Genealogy Chat

DONT PRESUME that everything youve been told is true - this is very important to remember.I have just received a copy of an obituary dated 1990,written by two daughters of the deceased who at the time would have been 36 and 40 years old-so we arent talking senile here.......in the obituary the deceased (their father) has been predeceased by by his father ,mother and 2 siblings-3 out of those four have been given wrong death years - 4 years out........at least.......not only that they have the siblings dying before before their mother,when it happened the other way round.!!......and especially when memorable events were happening at the time,Im amazed at the innacuracy.

This is after seeing the family grave ,they have still got years wrong,and have a lot of family stories and momentos.

Ego...I don't...100% of what my mother told me has been proved incorrect...and I don't know why! Sheila

I had my Grandmother's father's family given to me by an elderly rellie. All handwritten. Absolutely lovely. I started checking it and found she had the whole family wrong. Had the wright name and town,but the William she had died as a baby and it was the other one who was ours. I've since given that over to the family of that William. Just one simple mistake and the whole thing was wrong.

You would not beleive the story that was handed down on my paternal side.....talk about Chinese whispers!!!!!!! the story was SOoooooooo embroidered over the years. The story goes that grt grandmother met grt granddad in Dundalk, he had come from a wealthy Danish, Russian shipping family, but was 'disowned' because he wanted to 'start at the bottom' of the family business.............In truth, her dad was of Irish stock, he was born in London, and he came from Germany and was a docker!!!!!!!!!! Kathlyn

Don't even take official documents as fact. They're only as good as where the information came from! My 2x g-grandmother's death certificate in Ontario, Canada included the names of her parents - a lucky find I thought. After some years of searching, I've finally found them. On the DC, her father's name was listed as Nathaniel. I found a census record for all the right names and dates except him - the head of the household was Emmanuel. It wasn't until I said the two names out loud to myself that the penny dropped.... Once I had his name, I easily found the MC. Turns out the mother's maiden name was Corfell, not Caulfield. My guess is that my ggrandmother, who was from Barrow, Lancashire, probably registered the death. She likely still had her accent and the Canadian clerk transcribing what she said got it all wrong! From here on, I'm not going to take off running when I'm only working from one source, however official it appears to be!