Myths debunked when doing family histroy.

[IgorStrav]

  I can't think of any myths in my family, but I am developing a theory that the Pay family originated in France. Apart from a couple of outposts in the North of the country, they have always been along the South coast, and I discovered a while ago that the name exists in France, mainly in the North-west. Some of the family like to think there is a connection to a rogue called Harry Pay in the Middle Ages. He was based in Poole, so the South coast/France link is there as well.

My bit of the Pay family (my cousin Ian) always claimed 'we came over with the Conqueror' but then he also claimed to be the first son of the first son of the first son of the first son of the first son of the family, and was offended as well as disappointed when my research conclusively demonstrated he was the first son of the first son of the first son of the first son of the third son of an illegitimate son, and so you could actually say we weren't Pays at all.

To be very fair to him, I think the primogeniture theory had come from his own father, passing on some theory or other from our grandfather, who had been a Metropolitan Policeman evidently not very familiar with the truth of the situation.

I had to do a bit of counting on my fingers for that story 

[HughC]

The story handed down in our family was that the first Abbott ancestor in Ireland was a brother of Archbishop George Abbot, sent to Dublin as Master of the Rolls.  A cousin of my father was a professional genealogist in the days before the internet, so was familiar with archives and record offices.  She looked into it and found that nobody named Abbot or Abbott has ever held that office.  What she did find was John Abbott, brewer and steward to the Inns of Court (a master at rolling the barrels, perhaps).  I imagine his grandchildren were told “Grandpapa had something to do with the law courts”; John rose rapidly through the ranks with every retelling of the tale, until he held the highest legal office in the land!  Such is the stuff as trees are made on.

Rather more recently, and quite by chance, I came across an obituary of someone who had spent all his working life with the George Abbott brewery in Canterbury.  I don’t know when that was founded, but if it has been going for a couple of centuries it seems likely that John was a member of the same family and carried on the trade in Dublin.  From “brewer, of Canterbury” to “Archbishop of Canterbury” is but a small step for a determined myth-maker.

[brigidmac]

My grandmother told me that she'd met granddad at a wedding and that they were some kind of cousins

I've been looking for connections for ages .

Finally found his elder sister marrying her cousin ...so they were related by marriage .!

[Biggles50]

My Mrs family lore tells of her 2xGGF and his two daughters travelling over from Ireland.

Totally in error, family came from the same City as long as we can trace records.

Plus there is Zero Irish Ethnicity in her line.

[coombs]

My Mrs family lore tells of her 2xGGF and his two daughters travelling over from Ireland.

Totally in error, family came from the same City as long as we can trace records.

Plus there is Zero Irish Ethnicity in her line.

My gran always said there was Irish in the blood on her mother's father's side. No known Irish blood in the paper trail. However her grandfather in Oxford was buried in 1927 in a shared grave with an unrelated woman who was born in Wexford Ireland and died in 1912 in Oxford. So a kind of Irish connection, as they will be buried together for hopefully eternity, even though unrelated.

[DianaCanada]

This one is the opposite of Irish going to England.

Decades ago, before the internet, my late mother-in-law was working on her Irish ancestry, and somehow struck up a correspondence with a distant cousin in Ireland.  We went to visit him, believe it was in Leitrim.  He told us the Brydges family (m-in-law's grandmother was a Jane Brydges born in that area) were descendants of John Brydges, who was made a Lord, at one time the Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and he had custody of Lady Jane Grey and briefly, Elizabeth I (as princess). Apparently a Brydges was given land in Ireland.  So far, still a myth.  The family was C of E and spelled it the same way.

One of my relative's widow married for the second time, a Michael Faraday (actually her first husband's cousin on the other side) who was born in Clapham, Yorks. ca 1862.  When he died in 1934, he was proclaimed to be the last living descendant of Michael Faraday, the esteemed scientist, whose father had moved the family to London from Westmorland, and the fact that Michael the scientist had no children, pretty well puts this family myth to rest.  (I only found out about the spurious claim when I read his obit).

[ThrelfallYorky]

... Ain't families wonderful?
TY

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I had to follow up Diana's tale about Brydges, as it is a fairly well known name round here. The man who was Lieutenant of the Tower was later Baron Chandos, and when the title became extinct in the late 18th century, a rather eccentric man called Egerton Brydges tried to claim the title. After much litigation the claim was rejected as groundless, although he never seems to have accepted the result.
  The Brydges were a large and rather complicated part of the local gentry of East Kent.

[coombs]

Another myth debunked is when people say "the census will give which cottage our ancestors lived in then". Maybe more likely in later census records but not so much in earlier records, and even for later records you still have to do a bit of digging to find where in the village or hamlet the cottage/house/farm was. In cities it was easier as houses were numbered more often and streets named.