Tall tales or truth?

[iluleah]

We all have had family tell us stories about our/their ancestors and many of these stories are passed on decade after decade often added to or changed at each telling.... So have you been told of the famous, land owner, titled, or explorer ancestor and then when you researched found the story to be a tall tale?

[IgorStrav]

Still searching for evidence that my great grandfather 'stole all his wife's money that she'd been saving to visit her family back in Belgium, and ran away to the US'.

Have theorised for years when this might have happened, and what evidence might be available to confirm it, but irritatingly there's only negative evidence - ie that he wasn't with his family in the 1911.  Not really good enough, is it.....

[iluleah]

Still searching for evidence that my great grandfather 'stole all his wife's money that she'd been saving to visit her family back in Belgium, and ran away to the US'.

Have theorised for years when this might have happened, and what evidence might be available to confirm it, but irritatingly there's only negative evidence - ie that he wasn't with his family in the 1911.  Not really good enough, is it.....

Yes you are right stories built up around separation/divorce don't have the records to prove/disprove so it is like 'walking through treacle'
I can relate to this story with my own ancestry where 'others' have taken on one parties story and  it 'fits their purpose' to do so, whereas the reality is something completely different

[Treetotal]

When I started to do the Family tree, I asked my Uncle, who was in his 90s about his claim that Amy Johnson, the famous Aviatrix was a relative as I couldn't make any connection to the Johnson Family as her roots were in Denmark...he told me that she wasn't actually related but the family lived next to my Grandparents and him and his siblings called Amy's parents Aunt and Uncle and that my Aunt Maggie went to school with her.
We also have Carrolls in our tree from Ireland, he also claimed that Lewis Carroll was a distant relative...but that was his pen name 
Carol

[IgorStrav]

I always tell the tale, which i "think" I read here, somewhere, about a family's Welsh heritage, which remained unproven by the diligent researcher back through many many generations, until s/he noticed at one point the family had lived in Swansea Street, in - I think - Birmingham.

[coombs]

Nan always said there was some Irish heritage on her mother's side in Oxford. The claim remains unproven but James Smith of Oxford was a tin plate worker, and one of the witnesses to his marriage was Andrew Carney, sounds an Irish surname. No connection to Andrew has been confirmed yet but he did live in Oxford at the same time but was from London originally. James Smith said he was not born in county in 1841, but popped it in 1849, 2 years before the first very useful census. The Carney's could have been Scottish as opposed to Irish. Carnie is the Scottish variant, and people were very casual about the surname spellings back then.

[Treetotal]

  I remember someone on the photo board, years ago, who posted a photo who she believed to be her Great Grandmother. It was a Carte de Viste of a young Queen Victoria, she took some convincing, she believed that because it was in an album which had belonged to her Grandmother that the lady must be a relative. It was pointed out to her that famous people's photos were often collected. 
Carol

[Ian Nelson]

My Granny Cathcart ( Gladys Emma Tubby of Swaffham, Norfolk, a very broad Norfolk broad) was full of scary stories but her most often told story was about her brothers, George and Dot Tubby who both had 'Power over Horses'.  They calmed an irritable horse by walking round it 3 times and blowing up its nose, after which the horse stood as if hypnotised.  They also worked on the estate of Stephen Fry's parents as mentioned in his biog.  She said her brother Dot was a molecatcher in Whaplode, Kesteven ( part of Lincolnshire ) and I only half-believed her until taken on a Norfolk holiday trip by my Uncle Alan Lewis Tubby and we went off route to find Dot at Whaplode to tell him that his brother Lewis Tubby, (Policeman in Yorkshire) had died.  He approached the house across a ploughed field in his bare feet and he was bald as a coot, not even eyebrows and was carrying a sack full of dead moles for which the farmer paid him per corpse.  She also said one of my relatives was the Coachman to H. Rider Haggard.  He had connections with Norfolk / Suffolk and Isle of Wight, my ancestors localities.

[Ray T]

Some years ago, I had a ‘phone call from a recently discovered cousin whilst I was researching my long lost grandfather. He mentioned a conversation he overheard as a child when his parents were talking about a murder which took place at my grandfather’s house shortly after he died.

A couple of years later, I discovered that his “widow’s” lodger (it was a bigamous marriage) had been murdered in a nearby field on the way back from the pub.