Cool. Being related would really jack up my PQ, or Pioneer Quotient. Otherwise I'm still squarely among the 2 percent of all Mormons in the world who have yet to finagle an ancestral tie to a handcart pioneer.

Few things are more important to a socially conscious Mormon than a high PQ. Crossing the plains is our version of voyaging on the Mayflower. The longer your bloodline has been in Utah, the higher your PQ and the more church cred you have.

For example, say your ancestor arrived in the Salt Lake valley with Brigham Young. That's nice but still only an average PQ. Thanks to polygamy, lots of Mormons are related to the original pioneers.

But assume that same ancestor poked along and didn't arrive in the valley until 1865. If you can prove he was starving, covered in tar and crickets, and wearing anvils for shoes, your PQ is irrelevant because your SAT (Suffering Along the Trail) score is through the roof.

True, it would be better if you were related to a member of the Mormon Battalion or someone imprisoned for polygamy, but that's the beauty of genealogy - dig hard and creatively enough and you can probably find it.

My wife has a lousy PQ. She's the first of her family to journey to Zion, and then it was by airplane. But we've determined that the flight was bumpy and she had a migraine, so her SAT score isn't a complete zero.

Conversely, I have a room-temperature PQ. My family came in 1863. But they walked here, so my SAT score is in the upper 50 percentile. With a little genealogical research, I could probably dig up a wolf bite or a crop failure to help out.

That's right, you can get extra credit. Connect your ancestor to a contact with a well-known historical person and see your church stock rise.

If Porter Rockwell shot your great-grandma by accident, you still have something to brag about. If J. Golden Kimball personally told your ancestor a joke, your PQ goes up. And if your ancestor didn't like the joke (or even just didn't get it) - that can boost your SAT score.

You won't find a people more concerned with their family trees than Mormons. Nothing makes us prouder of our ancestors than the horrible things that happened to them, including stuff that was entirely their own fault.

Ancestral hardship is important to Mormons because it "proves" the truthfulness of our theology. No one would go through all that if it weren't true, right?

Be careful with that.

It's OK to be proud of your ancestors. I'm proud of mine. They went through a lot to get me here. I sometimes wonder if they wondered if it was worth it.

One thing is certain. Even if misery helps improve faith, I doubt it's genetically inherited.

rkirby@sltrib.com