Family rumours have they turned out to be true?

[Cybermouse]

Oooooh, Harewoodhouse,

Thats one family myth/legend I would love to sink my teeth into. How intruiging! Love to know if you find any truth behind the myth some time.


Bron

[harewoodhouse]

  well cybermouse if you can figure it out you are more then welcome to try...I have been up against a brick wall for years,I have looked high and low and cannot find away around it, my mother and grandfather were determined to figure it out and they never did before they died ,after my mother passed and I found photos etc that she had left of herself at dunham Massey (the family estate) and I found out that the place was in the hands of the national trust  it wasn't hard to find that all the papers had been sent to ryland uni so I wrote to them and got a nice reply saying that he had heard there were rumours but not the type of thing a family would right down and only the really old papers were given to the uni not the time frame we would be looking at if it was Sarah, and as I say I now think it was an older story but still something very fishy with Sarah's" marriage" , also I know at one point my grandfather had written to the Grey family and had gotten a reply that he said he would show me when I got older and that they were a lovely family...I had totally forgotten about it until I cleared up my mothers papers and by then my grandfathers things were long gone.

[Emmeline]

Hello Everyone - I have enjoyed reading the stories on this thread.

I have recently finished reading a delightful book written by Humphrey Lyttleton - It Just Occurred To Me - pub.2006.

In this he says :-

It matters not if stories of our quirks and foibles pass, through repetition and embroidery, from fact into fiction.
They are, after all, the stuff of immortality..........

[justmej]

Most of my dear old Mum's stories have been proved one way or another...except the one about....
One of the rellies was a policeman involved in the Sydney Street Siege in London.
Haven't come to grips with that one yet...there again maybe he was one of the terrorists
Sylvia
PS anyone know if there are lists for those involved anywhere?

Some of the names that I have come across during research on the above, which may be of interest are: -

Police Officers who died or were injured in original raid at Houndsditch  -

Died - Sergeant Bentley, Sergeant Thomas Tucker and PC Choat

Injured - PC Woodhams and Sergeant Bryant

Some of the Police Officers involved in the Sidney Street siege: -

Chief Superintendent John Stark
Superintents John Mulvaney and John Ottaway
Detective Inspectors Wensley, Willis, Collinson and Newall
Detective Sergeants Leeson and James Thurlow
Inspectors Frank Hallam and Thomas Wheeler
Inspector Quinn - Scotland Yard
PC Albert Burridge

Firemen - Station Officer A. E. Edmunds, W.H. Wilks and Walter Herbert Drew

As there were over 50 attending officers to begin with, followed by 200 additional Metropolitan and City of London Police Officers, detachment of foot guards from the Tower and a section of Royal Horse Artillery from St John's Wood Barracks, these names are just a few of the many involved.

justmej

[cherryberry]

My mother insists that we are descended from Grace Darling. However, as far as I can make out we have no-one called Darling in our tree, and I don't think that Grace Darling married or had children to be descended from.

Having said all that, most of the stories that my mother has come out with have had some truth in them. We aren't descended from a famous railway engineer called Luke Wanless (he wasn't that famous) - but from one of his sisters. Christopher Rowntree didn't own a shop in Bishop Auckland called Duff and Rowntree, but the Rowntree involved in that may have been his cousin.

I just wish she'd write it all down so that I can have a real good look at it, but as is often the case with older people, she comes out with those "of course, you know that..." kind of comments that are just not quite enough to be going on with!

Wotty

Hello Wotty

Just a thought I have just been to Souter Light house in Marsden South Sheilds  Tyne and Wear and Robert Darling who was  Grace Darlings nephew worked and lived   there for 24 years,   maybe you are descended from him,  but then as you say you have not come across any Darlings as yet in you tree.   

cherry berry

[Anydogsbody]

Just picking up on Wotty's comments and the Grace Darling element in this thread

"My mother insists that we are descended from Grace Darling. However, as far as I can make out we have no-one called Darling in our tree, and I don't think that Grace Darling married or had children to be descended from".

When I was at primary school we had to write items about famous Britons, one of whom was Grace Darling. My mother seemed to know a lot about Grace and it turned out to be because my ggggrandmother was, according to her, Grace Darling's cousin; a term which I have come to realise can mean almost anything.
 
Grace didn't marry and have children so any descent from Grace tends to be indirect and it certainly hasn't been easy to establish the link but I have just about done it and the link seems to be through Grace Darling's brother, William Brooks Darling, and his wife, Jane Downey. Jane's mother, Margaret Swan, I think was my gggggrandmother's sister.......you see what I mean about descents being indirect!!!

The story was to some extent bolsterd up by the fact that my family has some artefacts allegedly given by the Forfarshire survivors to Grace who passed them on to my ggggrandmother(Euphemia Wallace ms Young).

So this story I think is true but I don't know about leprachauns in cupboards/attics. My grandfather used to tell me that if you unscrewed your belly button your legs would fall off so maybe not everything that grandparents say should be believed. 

[stonechat]

It has bee suggested in the families of some of the family history contacts with shared ancestry that we are descended from Milton the poet

I do indeed have Miltons in the tree
The furthest I have got back is William Milton, who started having children in Warfield, Berks in 1682

Milton's ancestors were it seems from Stanton St John in Oxfordshire

So no connection

[MarkyP]

This has been going for a while now, nice to see it back. 

Looking back at my contribution back on page six (3 years ago!) I've still yet to prove any of my family rumours. However last year I set about trying to find an elusive 2 x Great Uncle who, according to another family rumour had jumped ship in America, and everyone (in the family) was very ashamed. Well having found someone with the same name serving in the Navy in the 1871 census I managed to trace his Naval career. It turned out to be the right person and yes, he jumped ship in Halifax, Canada. So far so good, I then found an article on his marriage in Massachusetts in our local newspaper put in by his parents, which I thought was a bit strange considered he was a deserter. From the marriage I managed to trace his descendants right up to the mid 1990s, but the trail ran cold. But, last week, in an unrelated search I came across someone looking for information on my navy deserter, and I have now discovered a new (distant) cousin and information on an elusive line in my tree! 

It does pay to keep digging into those rumours!

[MarieC]

Well done, MarkyP!  You must feel so chuffed!    You've certainly demonstrated the importance of checking out rumours!

MarieC