Family rumours have they turned out to be true?

[Guyana]

My father was a tale-teller, especially after a pint or two. 
1, His grandfather was a pirate. (My g-mother had pieces of silk which were supposed to have come from spoils.) That there had been a fall-out over division of booty, it was taken to Court, and the lot was lost. This sounds more like a "privateer" tale, but the time- scale is all wrong anyway.
2. His g-father, (same one?) once took a bowl of soup up to a corpse on a gibbet, the cadaver belonging to someone hanged for sheep-stealing. Once again out of time.
Although we have a detailed tree going back many generations, I cannot see any way of finding links to these, unless there is a "Fairy" out there.
We did think that we had a link to the first, when my son found a man of the same name on a ship of Nelson's fleet at Trafalgar, but that turned out to be no more than a transcription error!
 

[lisalucie]

Love this thread!!! Most of our rumours have been slightly based on a true event and just exagerated over the years. Would just like to say though that I am now inflicting this "exageration" on my daughter.

Near us there is an aerospace museum (Cosford) and there is a plane on display there that my Grandad welded some part for back in the sixties. When we visited Cosford this fact became dramatised into "Grandad Roy made that plane!!!" 

[tink.tech]

Hi
this thread is great I have found no evidence for some rumors like my great grandmother was from a rich Jewish family, She has a Jewish name but as I have found baptism records for her ancestors I doubt that be I am still going back maybe its in there somewhere

But I did have a story from my grandad he told me an aunt owned a big stately home that he visited as a kid, my cousin recalls the same story but he never seemed to have told it to his own kids, they put it down to grandad pulling our leg, lol. there was very little money in there family and seenmed unlikely.
but as it turns out a completely true story!!! she was born into a fairly poor family, through very lucky circumstances and a few marriages started her own company and made millions brought a near derelict stately home did it up, needless to say she liked spending and died in a modest London house on her own leaving almost nothing, she did however keep two large stone lions from the big house in her garden at London, they must have looked hilarious, excentric doesn't begin to describe her!!!
I took my children to the house a couple of years back it was amazing.

Helen.

[imchad]

Hi

I was always remonded of Aunt Maggie (my faher's aunt) she died of flu when she was 19. I had trouble finding her death and when i did find it she was 23 when she died in 1919.  The story had just got a little twisted.

Ian

[andrewalston]

My mum remembers more family stories than anyone else in the family. Her side must have been much more inventive than my dad's side.

It was her story that we are descended from George Marsh - St. George the Martyr - which got me looking into family history in the first place. "There's always a George in each generation" turned out to be a blatant lie, and I have yet to find a link in the saint's direction other than the parish in which the family lived for at least 200 years.

One of her grandfathers was born in Lancaster, but not at the castle as she had been told.

Her other grandfather was not the "seventh son of a seventh son" as she had been informed, bit the warts were successfully charmed away nevertheless.

She has been the source of many stories of life in the 1930s and 1940s which seem invented for some television programme or other, but I BELIEVE HER.
A sample:
A fruit loaf had been forgotten in the oven of the range for over a day and had the texture of a brick. She and her sister carefully wrapped it in brown paper and left it on the wall by the tram stop as though it had been forgotten by someone getting on.

They sat inside and watched through the front window.

Someone got off a tram from town and saw the parcel. They picked it up and immediately got on the tram heading back towards town. I wonder what they though when the parcel was unwrapped?

Another:
Being on the outskirts of town, it seems they became known for providing hospitality for tramps, common in the 30s. Bear in mind that her father died when she was 8, and the family had very little.
A chap knocked on the door and asked for a drink of water. They invited him in, brewed up and made him a sandwich. A corner of the table was laid so he could sit down and feel civilised as he ate and drank.
As the chap was leaving, they pressed on him the fourpence fare for the tram to take him on to Westhoughton.
When they returned to clear the table, they found a half crown under the tablecloth.

[old rowley]

I don't know about true but I have plenty of family rumours that have kept the family guessing and my interest in dispelling them even greater.

Two of the tales concern police officers within the family. The first is that we are related to the policeman who was shot in the arm and then arrested the notorius Victorian criminal Charlie Peace.....how true this connection is will be hard to say but the surname of the police officer involved, the time frame & location tends to fit in with what I have been told but I can not find the link. The other relates to Jack the Ripper and a policeman being dressed up to the nines in women's clothing in an attempt to catch him (bet that went down well in the police canteen when they asked for a volunteer  ). True, my family were living within the area at the time of the murders (in fact only a few streets away in the case of one of victims) but again there is no real evidence found that the "copper in drag" would be a relation if indeed it really happened.

My mother always said that we were related to Robert the Bruce somewhere along the line and also to Gypsy Rose Lee (never knew if she meant the stripper or the fortune teller  ). Its true that we have Lee's in the family but they came from the eastend of London - and were said to be near neighbours of the Kray's- but so far no strippers or card & palm readers have turned up, and as for the mighty Bruce hmmmmmmm well the jury is out on that one.

On my fathers side there are tales that centre mainly around my grandfather who we, as children, were led to believe had left the family home and travelled across the pond to join up in the mounties and tales of him trudging through deep snow drifts to apprehend the wanted captivated the imagination of a dreamy nine year old. True my grandfather did leave the family to travel across the pond but as a fireman/stoker on merchant ships between Glasgow-Halifax N.S. and New York. It is also true that he served in Canada but not with the mounties. He jumped ship in Halifax (another story yet to be confirmed) and joined the Royal Canadian Regiment and returned with them to fight in Europe from 1917, this after being discharged from the Highland Light Infantry after being wounded and no longer fit for active service (him serving in the HLI also explains why the family are supposed to be true Highlanders when in fact they were lowlanders but hey why spoil a good story with some truths & geographical facts  ). It was he that was also said of ..."he was part of a party who attempted to save Nurse Cavell from the Germans but failed and because of their failure the men in the party turned down a medal..." hmmmm again a bit stretched in the truth department but he was awarded the Military Medal for something as yet undiscovered.

OR

[Harlem]

I am intrigued by the absence of a family story. There are quite a few of Douglas, Hodgson, Walker (nineteenth century St Helens), some are probably true, some probably untrue, others plausible but unproven (e.g - a bareback rider in the family - I found someone in a circus, tho what she did is not given in censuses - I judge that one unproven but plausible). But why did it not come down thru only two or three generations that the Douglas's were Irish immigrants? After all, there were many Irish migrants in the mid 19th century, and many living in St. H. - very odd, I think.

Harlemswife

[aghadowey]

But why did it not come down thru only two or three generations that the Douglas's were Irish immigrants? After all, there were many Irish migrants in the mid 19th century, and many living in St. H.
Not that unusual really. My grandmother's McLeod ancestors in Canada 'came from the Isle of Skye' without a mention of 2/3 generations stop in Ulster (ironically not that far from where her husband's parents came from).
My grandfather's sister married a man from Scotland and apparently called herself 'Scottish' totally ignoring her Ulster roots.
On the other hand my grandfather's family were 'German' despite arriving in America in 1700s.

[Harlem]

Hmmmm - concealed Irish ancestry, eh? I suppose what I am thinking now is - why have certain stories persisted? Why are some embellished? Why were some made up? I think I want the provenance of stories.

My Uncle clearly remembers his mother telling him there were angels seen at the Battle of Mons. My Father said her brother, his Uncle,  had seen an angel at Mons. Now - whether we think anyone at all saw angels at Mons is one thing - what is certain is that Mons was early in WW1 and none of my Grandmother's brothers were there at the time - that's clear from their medal cards. But - it is said that my Grandma dabbled in spiritualism, and I now think that she needed to believe in angels at Mons for her own peace of mind. This might be a fanciful conclusion, but it tells me something about her. I don't know for certain what she believed, but it's plausible that she believed in angels at Mons.

These days the folks on here, and other like-minded friends we might talk to about genealogy, tend to be proud of their ancestors' achievements. I need to stretch my brain a bit to begin to think what it must be like to want to conceal your ancestry. It's impossible to know what the experience of the Irish migrant might have been, but in these cases it doesn't seem to hav e been Irish pride.

Harlemswife