A fairy Tale Tree

One of my Great Great Aunts on my mother's side had compiled a family tree which was totally believed by all her family and descendants.....until the current generation. My elder cousin started poking at the facts and discovered some 'embellishments' and flights of fancy when it came to our ancestors. I became interested and worked on it as well. The tree was a fairy tale based on (mostly) correct family names which was perpetuated in obituaries and oral stories handed down. Some of the older generation didn't believe us when we told them the truth and stuck to the line 'My Mother told me, so our ancestry must be true'.

Sorting out this puzzle was enthralling and I was hooked! However it taught me early on to check, check and check again, cite sources and leave notes for future generations of anything I am even slightly unsure about.

 

This rings true especially when my sister (in Australia although that is not important to the comment) reads my Tribal Pages Family History and picks me up on the fact that 'that is not the way Mom told it' or Grandma xxx always maintained....etc. And cousins to this day recall events quite differently through stories passed down to them that contradict my own researched interpretations.

I'm afraid it is the lot we have to bear and whenever did a formal known fact ever compete with an embellished family story. As one newspaper owner once put it, 'never let the truth interfere with a good story'.

 

My paternal grandmother always claimed the writer Thomas Hardy as an ancestor, and I believed her. When I started looking into the family history my ambition was to find our link to Thomas Hardy and lo and behold, I found it. Thomas never had any children but my paternal Grandfather was a descendant of Thomas Hardy's sister. Do you think that Granny was jealous?

 

I would assume Granny meant a 'family' ancestor. I always refer to such folks as 'ancestors' although not 'direct'.

 

Actually it's quite natural to an extent, for spouses to claim links to any notable bloodline ancestors of their other halves, especially where they survive their spouse. As emjay says they are not direct ancestors but there is an ancestral link through marriage. Anyway not as bad as the old song which claims "I know a man who danced with a girl, who danced with the Prince of Wales".

 

"Lloyd George knew my father; my father knew Lloyd George".......well..it's topical

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with claiming a 'by marriage link'. My wife can claim a blood link to Josiah Wedgwood. To me that is 'by marriage' but to our children and grandchildren, it is by blood. Her maternal grandmother was a Wedgewood.

 

Fine by me Peter.

 

Apologies....NO politics !

 

I ran into a similar situation when I discovered that my grandfather was born in a different place from that "known" to the family. The whole area had originally been surveyed as one large district, but long before his family had even moved there, it had been split into two counties. My grandmother, convinced that all the oral history was absolutely correct in every detail, was horrified when I printed the "change" of birth place in my newsletter. Her response? "Forget the survey! Stick to the history!"