Thursday, December 11, 2014

Checking the Stories

Grandma  told the best stories about her family - especially the one about her grandfather, who was born well before that awful war that pitted neighbor against neighbor  and brother against brother. Later it became known as the War of Northern Aggression in the South and the Civil War in the North.

She told how Grandpa Jones' family lived on a big plantation with numerous slaves and lost everything due to the War.  She made the events sound as if they happened yesterday, but were those stories true?

Grandma wouldn't lie to you, would she?   Nooo.  Grandma wouldn't stretch things a bit, would she?  Welll, maybe.   It all sounded like she knew what happened and believed it to be true,  but did she have the story right?  How do we find out the truth?

Searching for the truth behind family stories means we check every possible record to find out what really happened. Do our results agree with the family stories?

I love family stories. They are fun and they give personality to people long deceased, but they often get embellished when told, retold, and told again. Sometimes stories are  only partially true or maybe they are rooted in events that happened to someone else. When you hear these stories, write them down, along with the name of the narrator and the date, but put them in the category of Family Stories until you do your research. There is one more thing you need to do.  Write the real story, citing sources for all facts uncovered in your research, and be sure to share the information with others researching the same family.

Now, go on - record those stories and set out to determine if they are true!

Published 11 December 2014, Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog,

1 comment:

Mister Ed said...

I have two ancestors, brothers from Warren County, E.M. and E.H. Skaggs both born c. 1820. They went to New Orleans to make their fortunes. E.M. struck it rich in the California Gold Rush. E.H. made (and lost) a bundle with a sugar plantation and running the Union blockade of New Orleans during the war. Does anyone have any information on these guys?