Family Myths

[buckaroo]

I'd say you're not disillusioning anyone, just extending the famiy myth!!!,

"it must be further back again..." just need to keep looking... and looking... and looking some more!

We've got another myth that says, one of our gr.x? grandfathers ran away from the army (Napoleonic wars), returned home and changed his name from Prys Edwards to Edward Price! (Anybody fooled???).
We've found who we think is his wife & family in the census's but he's passed away by then. Don't know where to look next for him!

Buckaroo

[rancegal]

Well we've just seen a prime example of a family myth with no foundation in reality on WDYTYA tonight!  Sounds as if the headmaster ancestor reinvented himself!

[deeiluka]

Weve always been told that my (English) great grandfather ran away to sea and jumped ship in South Australia after his brother drowned in a lake!

That one has slowly been unravelled......discovered some time ago that yes, indeed his brother did drown.....in Victoria, Australia as a six year old when my great grandfather was 4 years old! Yesterday I received a copy of the inquest.....and the brother didn't even die in a lake.....rather, an in ground rainwater tank!   

......dee

[aghadowey]

My grandfather's ancestor was supposed to be a sea captain who died at sea- but the truth was that he was a captain (not sure if a natitical title or militia or what) who drowned in the well in his back garden.

[little meg]

thats funny aghadowey ( but sad that he drowned of course)
I think family myths are like the 'chinese whisper'.

I can see how the family would have said he was a captain and drowned, and how easy that one would have been embelished 

[aghadowey]

According to newspaper account he seems to have stumbled into the well. Know he wasn't exactly young but always wondered if drink was involved.
His daughter-in-law married four times which has made her extremely difficult to find but I do have a lovely picture taken of her when she must have been very old. His grandson was a doctor who cannot be found in records of either of two medical school he was supposed to have attended. But it certainly is an interesting family.

[Dimps]

"My mum's family was called Sutcliffe and although the last 4 generations were born and bred in SE London..."

Any relation to the former Woolwich Borough Engineer, Jillie42?

[boggabarrett]

My family myth concerns my Grandfather, according to my father, he was a seaman, but worked on the building of the Tower bridge, was hit on the head by a crane hook, afterwards he went back to sea, sailed twice around the world, and whilst home, dropped down dead when shaving, due to the bash on the head some years earlier, my dad was only a kid at the time, he reckoned he was about four or five, but I have found his sister who was born when he was six. Sad story but is there any truth in it? I have determined that he was Irish, was in fact a seaman, have only the fact that he was Irish from his marriage, and have never been able to find out where or when he was born, and never found any record of his death. I am starting to suspect that he ran off back to Ireland (or America, Canada, Australia) and the kids were just told he had died, but I keep searching.

[eilidh]

Hi,

I think most of us has uncovered the odd myth, or skeleton in our family research.  

When my mother asked why she didnt have any paternal grandparents, she was told that her granny Alice had accused her dad (a toddler) of being responsible for the death of her husband.  Story has it that the wee boy ran to his father knocking him over, and he died as a result of his injuries.  In grief Alice abandoned the wee boy leaving him to be brought up by his Aunty.  Apparently it was thought she ended up in a Mental Home suffering from a broken heart.

What did my research uncover;

Yes the grandad did die, but from injuries sustained over a period of years.

Far from the grieving widow, Alice remarried just 4 months after her husband's death, AND declared herself to be a spinster.

Five years later still married to husband number two, Alice had another child. On the birth certificate she declared her husband was not the father, but another man's child.  

She later married this man declaring herself to be a widow, but to date I cannot find a death certificate for husband number two.

Ah the plot thickens, looks like my grt granny just liked to spread the love