Family stories rooted in some truth.

[coombs]

In a small follow up to my "Myths debunked when doing family history" thread, we often have heard family stories that either prove to be true or prove to be wrong, or have some basis in truth.

My paternal gran always said there was some Irish in the blood on her Oxfordshire born mother's side. For years I have tried to find a link but none obvious so far.

In 1819 one of her ancestors James Smith married Sarah Inkpen and one of the 2 witnesses was Andrew Carney, which sounds Irish but he may have just been a friend of James who worked in similar trades as both worked in the tin/gilder making business. James died in 1849 and in 1841 in Oxford city he said "Not born in county". Other witness to the 1819 wedding was Hannah Hawkes, whose aunty married a Smith in Buckinghamshire in 1786.

But I think I may have found out why my gran thought there was Irish in the family. Her maternal grandfather James Edgington was buried in Rose Hill cemetery in Oxford in July 1927, and was buried with a woman named Anne Bough who died in 1912, who I have found was born in Wexford, Ireland. As far as I know she was not a relative, her maiden name was Delaney. It was quite common for people to be buried in a grave with a stranger, and James Edgington and Anne Bough are the only 2 people buried in this certain grave. Maybe my gran knew about this and assumed she was related, unaware that 2 or more unrelated people can be buried in the same plot.

[Josephine]

As I was researching my family tree, I learned that my great-grandfather had five half-siblings but only one survived to adulthood. In tracing that man's life, I learned that he drowned at the age of 33: his body was found in the river. The informant on his death record was my great-grandfather.

When I told my aunt about this, she remembered being told that someone in the family had drowned while poaching salmon in the river. One of the newspaper reports said that he "had been absent from his home during the night, but no anxiety seemed to be manifested with regard to his movements."

It sounds to me like the story about him drowning while poaching fish was probably true.

[LizzieL]

I've got two stories that have a thread of truth (well one is actually OH's

My husband's great grandmother died shortly after giving birth to OH's grandfather's younger brother, leaving great granddad a widower with a two year old to look after (the new baby died shortly after birth) My mother-i-l always sat that great granddad married his late wife's sister. What actually happened was that one great grandad's sisters died shortly after giving birth (baby survived) and it was her widower who married another of great grandad sisters. The second sister also had a child, so he was 1st cousin and half brother to the other sister's child!

The other story from my family. My grandmother said she had a "black sheep" cousin who had either been caught stealing and fled to Australia, or emigrated to Australia and committed the crime there - she was a bit vague on the sequence of events. I got the impression it was a female cousin, but I couldn't find any connected to Australia.
Then I found a male cousin some years older than grandma, who had been a grocer's assistant in Jersey. I don't know if he committed any crime there but he did go to Australia, got married and was employed as an insurance salesman. He left his wife, took up with another woman and came back to Britain with his children and the other woman, whose son married my relative's eldest daughter. The "black sheep" cousin set up an insurance company in London and defrauded a lot of people. He fled the country before he could be prosecuted, supposedly to South America. 
Questions even asked in Parliament
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1912/aug/07/law-car-and-general-insurance-corporation

[DianaCanada]

I remember my mother telling me, before I began the heady journey that is family history, that her grandfather had a picture of the Duke of Wellington hanging in the family home in Heathfield, Sussex.  He claimed that his grandfather had fought at Waterloo.
Great-granddad was a little off on his years - his grandfather, Stephen Carly Oliver, signed up in 1822 with the 2nd Regt. of Foot (Royal West Surrey).  He served for over 18 years but most of his service seems to have been in India and Afghanistan (Kabul).

[coombs]

My paternal grandfather did mention an ancestor on his father's side who went abroad. I then found his 3xgreat grandfather was sent to Australia in 1791 for stealing a hog, so he must have heard the family story passed down the generations.

[Cell]

Quite a few of ours always  turn out to have some  truths in them.  I never completely write the oral stories off as I find that  there's usually some grains of truth  which   have been mixed up over time when its been orally passed down.

Two off the top my head,  my grandmother  in law ( hubby's  grandmother) was told by her father that her mother had been killed by a horse running over her in the street(  she died when grandmother in law  was just  2 yr old , so no very clear recollection of her mother's death at the time.) .

A couple  of years after my hubby's
grandmother  passed on ( who I knew too and she always told me too her mother
was killed by a  horse running over her),  I ordered her mother's death  cert expecting to see a horse accident as cause of death - nope, she died of just  heart disease, no horse , no anything, except plain ole  heart disease. I found it odd  at the time  why on earth would her father lie to her, and make up a story about a horse killing her mum.

Then a couple  of years later , I  found out where the horse must have come into it .
I came across  an  article  in the newspapers  when grandmother's mother was  just a  toddler . She was  playing in the middle of street - A horse and cart hit her . Itsaid she was in serious condition and   had broken several  bones from the incident, where it states she was rushed  to hospital.
Maybe grandmother's mother suffered serious health problems all her life after this horse and cart accident when she was a toddler( she was only in her 20s when she died  from heart disease,  very young to have heart disease, so perhaps her husband, grandmother's father,  told his daughter it was  this horse that killed her and  maybe grandmother took it quite literally.) .


Another one  ,my father in law always said  there was a  monk ( as in monks in a monastery) in his family, but couldn't remember his name, just  that it was one of his grandfather's lot,  and  he thought  it was one of his grandfather's brothers that went off to be a monk.

I  never found  this monk of his ( all the brothers and so on I traced - no monks anywhere , or anyone that disappeared  of the face of the earth lol) ,  BUT   I did find that his grandfather's wife's  ( my father in laws  step grandmother)  sister married the local Reverend.
  I think  it's highly likely that father in law's step G uncle Reverend  is his  so called "monk " lol . ( father in law was eccentric  at the best of times lol. It's like sifting through  all the grains to get to the truths  amongst those grains)


Kind regards

[fiddlerslass]

My mother told me that someone in the family played the violin in the Eden Theatre orchestra in Bishop Auckland. On researching my Thompson family (mum's mother's family) I found that William Thompson was not only a violinist, he was a "musical director" according to the 1891 census. This was at the time that Arthur Jefferson the well known Theatre manager and father of Stan Laurel was in charge.

https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/26538

By 1901 William had moved to Leeds and was still a musical director. He also, like his father, made violins, though I have yet to find an example. I have not yet been able to establish at which Leeds theatre he was employed.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  My great grandfather spent 20 years in the Royal Navy, and several years were spent in the Coastguard Watch off the Humber. He had fairly recently married his first wife and she lived in Hull with 2 daughters. I am descended from the son of his second marriage and the family wondered how he came to be called Stanley, with the idea that he was named after one of gr-grandad's captains. The man they remembered had an unusual surname, so I could check. He wasn't Stanley, but his son was, and he was born in 1860, just before the time in question.
   That is as far as it went until I got in touch with a descendant of the first wife. Their branch of the family had a story that gr-grandad had rescued the captain's son from some danger, possibly drowning(?). So it seems there is something behind this, though I am not sure what!

[coombs]

My 5xgreat gran was born in 1765 in London to a father who was one of the last Huguenot immigrants, and a London born mother of full Huguenot heritage. Yet I never heard of any family stories of French blood in the tree. My maternal gran died before I was born, she died suddenly aged 50 so may have known about her French blood, I am not sure.

I was always told that her mother met her Durham born father in London and that story proved to be true.