Tall tales or truth?

[coombs]

It is true though that most of us descend from landed gentry and royalty. When people say that the often bog standard cliche reply is "Yes as I am sure they fathered many illegitimate children".

True but I am not talking about philandering but people who have managed to find (eg, Danny Dyer) royal ancestors through paper trails and the fact that over the years the fortune died out due to many children, and people who did not do as well with their inheritance. Also only the eldest male inheriting the titles etc. Ancestors getting wealthier the further back you go, leaving good paper trails and finding nobility.

Yes odds are that most of us are descended from some sort of landed gentry.  It's just that so many of us would not have a complete paper trail to prove it.  If you're descended from the youngest son of the youngest son of the youngest son wouldn't take that many generations to go down to middle class or lower.

I guess some are lucky enough to find a gateway ancestor, and others not so. It can depend a lot on many things. Also many daughters of wealthy worthy people married gentlemen, or mayors, or small time landowners, and their children ended up marrying farmers and yeomen and so on to farm workers etc.

So family tales about being descended from nobility are probably true at the end of the day, but hard to prove for many.

[roopat]

Well my OH tells some tall tales about his own family & himself. I have to bite my tongue every time I hear him tell other people stories about his youth /educational achievements / career which I know for a fact are grossly embellished. This has got worse since he retired but having known him since he was 25 I take no notice as I was there for most of these exaggerated events


Still irritating though! 

[iluleah]

Well my OH tells some tall tales about his own family & himself. I have to bite my tongue every time I hear him tell other people stories about his youth /educational achievements / career which I know for a fact are grossly embellished. This has got worse since he retired but having known him since he was 25 I take no notice as I was there for most of these exaggerated events


Still irritating though! 

 

....and that is exactly how many of these family tales begin. 

[IgorStrav]

Well my OH tells some tall tales about his own family & himself. I have to bite my tongue every time I hear him tell other people stories about his youth /educational achievements / career which I know for a fact are grossly embellished. This has got worse since he retired but having known him since he was 25 I take no notice as I was there for most of these exaggerated events


Still irritating though! 

I had a boss - and we're still connected as colleagues - who told the wildest tales about office events in which she was a major participant. 

I knew just how true these were, since I'd been present at many of them, and I can certainly say untruths and exaggerations never got in the way of a good story.

But it's tricky when you're calle on to confirm the details of something which never actually happened......

[coombs]

My aunt is like that, she is always telling very embellished stories. And on occasions we have had to correct her, saying "I never did that".

[Vance Mead]

The story my mother told me was that her Pontifex ancestors were descended from Pope Martin V, who was Pontiff in the early 15th century right after the Great Schism. I have researched them and they were husbandmen, a few carters, a cook, and one priest. So I'll put this in the Tall Tales column.

[Guyana]

My Dad's tales were something else,
1. "Grandad" was a pirate. (His mother had piece of watered silk to prove it!) There was dispute over the last lot of loot, and it went to Chancery, so the whole lot was lost
2. "Grandad" was one of a gang of (no doubt drunken) men who took a bowl of soup up to a corpse hanging on a gibbet, with a comic ending.
Dad's been dead 30 years, and I wouldn't get any more sense out of him, so how would I research that lot?

[Stanwix England]

Not my family in this case, but the number of people I've seen claim their ancestor was supposed to be on the Titanic but didn't go for some last minute happenstance is huge. I'm sure it was true for a few people, but if it was true for everyone I've heard it claimed for and they'd all actually got on board the ship, it would have sank before it hit the iceberg because of the added weight alone.

[coombs]

It is similar to how many people from East London claim they lived on Vallance Road Bethnal Green and knew the Krays, and had tea with Violet Kray. The Blind Beggar must be the largest pub in the world as many people say they were in there the night Ronnie shot George Cornell. Or they knew Alan Sugar as a youngster.