Hunting through the family closet.

Genealogy is the study of a person or families ancestors. But what happens to those dead persons who have their religious affiliation changed without there permission. You don’t think that happens, well it does. I do family research or genealogy and I’ve seen it happen. You come across information on family members that are all clearly of one religious group and then you find a single person in that group who recently was re-baptized by another religious group. Well one person made the comment to me it shouldn’t matter they are dead. Well tell that to the family they are related too. On more than one occasion of finding this kind of thing had happened they all want to know how to change it back. Believe me that’s the million dollar question. Wish I knew what to tell them.
I was told that archivers in other countries would ask people what their religious affiliation was before they would let them see records because of this very reason. They seem to have known about this problem before some of us found about about it.
Most of us know the group in question that practices this kind of behavior. I’m not mentioning names, they know who they are too, I’m sorry to say.
Those of us who are history majors are always appalled at people who want to re-write history for political or personal gain, but this is so personal that it has to stop. Changing history of this kind just to make it look like you had more converts is wrong. The practice needs to be stopped. If all the family members in the main line agree to changing a person that’s one thing, most of these people don’t even know it has happened to their ancestor.
Has this happened to someone your know, please tell us your story and if you had success with changing it back.