Family story or fairy story?

[Ray T]

When I was a child - a long, long time ago! - I asked what had happened to my maternal grandfather and I was told simply that he had died.

When the only relative I had left was my (now late) mother, I asked her again and she admitted that she had no idea and had never met him. That was when I started researching my family history.

What I'd been told was actually the truth but not the whole truth. To cut a long story short, he set off on his travels before my mother was born and seems to have returned from Canada in 1930 with another wife notwithstanding the one he already had, my mother and her, by then deceased, sister. He died before I was born and I had no end of trouble tracking down his second "wife" who had lived barely three miles from where I grew up.

During the course of my researches, I made contact with a living relative from the "other" side of the family. He mentioned a family story of a murder which had allegedly taken place at or near my grandfather's house. The story proved to be true - a lodger had met her untimely death shortly after my grandfather had died. Researching the murder helped greatly in investigating the missing wife.

My advice would be that if you hear a story, investigate it. Even if it isn't true it may give you an insight into something else.

[Berlin-Bob]

Not definitely Royalty, but .... one side of our family (so the oral history goes) was related 'on the wrong side of the blanket' to the royal spanish Habsbergs. No way (at the moment) of proving or disproving it.

This remnds me of something we we used to say in our 'patter' (sales talks) as market traders, when I was younger: "As I was saying to the Duke of York the other day .... oops, sorry IN 'The Duke of York' the other day ..."

Now that was deliberately put in the 'patter' to raise a laugh, but what if someone misheard it, and started spinning family legends out of it ?

(almost Royal) regards,
Bob

[iluleah]

This remnds me of something we we used to say in our 'patter' (sales talks) as market traders, when I was younger: "As I was saying to the Duke of York the other day .... oops, sorry IN 'The Duke of York' the other day ..."

Now that was deliberately put in the 'patter' to raise a laugh, but what if someone misheard it, and started spinning family legends out of it ?

(almost Royal) regards,
Bob

I am sure many family stories are conceived like that a parent telling a story to their child, some fact, some fiction, embellish a little to make it interesting and the 'family story' is born and passed onto the next generation as 'fact'

[iluleah]

I think a lot of our ancestors probably went to their graves only knowing half-truths as they would not have had all the research opportunities that we have today.

I sense that I am like you iluleah, in wanting to know the whole truth about things.  Strangely, to my way of thinking not everyone is like this.

As previously said my Nana didn't know as she didn't ask, as children were 'seen and not heard' she 'thought' her mother 'might' have been married before, but didn't know ( it was her father who was previously married) so she must have listened in to some conversation someone had.

Yes I want to know, the good, the bad and the ugly. I have researched and really disliked an ancestor, felt empathy for others cried and laughed on finding information.

"Let sleeping dogs lie" was all my mother said, she never told me anything to help and to this day she doesn't know what I have found although I caught her sneaking a look at my FH folder with relief on her face. What she didn't know was it was my 1st FH folder (not the real one)and I had already found out what she was hiding 6 months into my research all put in the 2nd and real folder

[Top-of-the-hill]

  My grandfather told me that his father, when in the Navy, "raised the British flag on the Kuria Muria Islands" Where? you may well ask - off the coast of Oman. I was able to prove it was almost true. His ship called there on the way to Australia, and the captain negotiated the hand-over. They hoisted the flag and left two natives in charge of the flagpole!

[Finley 1]

There was the case the other day of the Man that thought he was a 'Kennedy' and has finally had it disproved.. by DNA  -

He seemed OK about it.

Yes I have found oodles, that family would and wouldnt want to know.. I sometimes hardly dare talk to cousins about my findings, because they deny it flat.. Even though I have Cert or Documentation or worse still a Bastardy record...

Its all part and parcel.

I was always told that my Grandad had been gassed in France and dropped off .. here.. in my home town and fell in love with the lady that nursed him

YEP all true, .. but he was already married back up there in Scotland and just didnt go back to her....

naughty -- His actual wife outlived him and was down as his widow when she died...

I did get upset by this.  in case there were children.. and searched on here and everywhere.. thankfully No..
I say that with a slight tinge of regret now  but then shake myself.

So I had a Naughty Grandad   and ... 2 Naughty G. G. G.s  not following form, one way or the other.  I dont know.

xin

[IgorStrav]

My family legend concerns my great grandfather, who apparently stole the money my great grandmother had been saving to visit her family back in Belgium and went to New York to make his fortune, leaving her in the lurch with all the children.

He failed miserably, returned with his tail between his legs but his wife wouldn't forgive him, and he therefore would hang round outside my grandmother's place of work (a cigar factory) to beg her for money.

Apparently my great grandmother would never forgive the Catholic Church as the nuns hadn't helped her when her husband ran away.

Lots of lovely details there, you'd think.

So my great grandfather was with the family in all the censuses including the 1901, by which time the youngest 'child' was 13 (and the oldest 31).  My grandmother was married on Christmas Day 1902, so presumably left work at that point to be a wife at home (I'm presuming this, but assume it must be true - she had her first child in May 1904).

So if it happened - and I assume something or other did - it must have happened between April 1901 and December 1902, and I've not been able to find any travel documentation to say it did.

All I do know is that poor great grandfather was in the workhouse in the 1911 and not with his wife and the children who stayed with her (although I can't find her in the 1911 despite many searches), and died from the workhouse in 1915.

I'll keep on looking, just to see if any records become available that mention him.....

It caused a permanent family rift with the Catholic Church, whatever the circumstances...