My Polygamist Family History
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*****
My family heritage is intimately tied with the history of Mormonism. Polygamy is in my DNA.
*Why I left the Mormon Church: (www.mormontruths.com/why-i-le...)
Resources I mention in the video:
*Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey: (www.netflix.com/title/81292539)
*Big Love: (www.hulu.com/series/big-love-...)
*Faithful Mormon Movie “Legacy” about the Pioneers: ( • Legacy (1993) )
*Longform summary of Nancy and Sanford Porter’s life: (daviesdawsonhistory.weebly.com...)
*Sanford Porter Sr. Family Search Page, you can click around to all the people I mention using his page as a starting point: (ancestors.familysearch.org/en...)
*Remove your name from the records of the Mormon Church: (quitmormon.com/)
*Why Joseph Smith fled Ohio: (www.history.com/this-day-in-h...)
*Joseph Smith’s arrest record: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_...)
*Record of the Danites: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danite#...)
*Battle of Crooked River: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...)
*Coverage of Han’s Mill: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawn%27...)
*Explanaiton of the Branch Davidians and Waco, Texas: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege)
*PBS coverage of Mormonism and polygamy:
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexpe...)
*Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley interview with Larry King Live: ( • Pres. Gordon B. Hinckl... )
*CES Letter, a common tool used to deconstruct Mormonism: (cesletter.org/CES-Letter.pdf)
*My book, How to Leave the Mormon Church: An Exmormon's Guide for Rebuilding After Religion (www.amazon.com/How-Leave-Morm...)
*My Mormon wedding explained video ( • Mormon Temple Weddings... )
*My Mormon endowment explained video ( • Secret Mormon Temple C... )
*My Mormon garments explained video ( • Mormon Garments Explained )
*My Mormon faith crisis ( • Why I Left the Mormon ... )
- where to find me -
Patreon (ad free & bonus content): shorturl.at/8bpnw
TikTok: / alyssadgrenfell
Instagram: / alyssadgrenfell
Blog: www.mormontruths.com
Email me: alyssadgrenfell@gmail.com
- support my channel -
Venmo: venmo.com/u/Alyssa-Grenfell
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I never expected the Mormon church to turn into my new obsession but here I am
Same it’s the new true crime lol
Welcome to telestial kingdom 🪐
Its so fascinating lol mormons are my special interest as well and have never been a part of the church the book of mormon play is awesome too 😂😂@@saratexas5181
Same here!
@@alyssadgrenfell For me, it started in true crime and with Jordan and McKay's videos with Fundie Fridays. I had no idea that I would become obsessed.
"Found tied to a tree" sounds like those weird stories people used to make up after buying someone.
He definitely kidnapped her then poisoned Amy
I dont believe in that "tree" story too
It is possible that she came from an abusive household and that's why she was such an easy prey for that guy. She was so grateful for being given shelter and food that she honestly believed marrying him was the least she could do to repay his and his family's generosity.
Probably one of these three things, homestead was killed by bandits and she was left for dead, abusive father, or Indians.
right! I absolutely don't think that was the true story but a cover up... and a bad one at that
Holy Hannah, I’m only 14 minutes into your video. I am blood related to you. Both through my father and my mothers line. And it all stems back to Sanford Porter Sr & Nancy related to both!! I am related to him on my father side. Her on my moms side. And several of their children that lived into adulthood. I am related to their spouses both on my fathers and mothers side.
So hello cousin!! Lol
If you ever need any information on Family Tree. I’d be happy to help.
I am not an LDS member. I just have an account with Family Tree.
This is such an interesting way to find out you’re related to someone. Ah yes we were both related to people who believed that it was fine to marry someone half their age. I love the internet
@@ElGato-729 lol… and I didn’t have any clue. As far as I knew we were Irish Catholic on one side and protestant on the other. Lol. The Internet is a funny thing.
1:12:40 I think you must have at least one female ancestor who desperately wanted to leave the church but didn't even have the option to do so, and she'd be proud of you for doing it
She would be SO proud!
💯
Despite having zero connection to the Mormon church I’ve found myself binging your vids because of the intriguing topic and the way you speak is just so digestible, this has been so interesting to learn about, thank you!
Same
i was about to comment something similar, she’s such a good communicator
Same!
It’s been so cool to see creators like this more and more speak out about these things because there are gaps in my understanding of it.
Same
Using those missionary skills in a way the church never intended 😅. Love it.
(this is your new mission. now work in a trip to italy somehow!)
They use quite young and naive people to go out there as missionaries. It’s despicable.
@@theuniversalconnection3510 yeah it's literally the second they become adults they basically have the choice of go on their mission or be cut off from the church and home and their family and basically all they know. It's a pretty impossible choice to give what are essentially still teens who know nothing of the world. I suppose that's the point, if they were allowed to mature into full adults more might refuse.
But if they are right none of you will be in the Missionary position again in the Afterlife!
I remember accidentally arriving in a polygamist (FLDS) town in my 20s, decades before it was in the news. My friend and I had NO idea what was going on there, but we immediately felt like we were in a Twilight Zone episode, a really creepy sinister one where children were being hurt. All the women wore their hair the exact same way. (I found out later they used egg whites to get the exact same curl to hold in the exact same place.) People stared at us. I was wearing a one piece bathing suit, shorts, flip flops, and purple John Lennon sunglasses, so I really REALLY did not belong there. I whispered to my friend, "We're SLUTS here." (We were not sluts. "Not that there's anything wrong with that.")
I cannot convey just how creepy and eerie and straight out of the beginning of a horror movie it felt, not having any idea of what we were dealing with. When we got to the parking lot with our groceries, there was a boy about 4 years old with his mom. He pointed to me and said, "Different!" My friend and I just exploded with laughter, all that tension suddenly released. My friend said to his mom, who was flustered, "Smart kid." And we left. I often think about that little boy and wonder what happened to him. I imagine when he hit puberty, he might have been forced out of town like so many were. I hope he survived it and found a way to be himself outside of that nightmare town. (Colorado City, AZ).
That’s quite the surreal experience! 😮
The God Squad was probably notified and had eyes on you the whole time.
there is most definitely “something wrong with that”
Allysa: "Certainly if the daddy then married the adopted daughter that would be now illegal"
Woody Allen in 1997: "Hold my beer"
I was thinking that too!
Gross as hell 🤮
As long as there isn't any blood relations and they are 18 it's not illegal. Just creepy.
You beat me to it. I think there have been multiple interviews with Soon-Ye where she says she is happy about it, which kind of mirrors the account of Lydia. Big yikes.
Ellon dad did something similar too i think
oh my goodness, her saying “i can’t see anything but tragedy in this woman’s life” broke my heart. not even woman’s life, this GIRL’S life! this marriage happened when she was just 16. she then has 14 kids! poor thing 💔
I see you with the sponsorship, get that coin girl 😂
Hell yeah!
Got to make up for all that 10% she lost 😂
@@elibella5660 And pay 50% to the state religion's empire building.
He'll yeah. Make that money, Alyssa
1 Corinthians 3:3: "Jealousy is a sin "
36:50 “Died of a broken heart” is also old timey slang for “committed suicide”
Do you have a source for this? It sounds plausible but I can't find any sources confirming it
How old time, a ton of older movies, like 50s-60s. It is used pretty generously for any sort of death after losing a spouse.
Source?
Wow, there's an actual medical condition too - "Takotsubo cardiomyopathy".
Although that is true in most cases, people can medically die of a broken heart. It's called broken heart syndrome.
My great-grandparents were also first cousins. No Mormons anywhere in my family tree, they were an ethnic minority in the mountains of Romania. I think cousin marriage was fairly widespread in the late Victorian era.
If it makes you feel better, any of the negative consequences of inbreeding disappear after a single generation of outside marriage.
> the negative consequences of inbreeding disappear after a single generation of outside marriage
Not only that, but first-cousin inbreeding is actually not too bad, biologically speaking, when it occurs as a once-off. It takes closer marriage (like siblings) or multiple generations of cousins all inbreeding, before problems usually arise.
They don't disappear, they just become less likely after each degree of separation. Technically the "cut off" is after second cousin consanguinity. What this all means is 1st and 2nd cousin consanguinity has a slightly higher chance for birth defects than offspring produced by strangers. Beyond 2nd cousin, the birth defects rates are no longer significantly raised vs strangers
@@Trenz0 I don't mean your parents being 2nd cousins vs 1st cousins, I mean your grandparents being 1st cousins vs your parents.
I also have a first cousin marriage in my family, also in the Belle Epoque. No Mormons, they were Methodists. Just very rich and with pretensions to aristocracy😂.
Yeah, cousin marriage doesn't usually really start causing problems until it's widespread enough to start producing "ladder" cousins.
I met two young mormons on a mission for the first time in my life last week. It was so strange, because I knew so much about their religion, and what they do on a mission, from your videoes. They were really kind, and I was a little bit star struck😂 you teach me so much about a world, that is very foreign to me. I find it incredibly interesting. I politly declined their invitations to talk, and I asked them, if they needed anything, because I know some missions can be difficult. I think that blew their minds😂 most people in my country only know mormonism as a weird american cult.
Do you mind sharing which country you are from?
This was really sweet and probably the perfect way to interact with them.
It is a weird American cult.
Omg I had the exact same experience as you too! I was in Taiwan 2 weeks ago and randomly chanced by a Mormon temple in the middle of Taipei and I saw a pair of Mormon missionaries crossing the road. They looked so young and they were paired up exactly like how Alyssa described for overseas missions. A Caucasian boy with an Asian boy. They looked really tired and I felt so sorry for them. I later looked up Mormonism in Taiwan and turns out they have one of the largest Mormon population in Asia
It's 100% is a cult and not a legitimate religion.
I'm a never-mo and my mom is going down a family history rabbit hole and it's so cool. Our family has a tendency to lean liberal in conservative areas and I thought that was just within the last century. No, I've had ancestors kicked out of colonies because they VERY vocally disagreed with the treatment of indigenous people and pushing for social justice. We've been woke for centuries.
That is so cool!!! Most of my ancestors didn’t get to America until just a few generations ago, and so they were more progressive than the average American at the time I guess. But on my dad’s side, Daniel Boone is my (several greats) great uncle- certainly nothing woke from him. I found out the other day that my great grandma on my mom’s side divorced her husband when my grandma was about six (so this was in like the 40s-50s) and ran her own flower shop to make a living, which is pretty cool. I would love to look more into why my ancestors decided to immigrate over here- some were Irish so I get that but many were from Germany, Poland, etc. as well. It would be so cool to find out if any of my ancestors really pushed for progressive change or if they were active in any interesting circles
That’s awesome!
You are so brave, Alyssa. I'm a non-Mormon who has lived in Utah for 45 years and I know how much pressure you have dealt with behind the scenes. You're a truth-telling hero. ❤
She moved.
As a jewish person whose family documents were lost in the holocaust, i find it incredible that you can learn so much about your ancestors!
I’m so sorry!
💙
The Mormon site also has info on Jewish lineage. I’ve found family info there
The LDS have a fascination with ancestry as they have a mission to baptize the dead.
For every additional wife for a polygamist, you must get rid of a young man who would want a partner, or source/capture the daughters of non-members. No wonder they were persecuted.
yup, they're known as the lost boys and were sent away so that the older men could have the young women that would've been the lost boys wives.
Strictly speaking, that's only true of polygyny or polyandry. For the much rarer case of societies with "symmetric" polygamy, where a person of _any_ gender can have multiple spouses, you don't get that problem.
But since the LDS have only ever been about polygyny, never polyandry, that distinction doesn't much matter here.
I was reading the history of one of my ancestors and apparently somehow one of them lured away a Hershey girl (yes, from the famous Hershey's chocolate family in Pennsylvania) of only 14 years to go to Utah to be a 3rd wife in the middle if nowhere, southern Utah. It must have been a miserable experience for my great great great grandmother.
@@DaraelDraconis Are there societies where both exist? My Anthropology class 20 years ago said there was only one society known to have polyandry. It was high in the mountains of Tibet (if I recall correctly) where all farming was done on limited terraced land. The land was passed through the male line. A woman would marry _all_ of the brothers in one family, keeping the land together. These families would farm. Single women did other trades within the society. Fascinating
@@jenniferpearce1052 I'm not aware of societies where both are widespread, but it's possible to look at those who practise poly_amoury_ on a long-term committed basis to get at least _some£ ideas of how equal-access polygamy (as opposed to exclusive polyandry or polygyny) might play out. The specific question of whether you then have to find something to do with the unpartnered or recruit externally, though… that just stands to reason, since the problem arises from gender-limiting polygamy.
My rabbithole started with "I wonder what mormons actually believe" as mormons are very lowkey here in Sweden, and now I'm here watcing every video you drop haha. Such quality content, Alyssa! 😄
I’m also swedish and it’s exactly how it started for me too. Had an old classmate at uni who was Mormon (from jönköping, of course) and I had a very basic understanding of the Mormon church. There’s also a couple of episodes of Sektpodden where they talk to an exmo if you want to hear what it’s like to be Mormon in Sweden
@@alextheasparagus6675 Great tip, tack! 😊
Omg I have noticed more and more Mormons around Stockholm. Some of my friends have gotten hand written letters from them in their mailboxes also!
@@itchymagnets whaaat I’ve only gotten hand written letters from JW
😅😅
Descendant of John D Lee here. I have polygamy on both sides in every branch. I left Mormonism over 25 years ago but can still access familysearch. You don't need a membership number. You can sign up as a gentile!
I wonder if you got out before the policy went into place and they are now using this as one final reason for folks to not leave the church.
I was wondering if that weren't the case. I have an account and am not a member of the LDS church (gentile 😜), although I did sign up 10+ years ago. It doesn't give quite the same document access as an Ancestry membership, but if you're on a budget - boy, is it pretty similar! There is something to be said for the work done by the church in digitizing and preserving genealogical records. Obviously they have their own motivations, but I am still glad that it's being done and provides such a great (free) resource for those looking into their family history. It does assign you a unique ID (ex. AB1C-2D3), and under Account it has the option to "Add Church Record Number". I would try making an account without any information that may be flagged / blacklisted - email, name, even IP addresses just to be 💯.
@@cdpbryant Yep, I have an account too and not a church member. I've often wondered how I would be received at one of the research centres as I would love to see some of the documents that I can't access as a non church member. Has anyone (UK based) done this?
Don’t you have to pay a fee?
@@lehcarbunny1 I'm in Las Vegas, so not too far from Salt Lake City. Actually contemplating going in-person someday soon. Will reply when I do!
I left the catholic church for similar reasons, your content is so healing. A lot of us have religious trauma and you don't even realize it until you're out of it.
Same here!
Your willingness to be frank about both facts and feelings around religious matters is healing for me even though my spiritual scars arise from a different tradition. Thank-you.
The Jesus of the bible can heal that trauma. I am sorry it happened and hope that you find truth in love.
Alyssa,
I live in Salt Lake City. There are polygamists right under our nose. I waited tables in town in the 80’s. I know who they are and big love exists in the forms of real estate and construction etc. They run the Northern corridor. And live in SLC proper. I refrain from naming them as my mother taught me to be cognizant of others privacies. I’m an x Mormon from the age of 13 on. No mission accomplished, male and much high visibility Mormon lineage. Captain James Brown : Mormon Battalion.
Your bravery and courage are commendable as I have also witnessed the Mormon family shun ! Which you must be experiencing.
The most dangerous stages of fanaticism (no matter what it’s about) is when people die. The martyrdom almost then gives more fuel, instead of highlighting the wasted lives. 😔
Yes, perhaps with Joseph Smith surviving the LDS would have gone the way of many of these religious movement and vanished. Especially if he would go on doing questionable things and go for more power at all costs. Idealistic members, believing in helping each other and striving for more together, might have been alienated by this "all for one" attitude of Smith.
I don't know who ever told you you were dumb, or "not the smartest" Before you said that in this video the first time (you said it twice ;-) I thought you're so self-possessed and good at this. I thought about how much I get from your videos because you are researched, honest, curious and generous. You are smart.
It's not polyamory that I have a problem with, it's the fact that so many people in Mormon polygamy relationships, didn't consent, were taken advantage of, abused, way to young, didn't love their partner, or were forced into because of religious beliefs.
edit: changed polygamy to polyamory for the one I don't have a problem with.
Agreed, when the partner don't consent, it's sex abuse. Mormons are notorious for sex abuse and the subsequent cover ups by Kirtand McConkie lawyers. They need a fat 50% taxation in order to pay for the victims mental health care who were ritually abused by a tithing payer priesthood holder, who has more worth to the corporation than the children molested in this cult
Well, polygamy is super messed up, especially to women, and you SHOULD have a problem with it.
@@lunalee3021 I hold it to the same standards of any relationship. If they consent, know what their consenting too, are over 18 and aren't behind mentally (like not an 18 year old and 50 year old), aren't forced to be with them, and no one gets hurt (mentally and physically) then let them be in a relationship. I understand that a lot of (if not most) poly relationships are terrible. But a 100 years ago lots of homosexual relationships were in the same boat of being extremely terrible, and (obviously) being gay is not morally wrong in any way. And their are millions of the most hellborn straight relationships. I just look at it as what it is, 3+ people being together romantically/sexully. If I find out it's any of the things things listed above, then I will problem with it.
@@rr.aionamaThe sort of informed, consensual relationship style you're talking about is usually referred to as polyamory, and "poly" (or increasingly "polyam") usually refers to polyamory. Words have definitions but words also have connotations. Saying polygamy has the connotations of the awful practices referred to in the video, whereas saying polyamory has the connotations of informed consent.
@@queens.dee.223 Oh Damn, my bad. I should have used that. I usually just say poly so I mix the two word up. Thanks for telling me, I'll edit the comment.
The way you talk about finding out some distant relative married a first cousin and I'm sitting here with my dads parents being first cousins and they weren't even religious.... the 1960s were wild I'm told.
My dad's parents were first cousins as well. My grandfather was severely traumatized in WW2 (as a German soldier on the Russian front, I'm afraid) and came back with a severe social phobia. He and my grandmother were both orphans and best friends, and my grandmother also didn't feel like she was very pretty and didn't have any other suitors, so they somehow decided to get married to each other.
Through doing genealogy, I found out that their respective mothers were from completely different areas, no family tree overlap whatsoever, and a couple of ancestors a generation or two earlier even joined the family tree from different countries, so I guess that genetic variety helped fend off potential genetic problems.
In my mom's family tree, there are no first or second cousins, but plenty of third cousins or fourth cousins because her ancestors mostly stayed in the same area, marrying someone from the same village or one or two villages over was the norm. My great-grandmother was the exception to this rule, having moved more than a hundred miles before meeting my great-grandfather. He used to tell a story where he was asked why he married a girl from so far away, and he replied "the bible says that of all evils you should choose the smallest" (she was quite short. Maybe the saying works better in German. 😉)
Hearing you say "Sanford's Son" so much just had me thinking about the TV show: _Sanford and Son_ the whole time.
lol same here.
I came searching for this comment 😂
Yeah it would have been funny if she played that theme music!
As a retired cultural anthropologist prof that focused on Mexican migration to the US, I regard this vid as a very courageous&informative!
Thanx
2nd year undergraduate anthropology major here. This channel has gotten me into theology
Not sure how, as an English atheist, I ended up subscribed here, but it is fascinating!
Me too English atheist living in Spain going down this mormon rabbit hole with this bird. I also went to watch all the South Park mormon stuff
I'd personally identify as strongly agnostic but it's quite easy to reject the Ideas of Mormonism, with the distance across the Atlantic giving a lot more perspective.
My home region of Germany is deeply stepped in Catholicism, I sometimes find myself in those traditions without believing
Ha!
There's at least 1 Aussie atheist watching here and subbed as well.
English athiest here too. However my dad was raised mormon after his parents converted. He became athiest at university studying physics.
I mentally prepared myself to be horrified before clicking on the video
Good because you're going to hear some doctrines and practices by this religion that will make you cringe. Alyssa does a great job explaining it from personal experience and without exaggerating the facts.
were you horrified?
@@jacquelinecallejas1390 Thankfully, no
.... Says a "King Henry" who started his own religion, too. 😉😊
Another day of learning about Mormonism having zero ties to it at all 😁
22:44 your comment that "the story of early mormonism is the story of mostly innocent/naive people paying for the mistakes, crimes, and misdeeds of Joseph Smith and other top leaders" - so sad! Reminds me of Benny Hinn, a modern-day parallel in the sense that he's harming and impoverishing countless innocent/naive people in the name of religion.
First cousin marriage is still extremely common in places like Pakistan. They’re actually having a huge uptick in strange genetic disorders or developmental disabilities because of having quite a few generations of it now.
Yeah, I have a friend who had to escape her family because they were gonna ship her to Pakistan (from Canada) to marry a first cousin in an arranged marriage! Yuck!
Any prohibition on it in the West, however, seems to be cultural rather than legal. The Book of Common Prayer doesn't consider a marriage between first cousins to be incestuous. The laws of California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Tennessee do not prohibit it (I figure that since these 4 states agree, it is the same in all the U.S. States). It is permitted in Jewish Halakah. The Catholic Church prohibits it, but only as a matter of Church Law rather than Natural Law, so first cousins who want to marry may get a dispensation to be allowed to do so.
A rare first cousin pairing in an otherwise genetically diverse family tree is probably Ok as far as defects go. It seems that the problem arises when there are multiple successive generations with first cousin marriages that start causing stuff like Hapsburg Chin.
The legality of first cousins marrying each other varies from state to state. 24 states prohibit first cousin marriages, 19 allow them, and 7 only allow certain types of them (example: both cousins are over 50 years old).
My grandparents were first cousins. It had to do with cultural reasons and keeping land out of Muslim hands. My family is fucking crazy
@@gormanls Do you think that the crazy was caused by the first cousin marriage, or would they have been crazy regardless?
So whenever I hear people claim the Mayflower origin story, I sniff and think "My family came over to Jamestown before the Pilgrims even got on the ship." I also don't have ellis island relatives. Everyone came into Southern US ports before 1800. In case you don't know what that means, it means my isolated rural relatives also married their cousins.
where they french, spanish or english people?
@@Alimon96 If they came in through the southern ports, they were most likely, Scottish or Irish...or they could have been slaves.
Luckily my grandma parents are both immigrants from two completely different countries lol
Are you descended from one of the few Jamestown settlers that survived the Starving Time, or one of the later ships?
I have a similar story. Arrived in Jamestown in 1620s and never left VA. We equate ourselves to friends you invited over for a weekend and never left.
Wow. Yes I have Mormon ancestors. One had 11 wives. I was always told that so many more women converted thus the need for polygamy. Also was told it started in Utah with Brigham young.
This was enlightening and sad for me for the women. I think you are doing a wonderful job here. Thank you.
Alyssa, I just wanted to reach out and tell you I see you. You are so strong and you have such a great sense of humor, a quick wit and some killer sarcasm!! But also I see your sadness. I see the increasing pain throughout this video. I see how even being confident in your decision, it’s still hurts to think of how your ancestors may have perceived you, and the way I’m sure some family has treated you. And I just wanted to be a voice to say, regardless what your family believes, your pain is so valid. And I’m so sorry that you have to process all of this. And you hit the nail on the head. We’re all searching for truth and doing the best we can with what we have. And you are continuing that family legacy of truth finders. That is why your descendants will get to look back and say yeah, I had this bad ass ancestor, who beat all the odds and found the truth for herself. And they will have the opportunity to follow your legacy and do the same. You are changing the starting point and changing the accessibility of this information for generations. For lots of families, who will now have their own Alyssa because of you. And for your family. The past are not the only people to whom you are connected. You are connected to your family through your legacy as well. And oh, what a legacy it will be!
I lived in Salt lake so my son could train at the olympic oval . I worked for an LDS family business and it was a truly difficult experience. I really felt like they were very phony and at the same time was treated differently. I love Utah but no love for that Church. I find you very refreshing
Non-Mormon here. My 5th cousin 4X removed was Rudolph Hochstrasser 1839-1916. Born in Switzerland. Arrived in Utah 30 Aug 1860 in company of Jesse Murphy according to the Mormon Trail to Utah. Had 6 wives and at least 18 children.
Holy cow. How did you find all of that out? How did you feel the first time you read that?
So basically someone almost unrelated to you ?
What an ADVENTURE in life!
I have found out bizarre how much detail is on family search. They've got my history going back to the mayflower, but also to NJ. Creepy enough they've got my dad's entire history in Scotland, going back a thousand years. 😮
What if the Morfmon church, is directly tied to American government, which is capable of figuring out most any information on the planet.
Considering the relationship of the LDS Church and Scouts USA (formerly Boy Scouts), and the Eagle Scout to Military pipeline, I don’t think it’s that far fetched.
They are collectors of souls. If any descendent converts, they are seen to bring all their ancestors into the church.
They have a lot, but I’ve also found a lot of stuff that appears to me to be erroneous - different people conflated as the same person, etc. Not to mention some of the transcriptions that were done by what I assume to be Mormon workers or volunteers are complete insane and make me wonder whether they actually know how to read English. For instance, someone transcribed “Ludovick Hill” as “Fredswick Hell.” There are several completely crazy ones along those lines that lead me to believe that whoever did the work was totally on autopilot.
Tons of erroneous, unsourced information. Drives me nuts. Citations, people!
You seem to me actually so very intelligent, well spoken and smart in general, don't ever doubt those things about you! Broke my heart hearing you doubt your own worth. Your content is fabulous ✨
Your ability to explain something I know little about in such an informative and interesting way is admirable. It’s impressive what journey you’ve made. Thank you for sharing and being so open about your experiences and history.
I’m so early I should get an attendance award
Here is your award! 🏆 :)
@@alyssadgrenfell yay thank you! :)
i forget you first blew up on tiktok! i really appreciate your long-form content. i can’t imagine how much work goes into all this, thank you! i’m a never mormon so this is all new and fascinating to me.
I really appreciate the quantity and quality of information you continue to provide about Mormonism.
It’s great to see the internet leading to the collapse of abusive organizations like the church of LDS.
I'm here for the collapse like watching a train wreck while eating popcorn 😅
I was in ministry to the FLDS. I lived in Rulon Jeff’s old house with the Pray and Obey Chimney! They finally removed and repaired that bricking with the past 6 months.
I have been studying my family genealogy for 25 years. I recently received the results of my AncestryDNA test and have been researching all the matches. I discovered there were a lot of Mormons in the woodpile. One that lived 1826-1912 had five wives. One wife had no children. Two had many children each. The other two only had a few each. I spent weeks untangling which wife had which kids. Many of those went on to have several wives each as well. I also found a couple personal family history documents that helped a great deal in sorting it out. It also helped me understand how such family dynamics worked under those conditions. That always was a curiosity of mine whenever polygamy comes to mind. I understand your difficulties in sorting it all out and trying to wrap your head around it at all.
Not Mormon never have been, but my paternal grandparents are Jehovahs witnesses, so something about this topic/kind of religion has always been so interesting! Also your voice is super calming!
My husband comes from a Muslim background (we are both Atheists though) and I am interested in religious history in general, so we read a great book about the history of Islam together. It was crazy hearing you say that the justification for polygamy was to protect "vulnerable" women because it was the exact same for early Islam as well, since the early followers of Mohammed were constantly fighting wars/battles there were apparently many widows who "needed" protection. It's wild how more than a thousand years later the Mormons were using the exact same justification, and even now extremely religious Muslims will also use this justification. In my husband's home country polygamy is illegal but what the extremely religious people will do is marry their first wife legally and the rest of them only do a religious ceremony, which has no legal meaning, so those poor women get no legal protections or rights and are basically trapped in the marriage.
God have mercy. Would like to say that the New Testament of the Bible is the best read, even though the whole Bible is the best read in general, that anyone reading would benefit greatly...of course when the mind is set on God, for Him being the revealer of His Word and His Holy Spirit surely does and not according to human time cause God is outsidw of our time, His time is not like ours.
To have faith the size of a mustard seed goes a long way and foremost faith in God, wanting to know His truth, which He surely does reveal. The New Testament is filled with Parables of God and it can be hard to understand with the human way of understanding things But to trust God that He would be the revealer of His Word, His Spirit of truth surely does reveal and the best truth to be understood is His Words of Truth and foremost having the assurance for having eternal life with God in Paradise.
To have eternal life is so easy and all it takes is faith; believing that God did really come down to earth as Jesus Christ, that He would be to once and forever sacrifice which would wipe away all sin from the believer whom believes Jesus is The Saviour and that He is God. Eternal life is offered by God and all whom believe can have the assurance for immortal life when this one on earth comes to a close.
Religions have caused so much confusion to folks and the culprit of all the lies is the devil satan himself, which he whispers all day long to people that they would listen and the worst thing that anyone can do is to believe his lies and sad to say but many churches have listened and have been swayed to go about the gospel in all sorts of ways but the truth of Christ, and Jesus' truth is so simple to grasp that a child can hear, believe and have assurance for eternal life.
The gospel of Jesus was made so simple to hear and believe, even though the Bible can be a hard read to understand the mysteries of God and God made it to be so on purpose, because it takes His Holy Spirit to understand the depth of the Bible, which is His Living Words of Truth. With Holy Spirit anyone can have as His gift for understanding, same as it is with eternal life, it is the free gift that God gives through believing Jesus Christ; that God Himself came to earth to save all whom would simply believe Him.
The rest of the Bible is for nourishment while being on earth and even though it is a harder book to read, as I know so to be the case for me too, yet at the same time Holy Spirit provides exactly what God knows is good for me to understand....foremost what matters to God is belief in Him and what He did by going to the cross/tree, which believing Jesus Christ and His finished work, it is a guarantee for having His seal for eternal life in Paradise with God.
Anyhow, may what is written be of an encouragement to whomever is reading and foremost may God Himself be the way maker for His truth and His truth sets the heart, mind and soul free and the best news ever is to be free in God and have His assurance for being called children in God and forevermore having eternal life with Him, which truly is closer than anyone of us can imagine. Blessings.
🤍🕊️🤍
@@John_Lete thanks but im not reading all that sir ✌
It is a matter of truth for having eternal life for free. We all have the freedom to choose what we want to choose, though It sure would be wonderful to see you and your loved ones in Paradise forevermore, simply by receiving Jesus' gift. 🤍
It is a matter of truth for having eternal life for free. We all have the freedom to choose what we want to choose, though It sure would be wonderful to see you and your loved ones in Paradise forevermore, simply by receiving Jesus' gift. 🤍
We all have the right to choose what we want to, though It sure would be wonderful to meet in Paradise. 🤍
I connect with your videos so much, even though I have no Mormon background. My mom's parents were Mennonite until sometime after their marriage, and most of that side of the family (including my mom/parents and excluding me, my sister, and a few cousins) have remained Biblical literalists and evangelicals. The Mennonite church also has fairly extensive familial records, and as someone very interested in history, it's so strange that my main avenue to getting any sort of fine grained detail on any of my ancestors is through Mennonite records. Leaving religion feels like it rips away a large part of the connection to the family I can read about, and a lot of living family too. I'm not fully "out" as agnostic, but it's always so comforting and interesting to see other people who are successful and relatively happy sharing their stories. So thank you!!!
Comment on cousin marriage- my mom’s side is French Canadian and there are plenty of instances of cousins marrying. When each marriage has 6+ surviving children it’s easy to end up with a cousin you may not have even realized was a cousin especially when you get 2nd cousins.
Big respect to you for being so honest about such a personal topic for the education (and entertainment) of us laymen, your videos are always enlightening!
Do you think that you could sometime do an Utah tour in your long video format? I know that you have done some shorts in Utah, but I feel like the short format doesn't do justice to the weirdness and eeriness of the state. As an European, ever since I learned that in the US there is literally a state for a cult, I've had morbid interest in it, yet I haven't found a proper online tour from a secular perspective. But you could be the perfect guide to such tour :D
Thank you for watching! :) Yes, I have wanted to do a long form video about Utah for a long time! I am headed there in August so maybe I'll make one while I am there!
@@alyssadgrenfell Ooh nice, looking forward to it!
I appreciate that you set aside your own feelings of trauma to focus more on conveying your message. I see your actions as selfless and considerate! Thanks for being THAT voice for so many people.
Your ability to self reflect and look at your ancestry in such a completely open, honest and unfiltered way is very inspirational. I am 76 and it absolutely amazes me that you can uncover these truths, process them and then be able to communicate them and reflect on their impact to your life and still take away Avery positive message. Congratulations and thankyou.
my grandmother is Mormon, but the rest of my family isn't practicing (I wasn't even baptized). your content has been SO helpful in understanding some things I remember about my childhood, like why the young men in white shirts and ties were always over helping my grandma move boxes and do chores when we visited 😂 my grandma is a pretty tame Morm - I know she was married in the temple to my grandfather (who converted to make her happy), but I don't know how much she believes, and frankly I'm a lil scared to ask. thank you for your honesty and eloquence! also, for the record, you seem pretty intelligent (despite any ancestral genetic mixing lmao)
Alyssa, I just have to say, as a nevermo who fell down the rabbit hole of learning almost everything I could about the LDS church just out of straight curiosity a couple years ago, I'm so glad you have started this channel and have shared these personal stories and insights on this past life of yours. I find nothing more interesting than diving into communities and getting to know strangers and your storytelling is impeccable. (The para-social relationship is strong with this one 😄). Keep it up, I'm always excited to hear what's next. And with that, I'm settled to hear about this family tree!
It’s not parasocial if it’s mutual, and now we’ve met through this comment :) so nice to meet you, and thank you for this comment! I hope you enjoy the video 💙
my grandma left the mormon church when she met my grandfather but the rest of her side of the family is still deeply involved. i went to church with them and lived in their house for many years. it’s so strange to know things about their religion that they either don’t know or somehow have compartmentalized. i can’t imagine how they’ve stayed so faithful and seemingly blissfully unaware. my great aunt makes me very sad. she’s a fiery woman who’s chosen to stifle herself for the sake of the church for decades.
Great job on the video. By the way, millions and millions of people are descended from Mayflower families. It’s just math. The 12 to 14 generations back to the Mayflower, each with 3 to 10 or more children, each having their own families, gets you to some very big numbers. Fun to see the links, not a big deal. Again great job.
I needed this! It’s finals season and I can only study if I’m binging these videos 😭
Good luck on your finals.
Who’s too early lol
wouldn’t want it any other way!
i moved 6 months ago to an apartment right in front of a mormon church and since then this channel has become my new rabbit hole
I really think your ancestors would be proud of you for breaking the curse of Mormonism in your family. You set your family free ❤
Hello Alyssa I'm a new sub and I want to tell you how much I enjoy your channel. I'm impressed how you stood up for yourself and left the church, I imagine it was very hard for you to "disappoint" your family and friends knowing exactly what they would say to you to try and change your mind. But you didn't crack and it seems like you're doing great and you're handling the transition from the church to the secular world with grace and dignity. Good luck Alyssa.
Just what i need!! let me get my devils' bean juice
I drink the devils juice all day while smoking the devils lettuce lol!
@@jamesbrooks3664 the devil has a great menu
I like Satan tacos 🌮 😅
Literally all but one branch of my family tree comes from polygamist Utahns back in the pioneer days, and it breaks my heart to think what the women and children suffered as a result. I recently read Ann Eliza Young's autobiography (as Brigham Young's umpteenth wife) and I was horrified by it and at the same time grateful for her honest account and advocacy for the rights of Mormon women. I wish that Victorian delicacy would not have obscured many of the details of the sexual abuse, but the emotional abuse and manipulation is on full display and I highly recommend it to get a picture of what life was like for plural wives.
I found your closing comments to be very insightful and moving. I wish I could like and subscribe one thousand times. We’ll done.
You tell the story about Lydia Ann Cook so vividly. She may have felt that happiness you referred to, or she may have felt that she had to write her story that way because of how others would have seen it or her. It's hard to know. Our lives are complex, and so were the lives of our ancestors. Thank you for sharing about your family.
From what you have said here, You and I are very, very distantly related. NY mother spent many of her later years using the LDS resources to study her genealogy, and Porters from before the founding of the LDS Church are in my distant past. I have no religion any more and none was at all Mormon, but I still find the stories about the religious impulses that sent our ancestors out into the western U.S. to be fascinating history. Religious communes of many sorts have been a part of that migration, though the more fractious do seem to have been the Mormons. In addition to Porterville, there was the Kaweah Colony, near Three Rivers California that had a different take on the communal religion idea. They made the big mistake of thinking they would cut down and sell all the Sequoia trees to make ends meet.
Thanks for fleshing out for me many of the Mormons of both Utah and points east that founded several of the California towns I have come to know since my family moved west from our New England roots in the 1950s.
every time you said "Sanford's son" the harmonica started to play in my head from the TV show show theme
Awesome! I’ve read those journals. My wife and my kids come from the Samford Porter line as well. I believe through Nancy
Oh man, I love family histories. My maternal grandpa's family were Mormon immigrants from Sweden, but he "conveniently" left a lot of that out when he wrote his family history. I really want to go back through and uncover all the messy secrets!
I love watching your longer videos at work, you keep me company on my nightshift
I found myself yesterday checking to see if I had watched every video of Alyssa's. I am hooked to the next video. I'm being schooled on all things Mormon more than I ever wanted to know. Can't wait for the next video or short.
You're a captivating speaker and sharing these histories is important! Keep it up and know that you'd probably have an audience still with your videos even if you eventually branch out into other topics!
I don't know how I ended up seeing your videos ... but I am hooked on this very interesting history!
As a polyamorous bisexual atheist who was also victimized by Mormon elders in San Antonio, your videos bring me so much peace.
Wow, Alyssa! I admire you so much for not only educating yourself and being willing to be so vulnerable and honest with us! For many years ( over 50!). I have watched my sister’s involvement with the LDS church. She converted to this at the time through her then fiancée, much to my parent’s dismay. She was young, around 20 years old, and never knew what she had fallen into. Of course, when she had her temple wedding, after a Mormon church wedding as she hadn’t been a member long enough, none of her family were able to care. I wish I could get her to listen to any of this, but it will have to be an answer to prayer! It’s been years since I have tried and it didn’t go well! But, thanks for your ‘part’!
You should contact Sandra Tanner: she was an LDS church historian before leaving and has done alot of research into the history and knows about the CYA ing of the LDS church history.
Be prepared, Sandra Tanner is a conservative Christian now and is anti-gay-marriage etc. Her study of Mormonism is definitely biased toward conservative Christianity.
How terrible life must have been those first fourteen years for Lydia.
Well, I'll take this "tied to a tree" story with a grain of salt. Sure, she might have been an orphan or better of without her birth family - but her new life wasn't what I would wish for anyone.
You don't need to feel embarrassed by your history. Families are wild, mormon or not, everyone is going to find something that may now be frowned upon if you go back far enough. We are all related, and your history is also the history of others.
Your speech at the end about enjoying life and connecting with other people was so beautiful and moving! A perfect way to reiterate the purpose of the video. I appreciate how gentle you were with your ancestors and also with yourself. You had to process some really powerful and even disturbing information to make this video and you shared your story in a very touching way that's gonna reach a lot of people, not just ex-Mormons! It certainly did that for me ❤ thank you!
Alyssa I am absolutely in love with your videos, the way you preset the story is enaging and beautiful to listen to, I find myself watching your content when I search for good videos to watch. Keepit up!
Would love a vid on Mountain Meadow Massacre. TY for being a national treasure of honesty!
I grew up near a chapel in Colorado so a lot of Mormons went to my high school. I find it absolutely fascinating that their parents subscribed to this kind of stuff. I love your videos.
1:18:28 "...Make sure that this legacy of faith may never die."
The facial expression is priceless. Great video, my mind is blown learning about the history of Mormonism from a member of Mormon family royalty. The veil has been removed for all to see!
I almost teared up at the end, your mind and heart are so beautiful, I know that in your lineage there would definitely be people who would look at you proudly and be glad you did what they couldn’t
You can still use family search You just have to sign up under a different name you can't use the church-related part of it. You don't have to be a member of the church to be able to use family search. That's why a lot of people like to use it because it's a free family history building site and you don't have to pay for the membership unlike using my heritage or ancestry.
Yes! I was able to see a lot of the open source information, but my account is no longer connected in with the rest of my family, as it was when I was a member. So I can click through many of the people (especially people pre-1950s), I just cannot see my direct line.
@@alyssadgrenfell Use Ancestry, which allows you to use the Mormon records without them knowing.
@@alyssadgrenfellYou should still be connected to your family because let's face it You've got paperwork backing up the fact that you have a mother and a father and siblings or whatever. You shouldn't be disconnected just because you left the church. That's like saying because I was adopted and did a DNA test and found out that I was the child of an affair I no longer have the right to associate or link myself to my adopted family in my family tree when all my documentation is under my adopted name not my biological.
I assume you created yourself in FamilySearch. Create your parents and grandparents (if alive) and link to your dead ancestors. I’m not a church member so not sure what is behind that log in but as a non-member I can see all kinds of info on my ancestors. Have to take with a grain of salt of course.
I believe in polyamory and ethical non-monogamy but I agree that this is very different. I think a core point of ENM is that people are not-owned by each other, and the patriarchal elements are not in line with what i believe.
Alyssa I literally could not stop watching this! Fascinating beyond words!!!! I have zero connection to the Mormon church…but your channel is one of my favorites!!!
❤️
Hey thank you for sharing this! I love your channel. I’m not religious but I have a southern Baptist family. Your videos help people who are trying to find themselves and get out of religion, but also for folks like me who need to know that smart, compassionate, good people can escape the mindset- indeed anyone could, and that helps keep up our hopes that things can get better, all the faster if we are a part of it
I'm on Family Tree often. I'm happy to send you better images if you'd like. ❤
Thank you for this great video.
44:17 Mormon men marrying multiple women because they're widows or fatherless (vulnerable) reminds me a lot of Mohammed and his followers marrying multiple women giving the pretext that they're vulnerable (widows, orphans etc). Both Mohammed and Joseph Smith (and by extension Brigham Young) ruled over militias/armed men and fought wars. The Mormons vs the Native Americans wars of conquest are very similar to Mohammed's followers vs Pagan Arabs, Christians and Jews.
You do have a point , though I wild argue that Muhammad (may peace be upon him ) was only following God’s order so we should exclude him when talking about Muslim men in general . I would say that religious priests is Islam used the fact that Arabic is a very difficult language to understand and the fact many people couldn’t read in order to control them and to gain more power . So I would say that actually Islam does not permit polygamy , but the men ( extrem religious men ) played with the explanations and changed them and made people believe them
@@darknightmare7281 Arabic being a "very difficult language to understand" is a very weak argument since there are harder languages to learn like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian etc.
I appreciate your content. Thanks for sharing your family’s slice of history. We all have history that is strange, beautiful, upsetting, miraculous and bound by the past circumstances.
Your talks are bringing my contact with Mormon missionaries to my memory I was a teenager steeped in Southern Baptist teaching and seeking other spiritual paths. I had support from siblings. I read their book and kept inviting them back for discussions. I don't remember why they quit coming around. I even went to their church
👏🙂
Very interesting. I'm an ex-muslim atheist. Polygamy and 1st cousin marrages are still very commonly accepted in Muslim communities so its very interesting to see this.
My mom is a hindu to muslim convert and her grandmother (hindu) was married off to her uncle when she was 9.
My dad's whole family is Muslim and his sister was married of to a 1st cousin and her daughter also was married off to a 1st cousin.
I'm an Indian though I lived most of my life in Saudi Arabia.
The one with the late Bill Paxton? I absolutely enjoyed Big Love!
That Warren Jeffs show really made me think how close my family came to growing up like that. My polygamist great great grandfather decided to stay with his 2 wives, 26 kids, and the "mainstream" Mormons in Salt Lake. I guess I'm grateful for small strokes of luck.
Alyssa, enjoying your content as you delve into the history of Mormonism, Utah, and your own family history.
Yes, you’re right about the chance encounters one has that affect generations down the line.
This is really interesting! I'm from Europe so I barely knew mormons existed growing up, but I've been binging your content lately! I do have some constructive criticism tho, if you're up for it. I've noticed that you often leave bits of footage in, where you correct the way you start a sentence. So in the final edit the sentence gets said twice. It's not a big deal, but I do get distracted by that sometimes. And it seems like an easy fix of maybe just having another set of eyes taking a look on the final edit?
Still appreciate all the effort and will continue watching either way! :)
31:58-34:15 Absolutely spot-on, Alyssa. One of the more enlightening perspectives to me is what is expressed in the Fourth of July Oration, daring the governor of Missouri to do his worst. Then when he takes them up on their threat, making very clear who has the authority to govern the state and who does not, they cry "persecution" and tell everyone how awful non-Mormons are to them. This cringe-level hypocrisy was a principal public reputation of the LDS in the 19th century, especially.
The algorithm has brought your videos to me. I do not know why, but I find your presentations interesting and your story compelling. I grew up in NYC and had little experience with Mormonism and Mormons until moving to Arizona and living in the city of Mesa (a very Mormon community). I have worked alongside many Mormons over the course of my career. I can never recall being preached to or invited to accept a copy of the BoM. I am grateful for that. Thanks for the videos and your sharing of your journey. I will continue to watch. 🙂
Girl!, you are doing the work 🎉. Keep at it. We got your back. Thank you for taking us with you on your journey.