Dynastic sealings
What the numbers show
Adoption was not a metaphor and it was not permanent. Men took their adoptive father's surname, farmed his land and called him Father — and some of those bonds were formally cancelled, while the whole practice was abolished within a single lifetime.
Could an adoption be undone?
YES, but distinguish two things. A handful were FORMALLY CANCELLED. Far more simply LAPSED - Stapley writes that after the exodus the adoptive relationships 'quickly attenuated, then disappeared', without anyone dissolving anything.
The cases we can document
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John D. Lee's adoptions
Cancelled early, and comprehensively enough that Joseph F. Smith omitted them from his official compilation of sealings and adoptions altogether. Twenty-two people had been adopted into Lee's family; the record of them was effectively withdrawn.
Jonathan A. Stapley, 'Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism', Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (Summer 2011): 53-117, Table 1 (p. 66 of the print run) Table 1, source note
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After the 1894 revelation
When Wilford Woodruff ended adoptive sealing in 1894, the First Presidency instructed that there be 'as little changing of the work and the records as possible' - and then authorised SEVERAL CANCELLATIONS OF ADOPTION within the first month.
Jonathan A. Stapley, 'Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism', Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (Summer 2011): 53-117, Table 1 (p. 66 of the print run) p. 113 of the print run, citing First Presidency Letterpress
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The general fade
The commonest ending was not a cancellation at all. Adoptive ties 'quickly attenuated, then disappeared' after the exodus; no temple was available to perform the ritual for thirty-one years, and by the time one was, the theology had moved on. Some adopted people went on calling their adoptive fathers 'father' regardless.
Jonathan A. Stapley, 'Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism', Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (Summer 2011): 53-117, Table 1 (p. 66 of the print run) p. 81 of the print run
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Young's own cooling
Young modified his view because of how some adopted sons behaved - Stapley names Lee as a likely cause - and because, once in Utah, he began receiving letters from people asking to be adopted to him, or trying to leverage an existing adoption, for money. In 1848 he told his family: 'I don't care how many r sealed to me - nor who - if a man steals & wants to come into my fam - I tell him he must stop that - or lying or swearing.' By 1860 he was still insisting he and Heber Kimball 'would be able to draw their children to them again, even if they should turn away.'
Jonathan A. Stapley, 'Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism', Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (Summer 2011): 53-117, Table 1 (p. 66 of the print run) pp. 86, 94, citing Brigham Young family minutes, 12 March 1848
No overall count exists. No overall count of cancelled adoptions exists in the sources consulted. Do not put a number on it.
Things worth knowing
Brigham Young announced in March 1846 that people should 'hereafter [be] called by ther Name that they received by adoption'. Some adopted sons, John D. Lee among them, took the surname Young and called him 'Father'.
Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) p. 160
No ritual adoptions were performed during the exodus, but the apostles kept records of men seeking entry to their families pending a new temple.
Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) p. 160
At Winter Quarters, Young's 'family organization' was a conglomeration of about THREE HUNDRED men linked to him by relation, friendship or ritual. Wilford Woodruff called it 'the tribe of Brigham'.
Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) p. 160
Brigham Young on the doctrine: 'By this power men will be sealed to men back to Adam... It is a great and glorious doctrine, but the reason I have not preached it in the midst of this people, is, I could not do it without turning so many of them to the Devil. Some would go to hell for the sake of getting the Devil sealed to them.'
Journal of Discourses 9:269
And on what it did not buy: 'when men want to be sealed to me to have me feed and clothe them, and then act like the Devil, I have no more feeling and affection for them than I have for the greatest stranger in the world.'
Journal of Discourses 9:270
Except Robert B. Thompson, who died in 1841, every adoptive father in the Nauvoo temple was a polygamist. Winslow Farr was the only one not in the Council of Fifty.
Jonathan A. Stapley, 'Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism', Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (Summer 2011): 53-117, Table 1 (p. 66 of the print run) n. 38
The practice ended in 1894, when Wilford Woodruff received a revelation limiting adoptive sealings and told the Saints to be sealed to their own forebears instead.
Church History Topics, 'Sealing'
Where to read more
This whole section rests on Jonathan A. Stapley, "Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism", Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (2011), and on John G. Turner's Pioneer Prophet. What the vocabulary meant is set out on the doctrine page; the ritual's end in 1894 is on the chronology, where dynastic sealings can be filtered on and off.