Some family traditions are more true than others. The problem is proving them. My usual approach for dealing with family traditions is to break them into the things that (if true) might have created a record or document and those things that probably did not leave any record.Then I focus on trying to prove or disprove the parts of the story that I can. Often the family tradition is mostly false, but sometimes there is a grain of truth in there somewhere. I find that breaking it up into “possibly provable” and “probably not provable” a good way to start working on the tradition. There is an old article on the Ancestry.com site I wrote on this topic. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day […]
Some genealogists throw out an entire family tradition. While stories passed down from generation to generation may be exgaggerated and Grandpa’s own personal tall tale, there may be an iota of truth to the story. The difficulty is finding out that truth. An ancestor’s grand story of military service may really be that he was a private. A relative living on the castle grounds may turn out to be one who lived within sight of the castle. Include family traditions in your genealogy, but clearly label them as tradition. Even the tall tales tell something about your family. And look at the tradition closely. Could there be a nugget of truth hiding under tons of dirt? ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Recent Comments