Ancestry Magazine

Do you have an Indian princess in your family tree? You may want to check again. While the myths in your family tree are fun to consider, the true stories you find will be even better.

It seems like every family has fascinating stories about an ancestor which, although sometimes a bit curious, are considered true by most family members. The problem is, careful genealogical research will often debunk those stories, especially those that inflate an ancestor’s importance in his or her society.

False stories, or myths, interfere with the research process. If an ancestor was not an Indian princess, no amount of research in the records will extend the ancestry any further. Besides, the real stories of our ancestors are often more fascinating then the family myths they replace. For a family historian, truth is the master–and documentation is the servant of that master. But finding out the truth first requires an understanding of the myths that evolve.

Myths come in all sizes and shapes, and each family has tail ored its myths to fit its ancestors. Considered all together, there are four common themes to myths, with numerous combinations and subsets: 1) myths that deal with our immigrant ancestors, 2) myths that elevate the importance of an ancestor (or relative), 3) myths that deal with the family’s background, and 4) myths about the records of our families.

Since most myths are stories that may have happened to someone–some ancestors were governors, and some people really do descend from royalty–debunking specific family myths is a task left to each family’s genealogists. This article cannot catalog all genealogical myths, but it can identify some of the most prevalent, and thereby alert all family historians of the need to examine family stories more closely. Somewhere, among those family stories, you will surely find your own myth. It will need to be identified, disproved, and dismissed. Hopefully, you’ll also find real family stories that are just as intriguing.

Immigration Myths
As a nation of immigrants, our ancestors who made the ocean voyage are the target of much of our research. Sometimes we romanticize them and their struggles. Stories told about them become embellished, so many myths center on the immigrant ancestor.

Name changes at Ellis Island
One of the most common immigration myths is about names that were changed by immigration officials at Ellis Island. At least one version of this myth suggests that it was a radical name change that completely obscured the native surname. This almost never happened at Ellis Island. The officials there were well-versed in foreign languages, often being earlier immigrants themselves. The passenger lists originated at the ports of departure, where native names were fully understood. Indeed, the whole purpose of documenting immigrant arrivals would be partially thwarted if the names of those immigrants were changed beyond recognition.

Name alterations i n the Ellis Island era (1892—1924) were typically very minor, and were often affected by families upon settlement in the United States. For example, my Dutch father arrived in the United States with the surname spelling of “Meijrink,” which was anglicized to the current Meyerink spelling after he settled in New Jersey.

Name change to obscure an ethnic background
Some families claim a name change in earlier generations to make an ethnic name sound more English. A Tolle family genealogist tells of finding a woman with the surname Tolle who claimed her husband’s grandfather changed the name from O’Tolle. When the researcher later proved this to be untrue, the lady never responded. Sadly, the woman’s claim has gone into print, and the researcher is still being contacted by persons looking (in vain) for O’Tolles in that county.

These name changes seldom happened. My wife’s father’s family believed that their Sticht surname was a shortened version of a longer name. Only after finding the 1850 German immigrant to New York City could we prove the name was Sticht, even before he came to America. Also, name variations seldom happened after spelling became more consistent in the 1800s and the population became more educated.

Three brothers came to America
One of the most common myths of colonial immigrants is that three brothers left the native homeland and traveled to America together. Although this must be true of some families, it is not true for most. Usually people either immigrated as young single persons or as young families. Seldom did three adult brothers immigrate together. The myth often continues that one brother settled in the north, one in the south, and the other in the west. If brothers really did immigrate together, the chances are much greater that they would have settled near each other. This is a key principle of chain migration. The myth is really an attempt to connect different families of t he same name into one big family. Sometimes it appends the name-change myth by suggesting that each brother chose to spell his surname differently.

Immigrant origins in a famous place
Many families claim that their immigrant ancestor came from London, Berlin, Amsterdam, or some other well-known city. These myths are often built on some fact. Perhaps an ancestor came from a province or area near that large city. Sometimes immigrants would tell their neighbors and family that they are from a larger city because it is a place those people would have had heard of. While living in Germany, I often heard young men from Utah describe themselves as living “near California.”

My favorite is the small German resort town, Baden-Baden. If all the people who claim this quaint town as their home really came to America, the city would be vacant today, or else would have been as large as Munich historically. This myth developed from misunderstanding an immigrant’s origin in Baden as meaning the city of that name, not the former duchy.

Ancestral Importance Myths
Descendants often revere their ancestors. Children sitting at Grandpa’s knee believe him to be the most important man in the world. No wonder, then, that we attach even more importance to earlier relatives.

Involvement in a major historical event
Be it the California Gold Rush, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Chicago fire, or the San Francisco earthquake, family myth will often place your ancestor there. These events are a part of the history that binds us together as Americans, so in the collective consciousness of the country they are easily attached to relatives with only some distant connection.

The same Tolle researcher (mentioned above) proved that a Gold Rush ancestor was only eleven years old during the Gold Rush (1849), and didn’t arrive in California until 1874, with a wife and four children. Even then some family members di dn’t believe him. Similarly, my wife’s uncle insisted that his grandfather’s sister, whom he visited as a young boy, had married a man in New York named Johns Hopkins. Actual documents showed the husband’s name to be Charles Happach.

Elevated ancestral importance
If our ancestors were involved in major events, they undoubtedly played an important part. Perhaps this is never such a common myth as when dealing with military service. Privates become captains, and sergeants become majors.

My grandmother’s great-aunt wrote that “Hezikiah Herrick was a major in the Revolutionary War.” Hezekiah was actually a private in the war; his father, Ezekiel, was a captain. It is uncertain where the tradition arose regarding the high rank of Hezekiah, especially since he was only about nineteen years old when he served. The 1885 published Herrick Genealogy identifies Captain Ezekiel Herrick as a Major; this may be the origin of the erroneous statements about his son Hezekiah.

Family Coat-of-Arms
Although strongly encouraged by commercial vendors of all things heraldic, a family coat-of-arms is simply not possible. Coats-of-arms were not granted to families. They were granted to individuals, sometimes with the right to bestow them upon direct descendants. Even then, children other than the eldest son often had to change the coat-of-arms in some way. Furthermore, it was never granted to all possessors of a surname. The chances are very great that your relative of that surname is not related to the original grantee at all.

Descent from royalty or nobility
Perhaps the most common myth is that you are related to royalty. Everyone is looking for a connection to royalty. The myth usually suggests that an ancestor was disowned, or was a younger son who could not inherit, or was perhaps hoodwinked out of his inheritance (shades of Jacob and Esau in the Bible). The myth is an attempt to right a historic wrong, but i t rarely, if ever, happened. Few royal scions were disowned, and even a younger son had distinct advantages in upper-class society in the Old World. He didn’t have to eke out a living as a pioneer in the backwoods of North America.

This is especially true of immigrant ancestors. The first Brandenburg (usually named Michael) to come to America was not from the royal house of Prussia (whose surname was Hohenzollern), and he was not disowned for marrying a Jewish (or Catholic) girl. And he did not hide out in Holland (thus explaining his appearance on passenger lists out of Rotterdam). This myth is particularly noticeable among new family historians. Author Eugene Stratton observed, “with experience in genealogy, one’s royal lines tend to decrease. At one time I had twelve royal lines. Now I am down to two, and one of these is a little shaky” (Applied Genealogy, p. 259).

Family Background Myths
Certainly the above myths all pertain to family background, but they also fit the more specific categories given. There are many other myths about various aspects of a family’s history. The following are just the most common.

Native American ancestry
After years of mistreating the Native Americans, it has now become chic to be related to one! Perhaps it has to do with government benefits paid to many tribes. However, such benefits usually require a minimum amount of Native American blood, usually an eighth or closer.

While this is another of the most prevalent of American myths, having Native American ancestry is untrue in the vast majority of cases.

Of course, there are descendants of the Native American tribes who graced this continent before our European ancestors displaced them. However, most of those descendants are known, since they are already on the tribal rolls if they are on reservations. One family’s story about descent from Pocahontas was later proved to be descent from families liv ing in Pocahontas County, West Virginia!

Peasant ancestors without records
Certainly most of our ancestors were peasants, but that does not mean there are no records. Church records, beginning in the 1500s for many European countries, record virtually every peasant. But the greater danger in this myth is the suggestion that a family’s ancestors never achieved much. That is simply not true. Each family has hundreds, even thousands, of ancestors who can usually be documented. Among the peasants, there are sure to be some who were more successful and who made better lives for their families. It is precisely the stories of such ancestors that need to be found and disseminated. When we believe our ancestors didn’t accomplish much, this destructive myth discourages us from looking further.

Relationship to someone with the same surname
For people with the surname of a U.S. president, it is nice to think there is some familial relationship. This myth could have evolved innocently enough when a child noticed someone with the same last name and asked if she was related to the family. An adult, not knowing the answer, may have referred the child to an older adult, who, not knowing the answer either, made one up. Perhaps the answer was, “I don’t know, but we could be.” The child only heard the positive part, remembered it later, and passed the information on.

Those who know how surnames developed centuries ago realize that even uncommon names are shared by many unrelated persons. Of the approximately sixty adults named Meyerink in the United States today, only my brother is related to me. The others may descend from persons who lived where our Dutch ancestors lived, but there is no connection as far back as the adoption of our surname.

Large family inheritance
There are many versions of the family inheritance myth in many families, but they are generally inaccurate. As a probate researcher, I know that very few p robate cases ever go to more distant relatives than second cousins (children of the same great-grandparents), or their descendants. Often this myth is connected to some believed connection to nobility, and reflects some desire to right that historical wrong.

Other myths trace back to numerous inheritance scams of the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries. Con artists successfully scammed many American families out of thousands of dollars chasing the elusive inheritance. Older family members may have heard Grandma mention something about a lost inheritance, and so the myth is carried on.

Research Myths
Some myths are related to the nature of genealogical research itself. One would presume this means that other family members have conducted some research or understand the research process, but it is actually the opposite. The following myths show a decided lack of understanding of the true nature of research.

The family tree has been traced back to Adam
A short course in math will remind us that we can never really finish our genealogy. In just thirteen generations (which takes many Americans back to their colonial ancestors), we have more than 4,000 direct-line ancestors (not to mention all the children). Thousands of those are immigrants whose origins need to be discovered in the Old World, where the ancestry may go back several more generations. With ancestors doubling in each generation, and research becoming more difficult the farther back you go, we can never be truly done.

Just as wrong is the claim that the family tree has been traced back to Adam. No lineage to Adam is universally accepted as correct. Before the Merovingian dynasty (about 500 to 800 A.D.) in France, virtually all so-called lineages are really lists of tribal chieftains, with no proven father-son relationship. While we may descend from Adam, proving it is beyond the realm of modern genealogy.

Infallibility of a family relative
Whatever the myth, you likely have one proponent in the family who heard a story from a now-deceased family member “who would never lie.” As great as our aunts, uncles, grandparents were, they were not infallible. We could easily believe that every word they spoke was true; they may have been misinformed in the first place.

It’s all in a computer database
Believing that some computer database out there holds all the answers goes to the heart of wishful thinking, to which everyone succumbs at times. We want the answers to come easily, and newer researchers in particular often believe that computers and the Internet hold the answer to all the questions.

With the booming interest in genealogy coinciding with the explosion of the Internet and the use of personal computers, this is a mistake to which many fall prey. Add to it the hundreds of millions of “names” in online family trees, and billions of names in major database collections, and it’s easy to believe this myth, until you actually begin searching. Star Trek’s counselor Troi may have found 400 years of a lady’s descendants in the ship’s computers, but that kind of database is still a few hundred years away for us.

All the records were destroyed
Deceptive and dangerous, this myth discourages further research and is never really true. Yes, some records were destroyed. Courthouses were burned and bombing runs in World War II did destroy some parish registers, but it’s not that grim. Most record destruction is much less mild than is first claimed. Indeed, many claims may be an excuse by a record custodian not to search records upon request, or an indication of laziness in trying to find the requested records. If they are not where the worker first looks, they are assumed to be burned.

Even when records have been burned, there are usually alternate sources, since no one repository can, or does, hold all the records of value. If a courthouse burned, the church registers, federal archives, land offices, and newspapers likely did not. Careful researchers don’t let allegations of destroyed records get in their way.

This list is really only a start; there are a lot more myths out there. Of course, one or two of the above “myths” may actually be true in your family, but you should always approach such stories with skepticism. Remember, truth is the master. Document your family stories so they become part of the truth. Leave the myths to the Greeks and the Romans.

Kory L. Meyerink is a vice-president and senior researcher at ProGenealogists, Inc. in Salt Lake City. An editor and writer of Ancestry’s Printed Sources, he also teaches for Brigham Young University, writes articles, and lectures throughout the country on genealogy-related topics.