Don't believe what you're told

Yes, I know Peter and others keep telling us not to trust family traditions. BUT.

We all had just accepted that my great Uncle Percy Cubitt's wife was the former Ada Louise Flint. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble in the 1950s compiling a family history/tree and that gave her name and that they were married in Bournemouth in 1920. Then the other day I picked up a note on a Cubitt genealogy site where someone was writing a book about the ship on which Percy died and was looking for info on some of the people on board. Looking to dot the i's of what I told her, I found there was no record of a marriage, or even of an Ada Flint born in Bournemouth, etc.

After a lot of trawling around I have JUST identified who she was, making contact within the past hour with a great nephew of hers who said 'The family story was she left her husband for a sea captain called Cubitt'. Well, Percy was chief engineer rather than captain but his family tradition was nearer the truth than ours. I think someone must have told a bare-faced lie at some point!

 

My husband's Aunt remembers childhood stories of her great grandfather being a soldier. In fact, she claimed that he was killed in the Battle of Khartoum under General Gordon. I thought that this was a good piece of family history and did some more research. Well, the Battle of Khartoum was in 1885 and great grandfather would have been 65 years of age. After further research I discovered that the pooor man had died in 1877 in the East Kent County Lunatic Asylum, Chartham, aged 57 and appeared to have been incarcerated since (at least) 1851. He didn't marry the mother of his son (she was married to someone else) and there is no record of him being a military man.
I might add that this family abounds in many family myths, but this one is the best!

 

This isn't as good or dramatic a story as the above, but it fits with the general idea of not believing family traditions.

I was talking with my mother the other day and she said 'We got the first car shortly before you were born. Your father had just decided we could afford the £500 when his Aunt X died and left £500, so she paid for the car!'
This sounded a bit suspect to me - I checked my records and confirmed that Aunt X died when I was 4. My mother was completely nonplussed. She said, "Well, that was always the family tradition. I can only suppose it was said as a bit of a joke, that Aunt X's money paid for the car, but I really thought your Dad got the money before he bought the car."

A minor tale, but one that points up the fact that we can 'tidy up' memories to produce a better story, and then the story gets accepted as the truth.

 

Or even a Morris Mini Minor tale, but only with bells on, so you could be led a merry dance!

 

One of the stories I was told when I was young was about my great grandmother, Fanny Charlesworth of Sheffield. It was said that she was a French woman, originally named "Fannaise Le Bond", who was later killed in a road accident when my granddad was young. My dad had always believed this story to be true, and while my granddad is no longer around to ask, I assume he also believed it to be true based on anecdotal evidence. Of course, this was one of the stories that got me interested in my family history, though it's only turned out to be partially accurate...

The part about her death is true: Fanny died in hospital 1929 having been struck by a car several days earlier, at which time my granddad would have been 12 years old. Although the details of the inquest don't fit exactly with what my dad remembers being told, it's certainly close enough.

But the part about her being French seems to be bogus. The census records clearly give her place of birth as Lichfield, Staffordshire, and while "Le Bond" is the name she used on her marriage certificate and on the birth certificates of her children, it appears that this is a variation of "Leabond". I'm not sure how "Fannaise" should have been spelt, but I haven't found any evidence that she ever used this name, or for that matter that it's even a genuine name.

Having done some research on the Leabond family, I now know that Fanny's mother died when she was still a child, and her father had two spells in the local asylum before taking his own life in 1892, two years before she married. I can only assume that a made-up story of foreign heritage based on a vaguely sounding French name made a more enticing story for her children than the truth!

 

Funny some of the things we're told as children. My mother always claimed that her mother was Scottish (which was why we had salt on our porridge, not sugar like the Sassenachs), from Ayrshire. But, as I soon found out when I got interested in 'family', her mother was in fact a Lancashire lass, from Bolton. True, grandmother's father was a Scot (and indeed born in Ayrshire) but he had moved to Lancashire when a young man.

 

My Dad always said both his parents were Irish but I can find no proof at all that this was the case. Of course I know nothing at all about my paternal grandfather, only the name my Dad gave, which may or may not be correct, but the very little I have learned about my grandmother says she was born in England. She at least grew up in England, in a workhouse after her parents were jailed for neglect.

And my husbands several times great grandmother was a Nelson, and somewhere along the way it was suggested that she was related to Admiral Nelson - not at all likely since she was Irish and the dates do not match.

 

My Mother always said her father was Irish. Through my family history research,I have found his birth in Carlisle, England. However, his parents were both born in Ireland
so my mum was quite right, but we (her children) had the seed planted in our imagination of a grandfather born in Ireland.

 

My grandmother always claimed to be one of 17 children, with only 3 surviving to adulthood. Since she was born in 1901 and her youngest sibling turned out to have been born in 1914, 17 children seemed somewhat unlikely. In fact, it seems there were actually only 9 children, 6 of whom reached adulthood.

 

That's interesting, Gillian, as my Scottish grandmother (see my avatar) and two of her sisters moved from Nairn to Bolton. I assume it was to find work, but I'm not sure.

 

I think that my great grandfather, the Scot George Gunn, must have moved to Lancashire as part of his work on the railways. In 1841 he was a railway foreman in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, but in 1851 he was a railway secretary in Blackburn, Lancs. I'm sorry, it wasn't Bolton. I got mixed up because so many of his Lancashire wife's family were from Bolton. Unfortunately, I've never been to Lancashire, or I probably wouldn't have made such a mistake. .

 

I am originally from Darwen, which is inbetween Bolton and Blackburn.

 

Do you know a place called Clitheroe, Heather? That's where my great-grandmother, who married Scottish George Gunn, was born. Her father, my great-great grandfather had a glass and earthenware business in Market Place, Clitheroe. However, he was born in Burnley and died in Bolton.

 

Yes I know Clitheroe, in my youth I was a GPO telephonist and when the Darwen, Blakewater and Blackburn Telephone Exchanges closed and the new STD Exchange opened in Blackburn, there was quite a large number of excess staff. The Post Office used the excess to staff local exchanges on a week by week basis and usually it was the younger girls who were sent out relieving. One such exchange was Clitheroe, where I worked quite a few times, I still exchange Christmas cards with one of the girls who was part of the staff at Clitheroe Exchange.

My husband worked for North Western Electricity Board (NORWEB) in Blackburn and went out to Clitheroe quite often. Did you know that Clitheroe has a castle? The local soccer clubs of Blackburn (Rovers) and Burnley are bitter rivals. My G G Grandmother Jane Parker was married in Clitheroe.

 

I've just looked through my great-great-grandfather Thomas Greenhalgh's 15 children. The first 4 were born in Burnley, the remaining 11 in Clitheroe. Of the 8 only who married, 5 were married in Bolton, the other 3 elsewhere. And then in the next generation, my grandmother, born Ann Dodson Gunn, and 3 of her 8 siblings were born in Blackburn. After marriage they dispersed 'to the winds'. It looks as if very few have remained in Lancashire. However, this is one branch of my family that I still have to look into more closely, so who knows what I may find.
One of my great aunts, born Ann Greenhalgh married name Williamson, emigrated to Australia, to Melbourne. Where do you live, Heather?
No, I didn't know Clitheroe has a castle. But since writing to you I've looked Clitheroe up and learnt a lot. It looks a really attractive place.

 

We live in a suburb of Melbourne, Narre Warren. If you are interested in tracing a few more Lancashire ancestors Gillian a great site to visit is Lancashire Online Parish Clerks lots of information, records, pictures of churches etc.