Family rumours have they turned out to be true?

[yn9man]

Ragna -

First, welcome to Rootschat.

What a tragic story and so sad.

yn9man

[alftabor]

My great grandmother claimed that her Mother and two sons were drowned in a boating accident at Cowes and that her Mothers father was a baronet.
I have researched this claim and found:-
her Mothers father was a journeyman Tanner in Bermondsey no record of title.
Her Mother died along with one son of Typhus in Bermondsey within one week of each other in 1855
I can find no record of any other son.
Great Grandmother was a long way from Bermondsey living is South Australia with her Husband incapacitated with paralysis from a stroke for some twenty years.
So I guess  her fantasies were some comfort in adversity
My aunt was always searching for a link to Royalty :-
This story was the spur to my continuing interest in my Genealogy

[pjbuk007]

This is such an interesting thread!

Who will write the book?  It might be less of a gargantuan task for one of us (I dare to call myself "us" now) to make an article or two for one of the FH magazines?  Or several of these great stories could make up a monthly column?

I start my (yet another) creative writing course in February.

My father told me various family stories.  Unfortunately he died before I became properly involved with family history.  I did start in his last couple of years, but we knew his time was limited and I felt guilty about appearing to pick his brains because I knew he was on the way out. 

A selection of the rumours:-

His Cornish mother was one of the last Cornish speakers and had second sight, read the tea-leaves.  The latter was true, and a relative I found through the Cleveland FHS says her part of the family claimed this as well.  But I am not sure how likely it is that she spoke Cornish.

We were related by marriage to Abraham Lincoln.  In the fifties there were letters in the Burton family bible to prove this but they disappeared when my father's aunt died whilst he was abroad.   It turns out that my Dad's maternal grandmother had the maiden name LINCOLN.  But they seem to have come from NRY and Durham, and Abe seems to have been thoroughly traced to early emigrants from Norfolk.  So not sure if that was true about the US President.  My great-uncle Newark BURTON went to the USA and became a Judge.  He called himself Newark Lincoln Burton in the latter part of his time there.  Was this because of a real relationship, or just to sound good?

Other BURTONS and BENNETTS from N Yorkshire emigrated to the USA late 19th and early 20th century.  One was a judge in Philadelpia.  My grandparents had a ticket to ride, but my grandmother (of second sight fame) got as far as Liverpool but refused to get on the boat which sank.[/i]   This all intrigues me, but I am brickwalled and of course it may not be true.

But what fun it all is!

[janescroft]

 
I think the idea of articles in the FHmag is a great idea,pjbuk007!
Are you volunteering? I'm sure others would contribute.

[pjbuk007]

Not really, but I put that in because I am SOOOO lazy about writing and ought to try harder.

Thinking about it, I am not quite sure how to go about it anyway.

Ideas welcome!

[Lydart]

His Cornish mother was one of the last Cornish speakers

I think the last was one Dolly Pentreath (or Poltreath ?) from Mousehole ??   Its a vague memory of something I read when last in Cornwall !   She died about 1780 or 1800 ?

[saxonw.]

We always had a romour that Gg grandma was a Nightingale Nurse. Well she was a Mrs Baker  FACT  The nearest on eon the list of Nurses held by the Florence Nigthingale Musuem was a  Mrs Barker (Well it could be a Mrs Baker it's transcribed none too clearly) . Her first husband she claimed on her first sons birth certificate to be a Private in the 7th Dragoon Guards  FACT The 7th Dragoon guards didn't go the the Crimea FACT when she married him in Manchester (although he's from a Birmingham family) he is down as a labourer. Next turns up in 1861 claiming to be a widow.Needless  to say no sign of a death certificate. I  don't think she was one!  And the house she gives for address for her marriage in 1853 doesn't exist in either 1851 or 1861!

[pjbuk007]

Lydart

Yes, I think I read something like that about when Cornish died out.  But if so, how come there is such a resurgence in the Cornish language now?  Someone must have remembered it!

[Simon G.]

No doubt scholars remembered it.  Lots of languages have been dead for centuries, but a numbers of academics learn them.  After all, it was only in the last couple of years that they dropped Anglo Saxon as being a compulsory part of english courses at Oxford...and Anglo Saxon hasn't been spoken since the 12th century!