Family legends that turn out to be nonsense

[Guyana]

[quote author=HeatherLynne lin

Hi Matt, we must be related!!!  My maternal Grandmother was an Edden and the family story was that Sir Anthony had originally had the surname Edden but had removed a 'd' to make the name sound less harsh.  Unless Sir Anthony descended from Plasterers from Bury St Edmunds then I think this is very unlikely! 

Heather
[/quote]Hello Heather,
There are Eddens in this area (Tamworth, Staffs), one of whom was awarded the VC after the Balaclava bust-up. Any links?
Maurice.

[HeatherLynne]

Hi Maurice,  no I don't think so.  I've just checked my tree and I was getting confused, my Eddens were nearly all plasterers but from Marylebone then St Pancras then Islington from around 1790s to 1940s.  I've often come across the Eddens from Tamworth when searching for my folk but not found any links any further north than London yet!
However at least 10 of the men in the family have Rose as a middle name - four Samuel Rose Edden, four William Rose Edden and two George Rose Eddens all born between 1807 and 1891.  Are there any Rose connections in the Tamworth clan?
Heather

[Guyana]

Sorry Heather, No knowledge, but I can enquire. We had a neighbour, George Edden, who recently died in his nineties, and my only recent contact with the family is with Roy Ashwood, a local man, who has written a book ("Old Balaclava") about his VC ancestor.

[Thudnut]

My paternal Grandmother used to claim that our family was related to Captain Lawrence Oates - he of the Scott's Antarctic expedition.  Sadly, there is not even a remote link to the name Oates, let alone Captain Oates.

I have no idea why she made the claim.

[aghadowey]

My paternal Grandmother used to claim that our family was related to Captain Lawrence Oates - he of the Scott's Antarctic expedition.  Sadly, there is not even a remote link to the name Oates, let alone Captain Oates.

I have no idea why she made the claim.

Sometimes family stories get a bit muddled over the years (think of the game 'Chinese Whispers')- perhaps Captain Oates' family were neighbours or came from the same village/area? Or a cousin of his married a cousin who had a relative related to you...

[dobfarm]

Yes I agree ! with aghadowey. If say a grandparents brother or sister marries into a family where a past down family story legend origins comes from a spouses in law family and just tracing back actual direct family maiden and paternal surnames searches of the story reveal nothing.

As a kid  my dads brothers wife being my aunty in law, we used to visit her sister a lot as my  mum, my aunty in law and her sister were big friends as spinsters being domestic maids before any of them married, I always called and treated that sister as an aunty - even though she was not directly or direct marriage in law related but a side shoot of.....an in law ( and big whole life friend of mum acting like sisters). There are a few tales in that in law side shoot sisters family intermixed with my own direct family, that will pass down the generations that say in 150 years will baffle ancestry researches who will never know anything from BMD records or censuses only - even in the computer age. ~~~~ 60 plus years has already passed since that time !! in the post WW2 years still passing down the tales of old in the family by living people ~ me and my 7 years elder brother.  .

Ps. To complicate matters ~ Mums dad, my actual granddad was born 1867 and died 1957 aged 90 and I use to sit on his knee as a kid.- Mum born 1908 spent 12 years of her early life with her granddad born 1844 and told me stories from his time as a kid and her dads. Now its 2017 - mind boggles

[jbml]

And sometimes a story is deliberately fabricated, to throw people off the scent.

Take the story, for instance, that the King-Spooner surname came about because a Mrs Spooner, after being widowed, remarried a Mr King, and the children were unfortunately named King-Spooner.

I have relatives who have had this story handed down to them through the family, and it has thrown their researches completely off course, because it is pure fabrication. In this case, it appears that it was fabricated to cover up a potentially bigamous marriage.

Happy to share my researches on this point with any other King-Spooner descendants by private message on this site. Not everyone is persuaded by what I have got, but the documentation all seems to point in the same direction to me.