A Family Pattern: Tall Tales

I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 13: A Family Pattern

Introduction

My assigned Week 13 ancestor is Rose Carey Anderson—my grandmother—and the family pattern I associate most strongly with her is a little light-hearted: tall tales.

Discussion

As soon as I developed a love for family history, my grandmother Rose was eager to regale me with family story after family story.

The problem is, they were all tall tales.

The baby brother who died in a fall down the stairs? Actually polio.

The uncle who disappeared one day, never to be seen again? He had drowned—and his body was brought back to his mother’s house.

The other uncle, the firefighter who died in a fire in the firehouse? (Wow.) Was what the newspapers called a “hobo” and died in a fire in a barn he was crashing in.

Her grandfather who had to leave Ireland or be hung as a horse thief? Almost certainly not.

Grandma’s pattern eventually became clear to me and it became a challenge to disprove each story about the family’s past, and really, I did.

For years, I treated these stories like puzzles, something to investigate and, more often than not, disprove.

But I wasn’t smart enough to put two and two and realize that the tales she told me about the current family might not stand up to examination either.

“F__’s last two children weren’t his.” Maybe. Maybe not.

“C__’s dad wasn’t her dad.” I was not given enough info and will never know.

“M__ was having an affair when he died.” Another thing I’ll never know.

So, I am pretty confident Grandma is looking down on me laughing at the wild goose chases I’ve been on!

And honestly, she’d probably still tell the stories the same way.

Summary

When I was a girl, “Trust but verify” was a popular saying, and it’s something any genealogist worth their research notes would do well to remember.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: A Brick Wall Revisited