Be wary of family stories

[Sr]

Hi
I thought i would share my story with you all. The point i want to make is that sometimes family stories of ancestors have you looking in completely the wrong direction.

I grew up with this story that my grandmother told me

Her father was apparently on board the SS Lusitania when it sank in May 1915. He was retuning from New York after having an alarm system patented. I had no reason to disbelieve the story. I became interested in tracing his death. There was plenty written about the passengers but i could not find his name or find a record of his death.

I was searching the Commonwealth War Graves Commision website for another relative and by chance typed in my great grandfathers name. John Arthur Terry.
I found that he died in 1915 serving his country.
I have no idea why this story was handed down and i think its very sad that his death did not appear to be acknowledged. It would seem that the fabricated story about being aboard the Lusitania was better than the reality of dying for ones country.

[craizi daizi]

Hi SR

My Grandfather alays told us and his own children that he was adopted,  that he was german but adopted by an english family......we thought his side would be a nightmare to research - but alas we did and there is no adoption,  not anywhere in his family,  back to 1780s now......the real story seems to be that no-one was speaking to each other!!


Craizi

[scrimnet]

If your chap is the one buried at Alexandria, this may be the action he was KIA / mortally wounded in...

http://www.1914-1918.net/CAVALRY/2mtddiv.htm

The sick and injured were evacuated to (amongst other places) Alexandria...

[sueky71]

its not just family stories but family 'facts'.
my dad always told me that he was born in liverpool but that he was of scottish descent, and having met various scottish aunts and uncles, i had no reason to doubt it - on one occasion he even took us to the house where he was born.
after he died i came across his birth certificate which states he was born in glasgow! he didn't move to liverpool until he was 5

[madpants]

My Grandma wrote out some family history for me when I was at school, she said her Grandmother was a French lady called Madame De Vrai and her sister was a nun in France.

Researching into her family I have found Mme De Vrai is Emily Devey whose mother was born in Stockton and Father was born in Middlesex!  I don't know if her sister was a nun but she doesn't sound too french to me!

[aghadowey]

My mother told me my paternal grandfather was English, an orphan and an only child. Not even close... family were Scottish from the North of Ireland. His mother died a few weeks after his birth so I suppose that's where the orphan bit came from but he was the youngest of ten children!!!

[LizzieW]

My mother keeps telling me even now that my paternal grandfather was an orphan and had no relatives. 

Turns out he was 15 when his mother died, a few years younger when his father died.  However, he was the middle child of 5, the eldest was 21, so although he was an orphan in that both his parents died, he was not the poor lonely orphan I had been led to believe.

Oh and I'm still searching for my g.grandfather's Spanish(?) mother.

Liz

[KathMc]

I think every family has these. My great aunt told me her aunts were members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and quite proud of it. I have contacted several times and they have no record and a cousin has made the same enquires, with no luck. My father always said he was 100 percent Irish, but somehow we were related to HG Wells. My father has one branch that is from England, the Wells branch in fact, but no relation at all. They are a very interesting branch, but I am not allowed to mention the English "stuff" to my uncle.

Kath

[aghadowey]

My great aunt told me her aunts were members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and quite proud of it. I have contacted several times and they have no record and a cousin has made the same enquires, with no luck. .

Kath

Kath- my Canadian grandmother's aunt belonged to DAR. She died unmarried in 1930s. In the 1960s my grandmother tried to join but could find no trace of an eligible ancestor (and the family history is fairly complete regarding direct ancestors). In the 1970s my Dad's cousins tried to trace the link to Aunt Bernice's DAR connection but was told by DAR that at an earlier time submitted records were not thoroughly checked with the result that some people were admitted to membership that really had no connection.
This DAR link has always puzzled us as the family were very much Loyalists and when their side lost the Revolutionary War they were invited to leave the country which is how they ended up in Nova Scotia. There was one relative, not an ancestor, thank goodness, who belonged to the 'other' side and was made Governor of New Jersey as a reward for services rendered but we don't like to talk about him.
Anyway, back to the DAR... in the late 1970s I was able to look through some records of DAR ancestors and got very excited, and surprised when I found a couple whose names rang a bell. Took notes and rushed home to check my files. Yes, I was also descended from this couple but dates weren't even close. Believe it or not, my ancestors had a grandson named after grandfather who married a cousin with the same name as his grandmother, thus explaining different dates. We now suspect that Aunt Bernice joined DAR under this couple and as applications weren't checked well the mistake wasn't caught at that time.