A great aunt who claimed to be born on Friday the 13th that year. Nope. That date was a Tuesday.

I have no family lore to share but I live about 20 miles south of Lexington, MO and have been to the Battle of Lexington museum and battlefield tour a couple times. There is still a cannon ball imbedded into one of the columns of the county courthouse.

I think the details of your story are a bit off as well. In the 1861 battle, the Union forces were the defenders of the town and the Missouri state guard (confederate) were the invaders. There was also another battle in the small nearby town where my son attended school.

ETA: the story related to you may have been prior to the actual battle when the Union forces took over the town and then later the confederate forces invaded and took it back during the battle.

This area of north central Missouri was highly contested during the early years of the Civil War and the citizenry were highly divided as well.

My mother always told me I was born on Good Friday, but I wasn’t. I was born on Maundy Thursday.

My Swiss grandmother claimed that my grandfather (to whom she was never married) was Italian nobility. He was indeed Italian, but a lawyer in Rome, not an aristocrat. She certainly did have a wild time gallivanting through Europe after WWI. ;-)

My family always told us that my GG grandmother was a duchess (from Bavaria) and that when she immigrated to Texas, she sewed all of her jewels into her petticoats to smuggle them into the country. I know she was not a duchess, but she may have been a smuggler. She is related to a lot of people in Switzerland who have her maiden name as their last name, and it has an Italian spelling, although her lineage cannot be traced to Italy - or at least the relatives in Switzerland have not been able to do this.

We have a signet ring from my maternal great grandfather, an Ottoman Armenian from Istanbul. I have no idea how that crest was attained, or what it means or if it was just an attempt to bogusly elevate us. It seems like a nonsense to me. My great grandfather died when my grandfather was a toddler, so zero information passed down, though that man's will was a hoot to read, a very ascerbic wit with a pretty great business sense, but I digress.

I don't know if the family lore is true or not, but lore is I am a descendant of the von Habsburg's on my maternal grandfather side. No we didn't get any jewels, money or title, but got the genes if it is true. But my daughter, son, and my one granddaughter (so far) got the Habsburg jaw. My son's is minor, my daughter had extensive jaw surgery at 13 to correct it, orthodontist is trying to correct my young granddaughter (8) with orthodontic apparatuses, but no quarantine.

DH's father admittedly was never one to let the truth stand in the way of a good story. Including, a pirate ancestor racing to lay claim to an island, the first man to lay a hand on it wins, ancestor neck and neck with rival, ancestor cuts off his own hand and throws it onto land for the win! Well, alrighty. And a great-great uncle who killed a Black man in Kentucky, just for trying to hitch a ride on uncle's wagon. Hmmm -- I really hope that one wasn't true. Possibly true: great-grandfather teaching in a one-room schoolhouse way back in the hills; kids famously intractable, g-gf takes out his gun, lays it on his desk, and dares kids to misbehave.

I remember my grandfather telling family stories. They weren't particularly fanciful, but if grandma questioned any of the details he would say in a heavy German accent: "Vas you dere, Charlie? If you were I didn't see you!" Turns out that was a catchphrase made popular by a 1930's radio program.

Back in the Twenties, on my father’s side, there were 3 brothers in the Bavarian part of Germany. The eldest inherited the lands and house, while the two younger brothers emigrated to the Detroit area. One being my great-great grandfather. There was talk and concern now and then that the eldest’s family had ended up fighting for (god forbid!) Hitler during WW2. When my father started researching our family tree and actually got in contact with that part of our family, he discovered that they were instead part of the German underground hiding and ferrying Jewish people out of that area and to safety elsewhere. Unfortunately for them, they were eventually caught and were imprisoned for about 18 months until Hitler was defeated and they were freed by our GIs. A happy ending, thanks goodness!

Nickel, I laughed at your expression ”never let the truth stand win the way of a good story”! My DH is like that. Drives me crazy! sometimes the truth really does make a better story. And I have a strong aversion to messing with the reality.e of history. After telling the story so many times, me dh believes his own version, as he thinks its more entertaining. .

I don't know if it is lore or not....but according to Jody, his father's last name was Brannon, and wherever it was that he was from (in Florida), he did something that caused him to go to Cedar Key, which was just a speck of an island on the coast, and started going by the last name Collins. I think he killed someone in a fight....I don't know. The details were very sketchy. I do know he had a very large family....kids by two or three wives. He was an old man when he married Jody's mother, and she was no spring chicken....yet they had six babies in six years...so obviously fertility was no problem. I never met him. Jody's mother died when he was 6, and his father died when he was 12.

My grandmother always claimed that we were directly descended from Sir Francis Drake. I'm not sure that's true, and he isn't necessarily someone to be proud of.

Drake is not known to have had any children. Maybe not legitimate? I looked it up because I didnt think he had descendants.

Apparently my mother's family (Protestants) left Ireland after someone in the family killed a Catholic priest in a graveyard after mistaking him for a ghost. Good story but seems implausible for a lot of reasons. My husband's family was forced to leave Ireland because they were sheep thieves. That seems more plausible. The Irish have always been great storytellers!

Lol! The only one I can think of is that we are part Cherokee. Our other stories weren't told or they made the front page of the newspaper and there was no hiding them. Some of those are pretty bad.

My paternal grandmother's mother was supposedly Quebecoise. DNA indicates otherwise. Digging around via Ancestry, she had no birth certificate but was baptized when she was about 4 - in an Episcopal Church - although the family is Roman Catholic. Her father was born at sea; that I did confirm.

Not a story that didn't turn out to be untrue, but a mystery. My cousin has my grandmother's immigration papers and it specifically describes her as having part of one finger missing...but she had all 10 fingers in tact. It's one thing when they couldn't spell names from foreign lands, but a missing finger???

We were always told that my paternal grandmother was an orphan. When I did a real honest` to goodness genealogy I found she was an illegitimate child.

norar, if you havent read it, i recommend Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose. it‘s about the voyage of discovery by Lewis and Clark.

An explanation for some of these untruths is a saying I saw once:

"The older I get, the more awesome I was"

Part of which implies failing memory, part of which suggests tale changing to support the desire.

My father always told me we were related to the pirate, Captain Kidd. That is a family name on his side, but he died when I was very young; he was an only child and was orphaned as a teen so there are no relatives to confirm. I was able to trace his mother's family and found the Kidds, but haven't been able to go back far enough to see if the notorious was in the tree.

My paternal Grandfather was adopted and the lore was that his mother was full blooded Native American, I think they said Cherokee if I'm not mistaken. No one really knew who his real parents were though, he was abandoned as an infant. It was a very small little town though so people knew things. Well, I don't know how this rumor started other than maybe to protect the real girl and to direct blame to someone else but we have ZERO dna from any Native American heritage. My sister was so curious that she had her dna done and zip zero nada on the Native American dna! HAHA!

It's so interesting how many of these untrue family stories are about Native Americans.

My Dad's side had the exact same untrue lore. I have no idea why. Allegedly someone on my father's side, a few generations back, married a Native American.

I could not possibly care less, but if my dad were still alive knowing the story wasn't true would have bothered him. Again, I don't really know why. I remember my grandmother talking about this and saying her grandmother was Native American. Ancestry DNA said NOPE. LOL.

It is a bit confusing-Since Meriwether Lewis (not Louis) had no children, he has no direct descendants. Perhaps you are descended from a sibling.

My former mother-in-law and ex-husband's family loved to tell everyone they were direct descendants of Sir Francis Drake, who also had no children. So silly. AOK, your grandmother wouldn't have been from North Carolina, would she? I think some of these stories come from hiring someone to research your family and those people may embellish the family history to please the client.

All I know is that my dad's family went from France to England in the Norman Invasion and then to the Virginia colony in the 1620s. Naval intelligence traced it back at the start of WWll.

No, my grandmother was from Ohio. No idea where the fable originated.

There is a tendency among people doing ancestry work to follow links that lead to famous people. Since just about everyone who ever lived wasnt rich or famous it is amazing how often people are descended from some famous person. I once worked in a place with a major connection to Daniel Boone and I cant count the number of people who told me they were descended from him. That includes my ex Mother-in-law. The Boone family was huge so at least there is a chance vs someone with no descendants. George Washington comes to mind there. Somehow people dont tend to discover they are descended from servants or peons. We were also told we were descended from Cherokee and Chickasaw women (why not the men?) but are not. We are minimally part Sub Saharan African which must be from our Creole ancestry. I always suspected the Creole but no one ever mentioned it when I was growing up.

I am really enjoying this thread. There is so little family history that I know of from my family so no great stories ( or boring little ones either).

DH is into genealogy and had an aunt from a very large family who said she had been told that Sir Francis Drake was an ancestor. My husband actually found that there was a Francis Drake in her lineage but not THE (Sir) Francis Drake. :)

Family lore from years ago says that in his early days my grandmother's husband was a bootlegger and ran moonshine up from the south during prohibition.

If you take your ancestry back 12 generations (or about 250 to 300 years - circa mid 1700s), then you would have over 4,000 ancestors (unless many of your cousins married each other), and that is not that long ago.

When you are able to pull information from thousands of ancestors, some of them are bound to have been famous, nobility, or possibly criminals.

One of my ancestors on my father's maternal grandmother's side (the side with the most genealogical info) was arrested in the 17th Century in Rhode Island for fornication. The newspaper report said that he was found with a named woman in a barn with his pants down and her skirt up, which I guess was illegal, since he was married to someone else.

Another ancestor on that side from Wales had been a stowaway at age 16 on a passenger ship also in the 17th Century, but he and several other stowaways were allowed to stay on the ship because by the time they were found, it was too late to return to England, but I guess he was an illegal immigrant. However, he worked hard after arriving in Rhode Island and was charming enough to marry into a wealthy family, which is why his history is still known.

Ghengis Khan reportedly (according to the Smithsonian) has 16 million descendants living today, most of them in Asia.

My mother’s grandfather went by the nickname Red Horse so it was naturally assumed that he was native American. Nope. While I was researching my ancestry to join the DAR, I found that he was so German that he probably spoke with an accent. 🙄

My Dad's Mom, my Grandma said my dad was born premature at 7 months. Just 7 months married LOL. Being that was 96 years ago, I doubt it. Plus he was 8 lbs.

Sounds like you and your cousin could swap buffet doors and no longer have mismatched?

😊

Cyn, thanks for the spelling correction. I have changed it.

My great grandfather (or is it gg-grandfather) was the inspiration for Paul Bunyan. He was a lumberjack for the company that used that character in their advertising and there is some original memorabilia from that time in a family members possession. A single photograph that is of him does look like the earliest logo's. Not 100% sure but it's fun.

Check out the Wikipedia article on Paul Bunyan. It says that the character existed in an oral tradition among backwoodsmen in a large number of places, all unproven, long before being popularized by a lumber company who adopted the existing folk character as an image in an advertisement.

Yes, I know Elmer. It's just something we have fun with. But the rumor plus his likeness of the character that was drawn, gg grandfather's picture comparison. The family does not claim to be a definitive descendant of the character Paul Bunyan. Just passed down family story, just a story, but it could be true... that's the fun part.

Families have always hidden their versions of Al Gore's "inconvenient truths" while trying to conform to some unrealistic pattern of 'correctness'. They also embroider realities. Consider the 8 lb 'premies'; the unexplained origins of great wealth; the adult sibs or 'platonic friends' who cohabited; the 'invisible' physically or mentally handicapped family member; the suicides; the sister's child raised as if its grandparents 'tag along' child; babies surrendered out of the family for adoption or adopted into one in secrecy; hidden or obscured racial or ethnic lines. I have to wonder about all the energy that went -- and goes -- into these destructive Family Secrets -- as attempts to conform to what?

chisue, your comment reminds me of a wonderful Mike Leigh film, Secrets and Lies, about this very thing.

I have long retold a cherished family tale of an ancestor who was a minor nobleman in the Alsace-Lorraine region of Germany. The French invaded and captured the land stripping him of his land and title. Later the Germans retook that region and restored his land and title. And later still the French once again took over, once again displacing him. At which point he said "Forget it, I'm going to America" and he emigrated.

My brother who has been researching the family's genealogy can find no facts to even suggest that cherished tale is true. The closest match he has found is an ancestor from that area who owned/ran a shoe making/repair place who left due to the uncertainty of the battles between the Germans and French.

My mother said we were related to Oswald Mosley but weren’t allowed to tell anyone.

Oops, sorry Mom.

A lot of the "secrets" chisue mentions revolve around s@x and its consequences being taboo, especially for women. Once that underlying, inherently sexist premise destroyed, the need for secrecy is gone. In some families that kind of sexism was done away with many generations ago, in others it persists.

"My great grandfather (or is it gg-grandfather) was the inspiration for Paul Bunyan...."

There is nothing indefinite in this first sentence or suggesting it as being just a tale. .

Bob's story reminds me of one about my French ancestors. Supposedly, a young newlywed came home from the fields of northeastern France to find his father shot dead on the doorstep. Conjecture is that the young man was avoiding armed service. The young couple took off for Le Havre to sail to America with the man dressed in some of his wife's clothing. The tale continues with their eldest daughter being born at sea before the couple turned up in Cincinnati, where they had cousins.

Later, others from their hometown returned home to France with their New World wealth concealed in a laundry basket. I believe they prospered from the brewery they established -- although in letters home to their religious relatives the business was 'a confectionery'. (I have copies of some of these letters back and forth and estate inventory records as well.)

not royalty but both of my Grandfathers were bootleggers

The story was confused. Were we or were we not related to a very famous football player? According to Ancestry records. Yes, we are.

Bless my Mom's heart, but on a Tauck (probably) tour of the UK about 20 years ago, she encountered a Scottish gabber who told her our family surname was a Scottish one. So then she told everyone for years that we were Scottish. Even though I told her it wasn't. Our surname is definitely a Anglo-French/Norman one, and there's a lot of French Protestants and Huguenots on both sides of my family tree. On my father's side I have traced us back to some of the earliest Huguenots in North America. And to the extent I can trace things back to the 'old country', they were in Southern England (for the time they were the British Isles at all), not Scotland!

There might be a Scot or 2 in there (and 23andme claims to discern something like 2% Finnish ancestry) I have no doubt we are not "Scottish" as my Mom insisted.

Interesting 23andme tidbit: the only living semi-famous person I'm related to is a classical musician. Which is interesting because I have always been into it and it's another one of my time consuming hobbies I've alluded to.

A story passed down from a 3xg grandmother was that she was the grandchild of John Q. Adams. She even told stories of being at John Q's inauguration. She was full of it.

I made an inquiry of the John Adams society and they were quite gracious to debunk that myth. To this day we don't know who her parents were.

Another lore is one of our early ancestors came over on a ship, and her beaux stowed away on the ship to be with her. True love. Well they may have had true love, but documentation has proven they were both born in N. Carolina.

I am continuing to enjoy this thread. The last 2 were pretty funny!!