Genealogy Chat

Stephen But bear in mind that information on certificates and censuses can be wrong too. I have gone round in circles because a birthdate was wrong by a few years in a Family Bible. I've got marriage certs with fictitious first names, misspelled surnames etc etc. I've got census info that I know is wrong including a John who on the census is Jas. Why? My husband's gt grandfather - obligingly called Charles Carter so he is impossible to trace - has 4 different places of birth on 4 different censuses - all in London. nell

Stephen, Yes, there's some spooky stuff around. Family legend said that my Gt Grandmother was run over by a bus (in rural Norfolk, in 1889??!) and that my Gt Grandfather died of grief a year later. Humph! More like TB and peritonitis respectively. After much pondering, I realised that these were the 'cover stories' invented for children which had been passed down through the years. In your case, family sensitivities obviously precluded any mention of divorce - a difficult issue for us family historians, what should we do with our own current families? If we show the tricky situation on our trees, we risk causing pain to various members of the family .... making us as unreliable as those who went before us! 'Fraid I opted not to cause more grief to the people I love - it's the 'ancient' history I'm interested in, the next generation can sort out the omission(s). Thanks for the message - it's good to know I'm not alone in contending with incorrect information. Happy hunting Regs Jane

I started my family history research 2 years ago with the 'advantage' of having documents to work from. My mother drew up a rough family tree in 1944. She talked to her own father and mother and obtained fairly accurate details about their lines. The problem arose with the information from her mother-in-law, my 'Granny Kirby'. There were some glaring errors (which I later discovered). Here are 2 examples. (1) A woman divorced her first husband and re-married, which was considered sinful in the 1930s especially as she had 2 young children from the first marriage, when she left her 1st husband. The information about this lady and her family is NOT reliable in the 1944 tree e.g. the name of one of her sons-in-law is entered by mistake instead of the name of her 1st husband! (2) Completely missing from the 1944 tree is one of my Father's cousins who emigrated to Australia in the 1930s after (allegedly) fathering a child out of wedlock. I knew this 2nd cousin existed because his wife and son visited England in the 1950s when I was a little boy & my brother & sister-in-law visited him in New South Wales in the 1960s. All this is a tip to other family history researchers to remember the difference between 1st hand information (such as birth certificates) and most other information, which is inherently unreliable, even if it was supplied by your favourite granny!