Family rumours

[Bellejazz]

1.My Mums paternal side are descended from German Immigrants - myth confirmed

2.The family name was anglicised during WW1 (since Germans weren't very popular at the time) - myth confirmed

3.The first German ancestor to come here jumped ship to find gold - myth currently unconfirmed

4. The family was obviously very wealthy as they have a huge headstone in a Victorian cemetery that looks like something royalty would have - myth BUSTED (my Aunt knows no limits when it comes to exaggeration    )

[mrs_tease]

The truth - they come from Hull. No pilgrimage there planned, and they keep saying there must be some mistake (there isn't)! 

meles

  and whats up wit' 'ull?    lol

[Robbo]

My step - father's family thought they were related to Bonar Law.  He came from Scotland, theirs' from Wiltshire.

My Grandmother and her sister allways believed that their mother died from a fall. Death Certificate says she died from Meningitis.  They were quite young when she died so this was the story they were told

[Pinetree]

OH's Gr Grandfather was the illegitimate son of Lord Halifax and his mother was married off to cover it up - not true his parents were already married when he, and his two older siblings were born BUT

another researcher of his wife's family has had the rumour passed down that her mother was the illegitimate daughter of the then Lord Halifax 

Not sure what to make of it all 

Pinetree

[Ruth_T]

Maybe he invented custard flavour sweets ?  There's usually a grain of truth in a family rumour somewhere ! 

Well, that gave me and my family a right giggle!!!

[frederickay]

family myths .. True or false..
i have discovered a grain of truth in most..
1... us poor nzers have Spanish blood ... doubted but pr oven .my gggggreat granddad is Marquis don Carlos Martinez DE irujo...
 2.Spanish blood rich and noble .. really doubted but pr oven. as above..
3. family related to Ernest Jones chartist .. doubted but pr oven .
 4.great great uncle Henry Green hung for murder .believed lol but possibly disproved tho family letters and oral history believe it
5. Rich Wharton aunts owned Myers ... disprov en but definitely owned Fox Furniture factory .. well the upholsteress in family married the owner .. pr oven.
6. Isabella Wharton married Anglo Indian son of minor nobility Richard Ma let   .. Pr oven ..
& marriage cert declares her father John milner Wharton  a "gentleman " not pr oven ,Proved instead he  had done hard labour for stealing money from the mail..
I could go on but as i said a lot of truths and half truths have an piece  of truth . Having reread that is it coincidence i have been able to prove the infamous things as much or more than the other ??... its all part of the fun .
Jan

[Jean McGurn]

I only have three myths one of which was busted years before the internet was invented.

1) 'Machine Gun' Jack McGurn who was Al Capones henchman was a relative gone wrong -
NO he was a Sicilian who - according to a book I read in the 1960's about the Chicago Mobsters - had opened a Chicago phone book and picked out an Irish name. All though it is possible the name he nicked was a relative.

2) The family of high court judges in England - The Lord Chief Justice Judge Stable, his sons Judge Stable and Judge Owen were cousins of grandmother.
NO Grandmothers line was from StableS and her mother-in-law was from OwenS

3) Great Grandfather McGurn came over from Ireland after being disowned by his family for not going into the family business. He was a wheelwright they were farmers.
NO. He had been born in Liverpool and his parents had come over before the potatoe famine really hit the Irish hard. I found him, his wife and Grandfathers eldest brother on the 1841 census. I personally think it was religion being the reason. One Catholic and the other Protestant.

Jean

 

[Nick29]

Well, since I started this thread (thanks - I'd forgotten all about it !) I have dispelled another myth.   This one was so rife in the family that I still believed it myself at the time I made the original post.  This one alleged that my maternal grandfather was the Head Gardener in Greenwich Park, London.  In common with most family stories, this did have a grain of truth in it.  My grandfather was a contract labourer in Greenwich Park (when the 1911 census came out, it confirmed it), but he was never on the staff.  Apparently, one day he was told to clear out the weeds from a large pond in the park, because a Royal visit was expected, and he spent two days in the pouring rain wading in the pond to remove the weeds.  He was already an asthma sufferer, and he developed pneumonia, and was ill for six weeks, and he lost his job.   Fortunately his brother got him a job in the local gas works, but he still did a lot of part-time gardening.  He rarely came home without some flowers, fruit or vegetables for his wife and family.  Sadly, he died 2 years before I was born, so I never knew him.

[pwitz]

One of my first challenges was to find my Granny - born in Ireland, according to my Auntie that is.  I spent ages looking through the records, but finally sent for a cert with the right name and date of a lady born in West Sussex - which was the right one!  On telling my Auntie she said "All the family have dark hair and dark eyes so I thought they looked Irish!"

A rumour in the family is that my Great Aunt Fanny (yes, really!) was nanny to the late actor David Niven.  Don't know how to research this - any suggestions?

Polly