Family stories: fact or fiction?

[Sue Mackay]

My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Blacklock and she came from London, but my father knew almost nothing about her family. He said, however, that his grandmother had told him they were connected to Johnson's Polish. When I started this lark back in the 80s there was no internet and it was very difficult to track people down on the census in London - I remember one of the family history societies producing an 1851 index that just gave the surname and enumeration district and I spent an entire day at Portugal Street checking every single Blacklock entry without finding the right one, but the IGI listed the marriage of a Charlotte Blacklock to a James Johnson, and my great uncle turned out to have the middle name of Johnson, so I thought it worth investigating. I got out my tin of Johnson's Polish (when I could find it at the back of the cupboard ) and wrote a letter to the address given on the lid. Several months later I had a reply from the USA from the company genealogist, assuring me that there had never been a James Johnson who married a Charlotte Blacklock in their company history, which they could trace back to the year dot. It was only later when the census indexes appeared and I was finally able to locate the family that I discovered that 'our' James Johnson, whose wife Charlotte was my grandmother's great aunt, did indeed have a small business in London making polish and blacking. So we ARE related to Johnson's Polish, just not to THE Johnson's Polish!!

[Megan Roberts]

My mother's family were Welsh through and through and her maiden name was Gambold, which does not sound Welsh. Family legend has it that its origin goes back to the Battle of Agincourt and a certain Welsh soldier called "Davy Gam", because either he had a limp or was blind in one eye. He fought valiently and at the end he was knighted, and became know "Davy Gam the Bold"!

The interesting thing with this story is that when one of my Aunt's started researching the family in the 1960s she came into contact with other branches, of whom she had no knowledge of, and they had the same/similar story. So on that basis, and knowing the family lines it has to go back to at least the mid 1800s if not before.

However, there was a distant relation called Herbert Millingchamp Vaughan (1870-1948) who was something of a scholar, and according to an article he wrote the name must have arisen out of a "bastard line of the Norman house of Bolde".

You have to take your pick, but the former wins for me every time!

[Pam Downes]

My dad told me his grandfather was an old rogue and following a fight in a pub he was murdered!!!

I found out, much later after dad had died, that the old rogue (and he certainly was that) did have a pub fight,
after which, while in hospital, he committed suicide by cutting his throat.

Hospitals were not monitored way back then, like they are now, so...
did he do the deed?
or did someone sneak in and do it for him?

True or false, fact or fiction? I wish I knew one way or the other.

Mutley, see if you can find a newspaper report about the inquest.
I had a similar incident - always known in the family as suicide, but then I began to wonder 'could he have been murdered?' The newspaper report said that the pathologist stated it was suicide because of the angle of the cut to the throat.

Pam

[Mutley]

Mutley, see if you can find a newspaper report about the inquest.
I had a similar incident - always known in the family as suicide, but then I began to wonder 'could he have been murdered?' The newspaper report said that the pathologist stated it was suicide because of the angle of the cut to the throat.

Pam

Thanks for the thought Pam, I can paste a whole wall with newspaper cuttings about the 'old rogue' but they seem to have gone silent regarding his death but maybe it was a sigh of relief. *That's got shot of the bu**er!!* Good riddance to bad rubbish.....
I cannot find anything. No coroners reports surviving either.

The death certificate said a table knife was the implement. Oh yea? flick knife, pen knife or any other knife even a beer pot but a table knife? I don't think he would have known what one of them was for, manners was not his line.

[Ladkyis]

All I know so far is grandmother's mother was a Morgan The family( Late 1800's- early 1900's) DID NOT talk about the Captain Morgan side as he was a rogue...so the stories go.. I have read that he didn't have children, but he did have siblings so until I can verify where grandmother's mother's family really was from and who they were we shall keep them in the fiction with a shread of truth bucket!

Captain Morgan was distantly related to the Morgan's of Tredegar House, here in Newport. He was a privateer (legal pirate as he had letters from the British monarch) He became Governor of Jamaica too, so crime pays apparently. If you can get the family tree back to south wales then you could, possibly, be connected....

[Ladkyis]

My father's elder sister had three phrases that would come out during the conversation at the Sunday tea table.
"Oh course, Gran was an actress, went all over the world acting"

My father's grandmother was an actress and did travel a lot doing it.

"There's a Spanish Jewess in our family."

There is a lady who was a sephardi Jew who was my 3 x great grandmother.

"We're related to the Lyons of Lyons Corner House"

One of the sisters of Great Grandmother married a descendant of The Lyons of Corner House fame.

So there ya go. Three stories, all proved true with a paper trail to confirm it. Add to this that my great grandmother was an inveterate liar who used any or all of her three surnames with impunity and you can see how exciting my family has become...

[Lone Pine]

I have had loads was told by my Uncle that his Grandmother (my Great Grandmother) said to him that her brothers were in the Cold Strem Guards, and that one of her brothers had been decorated in the Boer War, afraid not, all lies. She also said that another one of her brothers owned a big department store up north, and that his son had become engaged to the Boots Heiress, but it all came to nothing ummm don't think so, but actually not sure about the department store bit, but the Boots Heiress, no don't think so.

Then of course we have the biggest whoper of all from my Grandmother (my Dad's Mum) about my Grandfather, saying that he died on the Somme in 1916, "liar liar pants on fire" the whole lot is a lie, he did die but not at the Somme he died at Gallipoli in 1915.

[susan-y]

Captain Morgan was distantly related to the Morgan's of Tredegar House, here in Newport. He was a privateer (legal pirate as he had letters from the British monarch) He became Governor of Jamaica too, so crime pays apparently. If you can get the family tree back to south wales then you could, possibly, be connected....

Hi Ladkyis..

Thanks for that! Yes, I have read up on Captain Morgan trying to see if there is any truth in the stories....I need to search the family a lot more starting with the gr.grandmother who was Elizabeth Morgan....she was born in Herefordshire according to the census, but I have not pursued the family at all yet.... With such original names for that area it ought to be a breeze finding that family ( in my dreams) I did tell hubby we need to order her marriage cert. and when he offers to pay for it I will start with it as that's the only information I have so far

The only thing in common with Captain Morgan I have seen is the love of rum by some of the descendants

Sue

[Coromandel]

Thank you all for adding such an interesting and varied lot of family stories. I'm sorry I took so long to reply . . . I had got so side-tracked replying to other threads that I forgot all about my own until I found a half-written reply in 'Notepad'.

Sue #1 [sueannbowen], I wonder if your grandmother ever knew the truth about how Frank died? I don't know how much information relatives were given about the circumstances of war deaths. If it was very minimal, people may have been left to make up their own versions of events. How spooky that you found information about your uncle in the museum.

Jan, your story demonstrates how family stories can get attached to the wrong person. The key details are still there but the scene of the tragedy has been moved so that it fits the person who it was supposed to involve.

Neil, the more people I talk to about family history the more common I realise bigamy must have been . . . and what a lot of lies were told in consequence! Maybe you'll get back to Norfolk eventually though?

Pam, how intriguing! What sort of date was your great-great-grandfather born? Could it be anything to do with the Peninsular War? (clutching at straws now).

Sue #2 [susan-y] I guess there must be some Morgans out there who really are related to Captain Morgans, and some Nightingales who really are related to Florence, so you never know! (I have given up searching for links to my supposed relations Nurse Edith Cavell and Captain James Cook though I haven't entirely given up on there being a distant connection to the Scottish explorer Mungo Park.)

Colin, 'truth is stranger than fiction', as they say, so it's perhaps not surprising that it's difficult to convince people of what one thinks is the real story. I think we just have to accept, too, that some people prefer not to keep their rose-tinted specs on. Not me: I want the 'warts-and-all' version! Our ancestors were human beings, after all.

Mutley, your sad tale is perhaps an example of how a family copes with one of the most taboo of subjects. If there is any doubt about how someone died, it must be easier to believe that someone else caused their death rather than have to accept that they chose to end their own life. Even when a death was clearly suicide there may be a family cover story: just over a century ago my great-uncle (Oscar) Newrick William Brown (aged 20) sat down in Epping Forest, put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The local paper had the full gory details. In my own branch of the family the official line was that there'd been an 'accident' with a gun, but Newrick's last surviving brother was more open about it. Now I will amend the official version, though I may just give a reference to the newspaper article for those family members who are too squeamish to want to know exactly what state the poor lad was in when he was found.

Jane, that sounds like the plot of a soap opera! Family history is hard enough when our ancestors have been telling the truth, as far as they know it . . . but if they are deliberately trying to cover their tracks for whatever reason, it may be impossible to find out who they really were.

Sue #3 [Sue Mackay] I loved that cautionary tale . . . it is so easy to see how people put two and two together to make five. Well done for ferreting out the truth behind your Johnson's Polish!

Megan, a lot of surname origins are lost in the mist of times so there's real scope for inventive story telling there. It's interesting that the story of Davy Gam the Bold has come down more than one branch of the family. If only you could prove it!

Ladkyis, hey that's not fair, stories that are interesting AND true.

Lone Pine, have you got to the bottom of why your grandmother said your grandfather had died at the Somme when it was really at Gallipoli?

The moral of all these stories is, I suppose, don't believe everything you hear . . . but don't discount it entirely, as you never know . . .
Thank you all again for your contributions to the thread.

[susan-y]

All said and told.....isn't it "fun" to have these stories in our families and whether we prove or disprove them its a challenge we all love.
Thanks for a great idea, Coromandel and for your fantastic reply to each and every one of our tales...... maybe we should all compose a book............................"Tales Our Ancestors Told Us" ( The hidden truths in genealogy" )

Sue

PS... Anyone does this...I get a cut in the profits