old Testa ment times." Further, the site includes a purported genealogy to the most ancient of Adams.
"Whoa, Nellie!" I said.
New Jerusalem's "Ask the GENEALOGY LADY appears to provide a valuable service to starting genealogists, perhaps even to experienced ones. Except for the Adamic claims, I was favorably impressed with the GENEALOGY LADY's advice; but naive claims of tracing one's genealogy to Adam and Eve assail confidence in their Web site.
GENEALOGY LADY said people who have traced their lines to European royalty can get the rest of the links to Adam from the Medieval Department of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
Being one of those cynically suspicious journalism types, I decided to get the word straight from the horse's mouth. So I called Bob Gunderson, who supervised the medieval unit for 25 years and has spoken for the Mormon Church on the subject.
He said, "Whoa, Nellie!" Or words to that effect.
Gunderson wrote on the subject in the February 1984 issue of The Ensign, a magazine published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Earlier, Gunderson presented a paper that bears on the subject, at the 1980 World Records Conference.
"I have no question in my mind that I'm descended from Adam," Gunderson said. "But I wouldn't even have time in my lifetime to record all of the names if I could develop that kind of a pedigree."
Any pedigree tracing back to Adam and Eve is based not on documented relationships, but on an overzealous religious faith and an ample degree of genealogical naivete.
Gunderson points out a couple of primary reasons we can't trace our genealogy to Adam and Eve. First, there's not a single documented line to Jesus Christ, on whose lineage reported in the Bible we depend for a link to Adam. Secondly, the Bible's genealogies aren't documented and the two given for Jesus don't even agree with each other.
If we compare the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew with his genealogy in Luke, we find them identical for the 14 generations from Abraham to King David; then they fall to pieces. Matthew reports 25 generations from King David to Joseph, stepfather of Jesus of Nazareth. Luke reports 42 generations. Worse, the names that exist on both don't match.
There are many theories explaining the many differences, but the fact remains - regardless of which line we follow, there is no documentation.
Gunderson explains about documentation. Careful genealogists will not accept undocumented links. To be accepted, a document must be contemporary. That is, it must have existed at the time of the recorded event. It doesn't necessarily have to exist today, providing it is known to have contained the claimed information.
So, how far back can a genealogy be proven?
Only to the Merovingean Kings who ruled Central Europe just before Charlemagne's reign, 768-814 A.D., Gunderson said. Perhaps a bit longer in China, but Chinese genealogies also soon run into problems with proof.
Gunderson usually recommends genealogists stop considerably short of the Merovingean Kings and work, instead, on rounding up families that lived during the last two or three hundred years.
Don't feel too badly if you've fallen for the "back-to-Adam" line. Legion are the folks who have. A guy named Sperry even wrote a book on 100 lines back to Adam, and that's not likely the only such work.
My advice is don't get caught up in collecting fanciful and meaningless genealogies that may be little more than fairy tales. Devote yourself to assembling reliable genealogies based on proof.
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