Did you grow up believing something about your family that you came to find was untrue?
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6rant6 (
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March 16th, 2011
My grandmother proudly told people how she was related to US President, John Quincy Adams. We all repeated the story for years. Then when family members started doing actual research we found out there was nothing to it.
There was also a story about a baby being blown away in a tornado and being found safe later, but that turned out to be a conflation of stories from our family and others. It was exposed when no one could identify who the baby grew up to be.
Do you have stories that you grew up with that later succumbed to actual facts?
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21 Answers
My father’s father used to say we were descended from a bank robber named Cooper, and he changed his name.
I have done a lot of genealogy, and haven’t found anything like that.
Yes. I was always told what a horrible man my biological father was and led to believe he abandoned my mother and me after I was born and this was the reason I wasn’t allowed any information about him and extremely limited/monitored contact with my paternal grandparents. The truth turned out to be my mother was caught cheating, got a black eye and then left my father. He was guilty of infidelities also which were the stuff of legend but he didn’t deserve to carry the whole blame and I didn’t deserve not to have a father.
So far, our family “stories” all appear to be true, although I was told that my daddy cilled a bar when he was only 3… I’m pretty sure that one’s not true…
I don’t think my paternal grandparents were ever married.Scandal! XD
I always believed that my father wasn’t an alcoholic. Until recently I found out that it was the reason he and my mother divorced.
He must have hid it well, because I had no idea…
@filmfann In folklore, Davy Crockett was rumored to have “cilled a bar” (killed a bear) when he was only 3.
My father and my uncle almost won the Second World War between them, but I found out later they had exaggerated.
I didn’t know until I was 12 that my two oldest sisters were actually my half-sisters. There’s a big age gap in my family. (Current ages 68, 66, 62, 55 & 47. I’m the 47.) By the time I came along, my mom’s previous marriage was ancient history and no one really talked about it. They weren’t hiding it, it just wasn’t of great consequence any more. It wasn’t until I saw their baby books that I found out. I asked my mom why they had a different last name written in them, and she said that it was because they had a different father. I was surprised, which surprised my mom. She was sure that I knew!
Of course, she thought I had been to Niagara Falls, too, which didn’t happen until I was 10. We lived near there and always took visitors to the Falls. Obviously, no one visited when I was little!
I found out through birth certificates & marriage certificates while tracing the family history back that my grandmother, my mothers mother was in fact a pregnant bride when she married my granddad at eighteen :-/
Now I know where my sister gets it from :-/ Lol………
Well in doing geneology I found that we have Buse in our family names and also Child so it was not good to find out we have Child Buse in our family.
Yeah, I thought we were normal.
Not really something about my whole family, more like I grew up believing my father was perfect, almost saint like in my mind…. Until he left me for dead when I was 12.
I was always told that John Wayne held me as a baby when he was in the area filming “Rooster Cogburn”...except he was here 3 years after I was born….
Also there was a tale that my uncle was in the army with Elvis Presley and that Elvis sent all my aunts letters.
@JustJessica Yeah, I think just a tad more detail we could stand.
My ex wife’s family swore that their ancestor was Governor of Virginia at the time of the French and Indian War. When the internet came along, we found they were descended from the cousin of the Lieutenant Governor; the cousin was a poor farmer on the frontier.
I was told my mother died of ovarian cancer, I have spent the last few years having ultrasounds because of the genetic risk with ovarian cancer. So then I did some research into my family and found she didn’t die of ovarian cancer at all!
I was also told my grandmother was an aunt… rolls eyes at family secrets and family myths.
I remember asking Mom what nationality we were, and she would only say “American, of course.” I had friends who were proud of their deeper roots, be it German or Dutch. My parents seemed to have no idea where we came from. I decided to check it out when I was a young adult, and found that we are 75% British, 20% French, with a smattering of Swiss and Swedish. It was nice to know.
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