Be Careful about Who you Date in Mormon-land! ...you just might be cousins!

Not that I am on the dating scene, but a couple recent experiences of finding fairly close relatives brought the potential concern for folks in Mormon-land to light...especially if you are LDS.  Let me give ya couple examples...

Case Study #1

I've been working in an office for just over four months now.  After a couple of months of working there, a lady I work with named Stacie noticed my name plate on my cubicle and said, "My grandmother was a Mortensen."  I first asked how she spelled it.  Since the spelling was "right", I asked what her grandmother's name was.  She said Elsie Mortensen and her husband was "Jack" Stevens.  I looked it up on new.familysearch.org and sure enough, Stacie and I are 3rd cousins.  Our common ancestor was Peter Anton Mortensen, who I blogged about recently.  She is a descendant of Peter Alonzo Mortensen and I am a descendant of Robert Benjamin Mortensen.  Stacie also looks a lot like my sister Kara and when we compared photos, Stacie and her family just could not believe the resemblance.

Case Study #2

Jessica's Grandma, LaMona Bascom-James-Newren, of Sandy, Utah, passed away suddenly last week after a brief illness and hospital stay.  She was found deceased comfortably in her recliner by the Visiting Teacher who came to bring her dinner.  The funeral was held on Monday this week.  Grandma Newren was born and raised in Raymond, Alberta, Canada.  During the viewing I was talking with some of the old Raymond cousins with the surnames of Bascom and Nielson (sp?) and casually mentioned that my Great-Grandma was raised in Beazer, Alberta, Canada.  The husband of one of the Raymond cousins perked up and asked me what her name was.  "Fay Wright," I replied.

"Well, I am Leo Wright" he said, "I knew Fay.  She was my cousin".

So with a little figurin' I discovered that Leo Wright is my 3rd cousin once removed.  He and his wife live in Spanish Fork, Utah.  By the way, when we lived in Greenville, South Carolina, our Stake Young Men President was a Kent Nielson.  During a YM training session he mentioned growing up in Raymond, Alberta and I asked if he knew any Bascoms, like the rodeo hall of famer Earl Bascom.  He told me he was related to them!  Leo's wife is his aunt.

Case Study #3

James Brigham Wright

Talking with Leo inspired me to do a little internet searching on the life of  our common ancestor James Brigham Wright who was in the ill-fated Martin Handcart Company of Mormon Pioneers, but he survived and has a great posterity.  While reading his history I came across a quote from one of his granddaughters named Ardis Elizabeth Wright-Maughan.  I recognized the surname Maughan as the last name of a guy I work with at the same office as Stacie, so I jotted down the Maughan names to ask him about this morning.  When I mentioned the name Ardis, he said, "That's my grandma!"  Ardis is the sister of Fay Wright, my great-grandmother.  So, Jason Maughan and I are 2nd cousins once-removed with our common blood ancestors being Edward James Wright and Alice Maria Warner.  He emailed his dad who confirmed that he knew Fay and my grandmother Eva and even lived next to them in Charlo, Montana for a time.  Small world!!!

Conclusion

So, the moral of this story is...for all you kids ages 16 to married anywhere in Mormon-land...you might want to consider carrying around a six-generation pedigree chart and check for similar names before you start smooching.  If you are married, you might not want to compare family trees too much, 'cause you might me kissin' your cousin. In this case ignorance would be bliss!  Turns out that my wife is my 10th Cousin once-removed, which explains a lot about our unfortunate kids!!!

Oh the perils of doing family history and genealogy.  But finding out how you are blood-related to people you ain't kissin' sure is fun!