RootsChat.Com

Reminds me of when I was a child.  My father would often say "when we lived at the castle" to which my mother always responded "you mean when they lived on their boat".  My mum was right - boatmen were part of his family - no evidence at all of hierarchy.   


Added:  Unfortunately both had passed away before I even started on Family History.

"The oral history about him are all wrong"

In my experience, there is at least a grain of truth to the stories.  For example, my father told me that my gg-grandfather did not serve in the Civil War because he had been badly crippled in a farming accident.  The truth is that gg-grandpa managed to squeak by to his 45th birthday without being drafted.  He was crippled in a farming accident but that was many years after the war.  Another example:  My grandmother said that her great uncle married a widow named Curtis who had a daughter named Stella.  I wrestled with this for ages before I finally figured out that she was a widow but Curtis was her maiden name and Stella was a niece who she adopted much, much later.

My advice is look at the years they lived, research what records existed so civil, parish, census, tax, land, wills, newspapers and such things as trade directories, unions... (my great grandfather was a farmer so there are lots of farm records) and attempt to find each one. The oral hstory about him are all wrong, but it tells me lots about my family, that they want to hide information and in some of their case also are prepared to  lie to 'keep a secret' my nana told me his name( wrong name) , she had met/known him so knew him and lied about his name just to 'keep the family secret/shame'

In some cases, you might find newspaper reports which support the family lore [not that everything printed in a newspaper is necessarily true, of course].