Never Trust a Document – or a Skeleton with Three Arms
When I was a child, my gt-aunt Myfanwy lived with us. She loved to tell family stories, and one she told often was about the day she took an amputated arm, wrapped in newspaper, to the cemetery.
Never Trust a Document – or a Patronymic
After my last blog, Linda gave me some food for thought. So we’re getting away from actual documents this time, and looking at patronymics. Not to be confused with patronising, which is something the British are REALLY good at. (British forces arrive in somebody else’s country: “Oh, you don’t have a flag? Oh dear. That’s a shame. You can’t have a country without a flag. Very sorry. Look, we’ll plant ours. Now your country belongs to us”)
Never Trust a Document – or an Aunt
When I was a teenager, my Aunty A (whose real name was Annie Jane, but she’d never admit to it – and whose husband, I understand, didn’t tell her for months that he’d registered their baby daughter’s name as something other than they had agreed – fancy calling your child, in all innocence, by a name that isn’t hers….) told me she was 39. Since she was six years older than her sister, my mother – and since my mother was 24 when I was born, I didn’t even need to count on my fingers to work this one out. It has been a long-standing fact in the family ever since, that Aunty A is STILL 39. Officially. Oh yes.
Never Trust a Document – Especially On Your Wedding Day
I’ve found so many marriage records in my family where the bride’s age has been shaved a little…..or her marital status has been adjusted (leading to the discovery of two cases of bigamy) …..or a father’s employment has been inflated (one of the recurring ones is the elevation of an ag.lab. to ‘farmer’ – we had aspirations, but not status, it seems)…..or a father’s name has been changed or even invented. So maybe the answer lies in people’s perception of marriage? It has to be one of the most conventional and respectable states in our society; so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if brides and grooms (more often brides, in my experience) adjust inconvenient truths to become the life-story they would rather tell, when embarking on this stage of life.
Never Trust a Document…or a Gravestone
I’m tickled pink that I’ve had comments about document wrongnesses in other people’s families – Norah’s gt-gran Jane who was really ‘Mercy’; her ancestor Cornelius who apparently died at 115; MJ’s gt-gran who varied her forename AND her surname …(quite…); and Melvin, you are SO RIGHT to say “do not accept anything…without verifying the facts”. And thanks to Donna for the encouragement – since I’ve never done this before, it’s very welcome.
Never Trust a Document: A Story of My Great-Aunt Ceridwen
To begin at the beginning [spot the quote]: NEVER TRUST THE WRITTEN WORD Why? Because all too often it’s the product of what somebody wants to hide or change; or the product of some official’s poor hearing, poor sight or inability to interpret handwriting. Occasionally, it’s wrong because somebody innocently believes something untrue.