rellies and their misinformation

[jabawak]

How about this my fathers youngest brother was always Uncle Wool when I was growing up. It's only recently I found out his real name is Francis. The reason behind the nickname, he was premature and was wrapped in cotton wool, before humidicribs of course.   Jabawak

[Shaztoni]

My Grandfather Tony, who called his first son Tony, was in fact called Thomas.
A great grandfather was known as George Bernard but was really Jeremiah.
A great grandmother was known as Annie but was really Elizabeth
 
Sharon

[jinks]

Mis-Information OR which side of the fence

I spent years looking for a Great Aunt Alice...
My Grandmother Sister

My Mother had heard of her but could not place her.

I then spoke to my Auntie Pat (Great Aunt).
Who is Auntie Alice?

Oh its me.... half of the family call me Alice the
other half Pat?

But why?

Dunno I think it was something to do with when
I was training to be a nurse and there was other
Alice and it kind of stuck!  

The best is when you get a story from one side
of the family and then a half contradictary story
from the other. (You just have to except that
they are coming from two different view points)

Jinks

[MJP]

I have a case of mis-information that is not really so much a problem for me as the genealogist, but must have been a bit annoying for the person in question!  My g-grandfather Walter came home from school one day and asked his mother what his middle name was.  A bunch of his buddies had been talking about their middle names and he was starting to feel left out because he didn't know his.  His mother told him it was Welrose.  So, years later when he went to get married he registered himself as Walter Welrose.  When his mother saw the marriage certificate she burst out laughing!  "That isn't your name" she said.  "You don't have a middle name - I just told you that so you would stop pestering me about it!"  (I'd be thinking,  er.... thanks mom.... couldn't you have made up a better name?)

[Shaztoni]

I laughed out load reading that, just think of the amount of things we tell our children that they take as gospel, it's shocking really!!

[DebsE]

Hi there,

I couldn't help laughing as I read these posts - I too have heard the old line "hadn't I already told you that family information" many times. It doesn't seem to matter how many times you ask, as soon as you find some exciting piece of information after weeks or months of searching, someone is bound to say "I could have told you that". 

But my favourite for mis-information has to be my 2x great grandmother. She spent her whole life telling "porkies" to anyone who would listen and unfortunately everyone seemed to take them as gospel. She lied about her name, her parents, her upbringing, her countries of residence, marriages that never happened, illegitimate children with made-up fathers who later disappeared, fake educational qualifications; basically anything you can think of. And this wasn't just in chats with friends - she put different information on every official document too. Imagine the fun we've had trying to trace this lady when she has a different story on every official document we look up! 

Her obituary in the paper makes fantastic reading - if only more than 5% of it were real. It certainly makes tracing her movements from England to New Zealand a challenge. She was born illegitimately to a young mother and seems to have been given to a boarding house keeper to raise. So she spent the rest of her life creating a more exciting background and creating the type of life she probably wished she had.

She's certainly kept her descendants interested...

Debra

[helenw]

My gt grandmother lied about her age for her entire life and even made things up to cover up the truth!!

When she got married she was actually only 18 whereas on the certificate she said she was 21 and she stuck to that story until she died in 1982 including memories about her older sister who had died 2 years before she was born!! Her parents had both died by the time she got married so there was no one to really say she was wrong.

My problem seems to be tapping the right information out of my "olds" though, you cant just ask a straight question it has to be eased out through stories, for example we never knew my granddad (my dad's father) had grown up in a sweetshop until one conversation lead my gran to mention how much he hated sweetshops. The thing is though when they start i cant write fast enough!!!

[LouiseB31]

My story is the other way round really.

When my mum and I began researching the family tree about 20 years ago we went to see all our elderly relatives. My nana told us all about her parents and their brothers and sisters, where they had moved to in the world, what kind of work they did. I recall her mentioning an uncle Frank with a limb missing and Uncle Ben who went to Wales. We wrote it all down very carefully.

Then we went away to act on the information we had gleaned, we ordered birth certificates for mum's four grandparents based on what we were told.

Nana's mother had an unusal name and we soon found her birth certificate reference, in one of the first volumes we looked in. The certificate when it came identified her parents and place of birth so we set off to trace down their line, discover census returns etc. The only trouble was that the family in the census we found had different names to the family that Nana had recalled.

We dismissed Nana's contribution as the mistaken stories of an old lady who had subsequently developed alzheimers.

We were not able to progress any further and the line petered out. However, we were very fortunate in that the internet came along in due course and we found some new relatives connected to one of the siblings on the census. Mum and Dad even went to stay with them for the weekend and spent a lovely time reminiscing and looking at old photographs.

One of Nana's aunts, who we had always known about and who was definitely a member of our family was not on any census we could find with the rest of her family and for years we searched and searched for her. One day quite recently Mum sent off for the sibling's birth certificate for clues and found that she had entirely different parents to the others.

A little bit of research very soon showed that 20 years ago we had sent off for the birth certificate of another woman, coincidentally with the same quite unusual name and born in the same town but registered in the following quarter. She was not Nana's mother!

Which meant the family on the census were not ours and the lovely couple Mum and Dad went to stay with were not related to us either!!!!

When we got the right birth certificate for Nana's mum and saw who her parents were and found them on the census, there was Uncle Frank with the missing limb and there was Uncle Ben in Wales and it had all been right all along!

Every word of this is true, what a total shambles - and what a difficult task my mum faced, having to tell the new rellies that we were in fact impostors.

Regards

Louise

[kat2004]

Hi Louise, what a story! Can you laugh about it now or do you feel a bit maddened by the coincidence of the same unusual name? I cant imagine how gutted I would feel but on the bright side I supppose you met some nice people, albeit not related!