Some Family: The Mormons and How Humanity Keeps Track of Itself (review)

Akenson’s Some Family promises an analysis of genealogical meta-narratives—particularly focusing on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (lds, the Mormons) and their vast collection of genealogical materials. His ambitious project aims to demonstrate the usefulness of understanding genealogy as a unique narrative of history; Akenson’s contention that historians too often treat genealogists with “snobbery” is a point well taken (15). Nonetheless, despite some promising ideas about narratives of human history, Some Family displays a lack of clarity about the Mormons’ genealogical project and how it could benefit historians and historical narratives.

Akenson is at his best when describing the various types of genealogical narrative, but his analysis breaks down when he discusses the specific challenges and opportunities of the Family History Library (fhl)—the location of the Mormons’ genealogical collection in Salt Lake City. Akenson’s account blurs the distinctions between the large holdings of primary records (microfilmed and digitized) and the compiled online databases. He makes some apt critiques of the compiled databases that should help historians and genealogists use them better. But he does not explain the important differences between the databases. Moreover, he incorrectly asserts that the compiled information can never be correlated with original sources, claiming that such information, in fact, is “beyond verification” (211).¹ Many entries in the databases contain source notes and other information that can still be verified by exploring the primary sources available in the fhl. Considering that Akenson has used the collection in his own research, this puzzling imprecision leaves the false impression that the Mormons can offer genealogists and historians only a mishmash of useful and useless information in the online databases.

Some Family is built around the idea of genealogical narratives, but the attempt to describe the Mormon narrative creates a tension in the book. Akenson grants the lds Church a massive, and mechanical, power over a “master narrative” of genealogy (87–88, 118, 155, 185–86, 191, 199). But the problems that he has with the databases stem from the lds Family History Department policy to make submitters, rather than the Department, responsible for the quality of information they submit.

Hence, although the church collects records and compiles databases, it does not try to control how the tens of millions of people use those records and resources; nor does it attempt to check submissions for accuracy. Akenson discusses the difficulties that this policy raises, but, unfortunately, he does not address how they affect his description of the “LDS machinery” as “writing a world narrative” (189, 211). Otherwise, his analysis of the different strategies for compiling lineages (patrilineal, matrilineal, double, biological, social, etc) is excellent. If he had more accurately discussed the Mormon genealogical project and its usefulness to historians and if he had accounted for the many voices included in the Mormon genealogical narrative, he would have made his mark on both history and genealogy.