That is a lovely story, Alice, and it makes sense to follow such a prompting. My 2ggraunt did submitted the names of her orphaned mother's parents as Grandfather B . . and Grandmother B . . . There was no Family History Library. There's a considerable difference between your story, however, and these "names" so recently reserved. I have also done New York research and understand the dilemma. I have another ancestor that we simply cannot trace. Because the DNA does not match others of the same surname, I suspect he is probably an illegitimate child carrying his mother's surname. I'm not going to seal him to a Mr. and Mrs. Surname without finding better evidence. The rest of his work has long been done, and I think he is none the worse for not being sealed to unknown parents. I think most of this manufacturing of parents comes from the pressure to "take a name to the temple." Someone fairly recently converted the names of my ggrandmother's sisters who died in infancy to male names. So Leonora became Leonard, etc., and someone got a chance to go to the temple. As Helle pointed out, there's no excuse with Scandinavian records. If we really care for our ancestors, we owe them a decent effort to properly identify them. Jean Ohai - - - - - On 6/1/2013 3:00 PM, [1]lds-ward-consultant-request@rootsweb.com wrote: Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 12:18:55 -0700 From: "Alice Allen" [2]<aiallen@iinet.com> Subject: Re: [LDS-WC] Junk Genealogy | Was: Re: Digest, Vol 8, Issue 225 To: [3]<lds-ward-consultant@rootsweb.com> I think we have to be careful not to pass judgment upon the people who have submitted some of these "Mr. & Mrs." For temple work. I have one of these in one of my own lines. This has been a difficult line for me to trace--early 1800's NY state, can't find any indication of my gg grandmother's family there, even though she is listed on the 1850 census with her husband and in all the censuses I've found her in, her birthplace is listed as NY. Her individual ordinances (and maybe her sealing to husband) was done in the 1930's--it's a long story and only interesting to me, so I won't share it here so your eyes don't glaze over. Back when the IGI & Ancestral File were on CD's (1990's), I discovered that someone had sealed her and a brother to "Mr. & Mrs. Davey." Over these many years I've been grumbling to myself as to why someone would do that, and how did they find out my gg grandmother had a brother, since I never found a trace of this family. Last fall I was contacted by a descendent of my gg grandmother, who had found me on nFS and was delighted to discover me, and hoped I had information on this family--especially did I know who our gg grandmother's parents were? Thankfully I did not rant & rave about the "Mr. & Mrs" whom they were sealed to, but I told him that's all I know. Then he told me this story: His aunt had a history written by our gg grandmother, and he had read it many times. He had noted many times that she related being orphaned at an early age--naturally she didn't tell who here parents were, when they died, etc. But at some point he was prompted to read that history again, and eventually he did. What he had never noticed before was that our gg grandmother told of her younger brother Sam, who was 2 years younger than she was, and that they had been placed in different orphanages and she never saw him again. Since he had his gg grandmother's birth date, he calculated the brother's birth date, added "of" to the county they were from, and submitted his name for temple work. He was also prompted to seal both of them to their parents, but he was never able to find out who they were. He calculated their birth dates, added "of" to the county and state, and the submission was accepted. Now, this was the 1990's, and as I recall things were loosened up quite a bit about that time as far as submitting for temple work. He has not stopped hunting for their real names, and I have been hunting,too. I have a trip to Salt Lake planned in the next couple of weeks, and looking through probate and guardianship records is #1 on my list for the day my daughter has promised me I can have at the FHL while her family does some touristy things. So at least in this case, this was a "guided by the Spirit" thing and not "junk" genealogy. There may be others out there with a similar story, who knows! References 1. mailto:lds-ward-consultant-request@rootsweb.com 2. mailto:aiallen@iinet.com 3. mailto:lds-ward-consultant@rootsweb.com