Why do I have hundreds of autosomal DNA matches involving a single 18th century Mormon?
This could be a historical question, and if it is, I'd appreciate knowing where to ask it.
I have an ancestor, Mary Magdalen Pluck, born 1775 in the Rhineland, married Jesse Dehaven of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She is my 3x great grandfather, meaning that half of her descendants should match my DNA if they tested, which most haven't. If she and Catherine Anna Pluck were sisters, 10% of CAtherine Anna Pluck's descendants should match me. When I check people Ancestry identifies as descended from her, and check how many of them match my DNA, what I get is what I would expect, which is actually a great many more than I should expect given that atleast ordinarily most of those people wouldn't have done DNA testing.
It is very clear that Catherine Anna Pluck and Mary Magdalen Pluck were related, and if not sisters they could have been close cousins.
Two Pluck families lived near them. The one Catherine Anna Pluck belonged to had people in the family in the 1790 census whose names have not come down and Mary would have fit. There were also a number of stray individual Plucks in the immediate area, some of whom may have belonged to one of the two Montgomery County families or they might have come individually. All seem to have come from the middle Rhine region.
I must have upwards of two hundred matches who descend from Catherine Anna Cloward, and don't share any other ancestry with me. I have maybe 30 people who descend from Jesse Dehaven and Mary Magdalen Pluck and don't descend from their daughter Mary Magdalen Dehaven my 2nd great grandmother.
I just looked into eight people who are often more closely related to each other, and share a specific segment with me, with clear early Mormon ancestry, every one of them live near Salt Lake City and they're often 3rd and 4th cousins to each other, and, guess who they descend from. I was really hoping for information on an ancestor I know less about, like maybe my Moores.
Catherine Anna Pluck and Jacob Cloward belonged to the first group of Mormons that went west. She was a personal friend of the Prophet, and she said she saw angel wings and a halo on him - which actually supports thinking she was closely related to Mary Magdalene Pluck, whose descendants have always been more than capable of seeing such a thing. They traveled together every single place the Mormon group lived after Palmyra. They had a lot of children, and each of the children had a lot of children, and they often had multiple spouses. Remarkably, the women of this line often had new husbands while the former husbands were still living. ????
What I want to know is, do I have hundreds of DNA matches to this one family because most Mormons do DNA testing, because upper caste Mormons do DNA testing and CAtherine Anna Dehaven's descendants are upper caste Mormons, or because Catherine Ann Dehaven's descendants are upper caste Mormons and that caused them to have far more descendants than normal? Or, were upper caste Mormons very inbred and more of their DNA came down to their descendants than normal? Or, what I initially thought when I began to see her popping up in my 8 peoples' trees, perhaps most Mormons today are descended from her, having for one obvious reason or another tried hard to marry her prolific descendants - kind of like the way most people with ancestry in New England before 1850 descend from Edmund Rice. And then her descendants do more DNA testing than normal.
Thanks!
Yours,
Dora Smith
Answers
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I have a similar problem to yours, where half of my mother’s line were early converts to the Church of Jesus Christ and the other half were not. 75% of her DNA matches come from descendants of the early converts.
The simplest reason why you have so many more matches from your early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint (Mormon) relative is that more descendants of Catherina Anna Pluck have tested than the descendants of Mary Magdalen Pluck.
Early members of the Church of Jesus Christ were encouraged to have enormous families, and several generations of families with 10+ children lead to a massive descendancy pool. It’s likely that many of those descendants are still members of the Church of Jesus Christ. The church highly encourages engaging in Family History work. This makes this disproportionately large group of descendants even more likely to know that DNA tests exist and feel motivated to take one (your first hypothesis).
On the other hand, DNA testing is new enough that it’s quite possible that the descendants of Mary Magdalen Pluck either don’t know it exists or have no interest in taking a test.
In terms of the concentration of matches in Salt Lake City, the early arrivals in Utah were a pretty insulated group. They immigrated to Utah to be hundreds of miles away from any other major settlements and stayed put. That’s why you see so many people matching as 3rd and 4th cousins – many of them descend from that early core group of immigrants whose descendants stayed in the valley.
I do know that it was relatively easy to obtain a divorce in Utah, which may be the reason why you're seeing women remarry (and have more children) when their first husbands are still alive.
Hope that helps!
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There are probably a few reasons why this is so. First members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are encouraged to do genealogy. Thus, they have probably have a higher than normal DNA test rate. Second, In the 19th century, some members practiced polygamy and a male ancestor could have had more descendants than the normal population. The third reason is that DNA statistics represent averages, but they do not represent specific individuals. You could have inherited more at DNA than the from these ancestors than normal. I think the reason is probably a combination of all of these reasons; especially that I believe more members get tested than the normal population because of their interest in genealogy.
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Thanks, Kent.
Those things and more occurred to me, but there's no substitute for actual specific knowledge, over speculation.
For example, I know that Mormons are all required to do their family history, but, are they also more than a little encouraged to do autosomal DNA testing?
And, does it make a difference what their standing is with the Church? I haven't systematically followed the family but it does appear that many descendants of this family spend their lives as counsel to the local bishop and their obituaries tell us where and when the marriage was sanctified in the Mormon Church, whatever the term for that is again - not something most Mormons put in their obituaries, but the kind of thing a very devout Mormon or one facing a lot of expectations might. I was tracing families of people who share a single segment with me, and obituary after obituary had those features.
It occurs to me that the descendants of a close personal friend of the Prophet who testified she saw him with angel wings and a halo, whose son played a prominent role in the settlement of Salt Lake City, might belong to a Mormon upper caste if there is one. I can't learn if there is one. Lots of people complain about it, but their specific complaints occur in every Episcopal church I've ever been in , and every other church. But the Mormons are more cult like, and the cult is more formally structured, and it seems like the sort of upper and upper middle class body of staunch supporters and leaders who form the core of every church as opposed to poor attendees who keep to "their place" and set up the chairs, might be more institutionalized than normal.
In a normal church, there is movement in and out of the relatively wealthy group that leads the church between generations. New people can pay or work their way into the upper eschelon, even in the deep South where I now live. If there were a caste system, that would become much more rigid. Is there an actual group within LDS that for generations noone has much joined or left?
Now, Clowards aren't Rockefellers, fabulously wealthy people who dominate every institution in American society that they touch and have done so for hundreds of years and probably always will, so if there isn't a caste structure, that one family shouldn't stay in dominant roles for almost two hundred years!
Yours,
Dora Smith
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Thanks, Laurel.
In my case, it looks more like 90% of my matches belong to the Mormon branch of the family as compared to the probably sister branch.
I hadn't yet noticed what effect the polygamy had when I posted the question - but in this case it only seems to have doubled the number of children this family group had. Each Cloward male had 20 children instead of the customary 10.
I noticed that in the first generation or two a great many women in this family had a second husband while the first was still living. I didn't know Mormon women were encouraged to have multiple husbands. This is serial polygamy however you spell it. (In anthropological terms, it's also serial polygamy when everybody else divorces and remarries; it just stands out in a fundamentalist culture where people didn't divorce, women had the status of slaves, and men had multiple wives. Like, what on earth?)
You mention that it was relatively easy to get a divorce. Was this church approved? And just how easy was it? If slave second wife of brutal husband wanted a new husband, how would she exactly extricate herself and get a new husband? From a couple of stories I've seen of how it actually came about, I'm wondering if the process rather resembled the movie/ book, "Winter's Bone". If a woman were gutsy enough, after paying with massive bruises and busted teeth, she could come out of it with a new husband, after the community, impressed with her guts, strangely and apparently miraculously swung around to her way of thinking? I've never read a stranger book on community structure and process!
Yours,
Dora
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Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, believe in freedom of choice. No one is "required" to do family history; they are urged to do it, and most do not. Last stat I saw was only 5% do family history. That may be higher now. And no, they are not required to do DNA testing of any kind, but many do. Probably more take DNA tests than any other group. Why? That is a good question. I think they believe it helps prove family relationships, which it does. But most find that autosomal testing only proves what they already know, It is very helpful for those who were adopted or have Non Parental Events. But this testing, even for Y, Mt, and even X DNA has been more of a fad for the past year or so, and I believe it is tapering off. We'll see. I think Kent Jaffa's suggestions above to answer your questions are right on!
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Thanks, Cathy.
When I first began to research my family history, 30 years ago, I had access to Ancestral File and the database of transcribed records. When I began to have the wherewithal to search SMGF before it disappeared, I noticed that matches on criteria that Family Tree DNA had rejected because people related within thousands of years might wrongly be regarded as matching, were being used to justify adding people to family trees in Ancestral File, as "relatives". One common example that kept cropping up was teh Cloward family as "relatives" of Mary Magdalen Pluck who married Jesse Dehaven. In fact, I wonder if I was seeing that before I ever used SMGF, partly because I remember being in the Buffalo public library at the time, and partly because there is no way Jacob Cloward's Y DNA supported thinking his wife was related to another female. I suspect they assumed that all Plucks from Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties in the 18th century were related, without any special reason to think so, besides some of them appeared to have been baptized in the Rhineland.
Please forgive my issues with vocabulary; I've understood the situation more specifically than comes across, but I'm terrible with the terms or names for anything. I have understood that the reason to include people in one's family tree as unspecified relatives if one isn't sure they are related, is to baptize them so they can enter the Mormons' concept of Heaven. God must be thought to be forgiving if someone gets baptized who doesn't actually qualify. It would be human to want as many potential ancestors to get into Heaven as possible.
I understood that every Mormon must do their "temple work" in order to qualify for a ceremony at the Salt Lake City temple that every Mormon is required to undergo. This temple work includes submitting their genealogy.
Now better genetic genealogical testing proves that Jacob Cloward's wife and Jesse Dehaven's wife actually were related, probably sisters from the amount of matches, and that's consistent with the 1790 census. One wants to know how firmly to conclude they were sisters. Normally one can tell from the volume of matches, but in this case something is off, and I need to know how badly the numbers are off.
Since you're telling me Mormons aren't required to do their genealogy, and I know that they are, I can't know what to make of your telling me about some much hazier requirement to do DNA testing. Or "encouragement". I've no idea what to think you mean.
It would be interesting if there are Mormons who don't share their church's much more black and white outlook on life, and in fact really don't have much of a grasp on reality at all, everything is just fuzzy-fuzzy, but that's not for me to straighten out.
I wonder what LDS's central administration would say to your assertion that LDS has no actual rules!
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You know, I can see I am really not going to get my questions answered here. If any Mormons have even answered, they must be a strange sort of Mormon. I can see that some people who are speculating about Mormons have replied.
Who can I specifically ask at the LDS library in Salt Lake City or in the administrative offices of whoever oversees genealogy testing, what the facts of the matter are?
That's FACTS, people. I need to speak to who can actually provide them. I'm sorry if noone here has enough of a grasp of what a fact is to even tell me who to speak to to find out what they are!
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Cathy provided you with my answers and I think they are pretty good. Cathy and I are Mormons and enjoy genealogy. Both of us have been volunteers at the Family History Library who assist the Library Staff. If you want to know more about why Mormons are encouraged to do family history, send me an email at kjaffa@comcast.net and I will be glad to discuss it with you. All the Best.
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Dora, it does look like all of the responses so far have been from members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons). I am also a member, and am one of the admins on this site.
This community website is not for religious debate (see the Code of Conduct here), but I can see how your main questions relate to your desire to understand your genetic testing results so we'll allow it as long as we can keep the conversation kind & respectful.
Regarding the divorce question, you can see more info about that in this article on The Church's website - Plural Marriages and Family in Early Utah. Note the sentence a ways in: "Church leaders recognized that plural marriages could be particularly difficult for women. Divorce was therefore available to women who were unhappy in their marriages; remarriage was also readily available." There's a footnote attached to the 2nd sentence to read more. I myself have a female ancestor who was married to a prominent man in the church in the 1800s who divorced him and remarried, then had additional children by her 2nd husband.
Joseph Smith said something we like to quote. "I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves." We as members of this church are all taught to do our family history, but many don't, due to a host of reasons. However, we likely do have a larger percentage of our population who is involved in researching their family history than in the general public. There's no specific encouragement to do DNA testing, it's just part of the whole genealogy package, so to speak.
I have a lot of Utah pioneer ancestry on my dad's side, but my mom is a convert to the Church, and I have many, many more DNA matches on my Dad's side than I do on my Mom's side. To the tune of hundreds, vs. dozens.I hope that's helpful, if you have more questions about our practices as it relates to understanding your DNA results, or you don't think your questions have been answered fully, feel free to ask again. We may not know, if you're asking about practices from the 1800s, but we can try.
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Dora, you ask if there is a caste system withing the church...if there is a group of people who consistently stay in the leadership of the church. There really isn't. I've traced my family back beyond the beginning of the church and what has surprised me is that very few families had all of their children stay active in the church. Each generation that participated actively within the church lost several children to non-participation. Sometimes only one child stayed active within the church. My line happens to have been the zig-zagging line that did stay participating, but I have many uncles, aunts and cousins in many generations that disassociated themselves with the church. As I help others research their families, I find that is true of most of the early families that joined the church. However, there are some few families who somehow managed to keep all their children participating...and as you noted, with the prolific number of children they had, numbering their descendants is an immense task.
Since my family has started doing DNA tests, we have found some wildly unexpected information and trying to pinpoint how we are related to these unexpected relations has been most difficult. It seems that the wife's side of the family was very prolific and lots of her relatives have done DNA tests, while the husband's side of the family has very few people and none have done DNA. So, we can see that children of this couple match our family, but because we are missing DNA on half of the tree, we cannot tell if it is a son of this couple or a brother of the wife who connected with my ancestress. (This line happens to NOT be members of the church in either the paper trail or the DNA trail.)
I would guess that you are dealing with this same sort of lopsided DNA tree...that one side just isn't interested and no one on that side of the tree has bothered to take a DNA test.
You are asking for facts...unfortunately I have no statistics ready to hand on what I've experienced in my research. I did do a google search and pulled this article that seems awfully interesting regarding DNA in Utah. But I couldn't find any other articles or discussion related to the church, or rather, it's members, and DNA.
As for Edmund Rice...I'm one of his descendants, too!
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