Ancestry.com

If you google the word, "Ancestry" or "ancestry with a small a"  the search engine takes you to Ancestry.com - the largest for-profit genealogical research company in the world. It operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. If you wish to research your ancestors, you will come across one of the companies that they have acquired through the years.

 And there are many! 

Back in the day, it used to be so simple. Regular families would write in the Bibles or some journal book to keep records and track of all the dates and names of the family. Those who were born into Royal families had professional genealogists, who worked within the royal families. They had to keep track of who was who - who was born to whom and their families. 

Ancestry was founded in 1983 in Utah by John Sittner, Robert Shaw, and Rex Sittner. The company published genealogy books and they were headquartered in Utah. In 1992, John Sittner negotiated with his internet provider to make the data collected in their books available online. The data included American social security death records, marriage records, and a few other collections. These online databases were free. 

I always believed just because they were in Utah that it was the LDS church- that owned and operated Ancestry.  The LDS officially didn't start Ancestry.com however it didn't take long, during those early years for LDS members to purchase and take control and grow the company to what it is today. 

I think the misunderstanding came from the fact that FamilySearch was operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) which is closely connected with the church's Family History Department. The Family History Department was originally established in 1894, as the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU)  FamilySearch maintains a collection of records, resources, and services designed to help people learn more about their family history and to Facilitate their practice of baptizing the dead. 

Throughout the years, FamilySearch (LDS) had many collaborations with Ancestry.com - flirting and courting the mega-company until finally, in February 2014, FamilySearch(LDS) announced their partnerships with Ancestry.com, Findmypast, and MyHeritage, which includes sharing massive amounts of their databases with those companies, and members of the LDS Church receiving free subscriptions with these companies. 

It is interesting to note in 2008, a directive from the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy directed Catholic dioceses to prevent the LDS Church from "microfilming and digitizing information" contained in Catholic sacramental registers so that those whose names were contained therein would not be subjected to vicarious Mormon baptism. Earlier, the Vatican had declared that Mormon baptisms were invalid.

Well yeah - I don't want my ancestors being baptised in a religion they would never have joined. In all fairness or maybe I am just naive - I think they only do it for their own family members. Then again, what if their family members, cross over to mine - do they baptize my family?

Since I was a child, I have always been fascinated with the history of my family tree. I owe many thanks to this corporation/LDS church for helping assist me in finding out about my family through their records.

I admit, I do take issue that I pay those high prices so that LDS gets free subscriptions. It's like they OWN our ancestor's history and I get a bit protective about that. If you want to know about your family, and you are not LDS, you have to hand over the big bucks for a membership subscription to be able to get those records. Every year I go back and forth - that this will be the last year. 

But I'm hopelessly hooked. 

I hope I haven't offended any of the good people who are LDS. In fact, my daughter-in-law was raised in the LDS faith. She has since walked away. Her family are good people and as long as they don't baptise my dead relatives, we're good.