Daniel H. Wells, LDS Apostle, Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah - 6 Inconsistencies, 5 source conflicts

The curator is listed on this profile as Randy Stebbing; however, one of the great things about Geni is that we all have the ability to fix profiles when we find problems.

These profiles tend to be an amalgamation of the best information available at the time. They are not usually feet-on-the-ground genealogically perfect. Those who contribute to each profile have varying degrees of expertise, so probably the most helpful way to think of these profiles is that they are an amalgamation of crowd-sourced information - a good starting point for additional, more expert, research. Additionally, inconsistencies and conflicts tend to creep in when profiles are merged.

It sounds like this is a profile you know a great deal about! Was he one of your ancestors? Please feel free to correct errors as you find them. It's always helpful to add notes to the profiles explaining your sources and reasoning.

I understand everything you stated. I especially understand that this profile is a genealogical work in progress, as well. Your explanation of inconsistencies and conflicts coming from the merging of profiles explains some of my reasons for questioning the curator (s), of this profile.

For what it's worth, there is a decided lack of consistency in Church records about these pioneers. Much of the information on Geni about LDS pioneers has been ported over from familysearch.com by well-meaning people, but I find that those trees are loaded with errors. Much of it is based on the memories of elderly people - many of whom learned the hard way that giving too much information about polygamous families was dangerous.

That's just part of the reason that there's so much controversy about the number of wives a particular Church member may have had, for instance. It can be very difficult to accurately document their lives, and nearly impossible to do so in a diplomatic, objective fashion.

I'm not in any way saying that oral histories aren't valuable. Especially when it comes to the details of people's daily lives and the reasons that drove them, oral history is invaluable. I just think that it's doubly important to try to find accurate sources to back them up.

Sorry, *familysearch.org, not .com