Utility of Oral Traditions in Family History Research

wexflyer

The material below, relating to the utility of oral family traditions, is taken from a different thread, relating to a very different original subject. I think it may be useful to extract this into a separate dedicated thread, with a more descriptive subject heading.

mod9maple wrote: »

How can hearsay be more accurate than verified documents? In genealogical terms if you can't prove something, you can't record it as fact. You can though record it as a possibility in your family history but that's a different thing altogether.

How can you be sure your ancestor did as you think he did? Without evidence you can't. It's not verified fact. I'm not saying he didn't, but without proof that information can't be part of that mans genealogical record.

I entirely disagree. First and most important: family tradition IS "evidence" - a sloinne is legal evidence in Ireland and Scotland. At the same time, many written records were created on the basis of what you dismiss as "hearsay", so how can they be any more accurate or reliable? And as for the documents being "verified" - the heck they were!

I have seen many, many examples of erroneous documentation. How can one know? Well, some are impossible or obviously wrong. Others can be shown to be incorrect by other documentation. In yet other cases, I simply believe my sources to be more accurate than the "record". My sources were all talking about their own family/ancestors. By contrast, the authors of the records were recording what they thought they heard, or thought they knew. Do you realize just how high the error rates were in the "official documentation"?

Some examples:
- Gravestone inscription for a great-uncle of my grandmother, showing date of death in 1857. My grandmother and her sisters always asserted to me that the year given on the tombstone was incorrect. I believed them - why would they have any cause to invent a story about an incorrect date? Just last month I found an entry in the parish deaths register that proved them correct.
- A US cousin of my father has a valid baptismal certificate for his mother, issued in the 1920s. Yet, we know the date given on it to be impossible, given the timing of birth other members of the family. A subsequent search of the parish registers shows no corresponding entry - in fact, there is no entry for her at all. The priest in the 1920s simply invented a date/year, and put it on a cert.
- An example of a record created by someone who "thought he knew", but did not: the civil-registration record for a marriage of a great-grandfather of mine actually contains the details of a second cousin, with the same father's name. The priest obviously "thought he knew", and put down what he knew about the cousin.
- Marriage registration where the wrong sister is shown as the one who got married!
- I seem to recall once seeing what appeared to be a 19th century "gay marriage" (if one were to believe the names).
- Multiple other examples of incorrect parents names and other details on civil registration records.
- The intentionally incorrect records, such as the second marriage record for my bigamist great-great-uncle.
- And on, and on.

To sum up, I think that the current tendency to dismiss the veracity and utility of oral sources is one of the most fundamental mistakes in modern Irish family history research. This attitude is unhistorical, self-defeating, and fundamentally incorrect. If you are honest, I think you will admit that in the end most everyone in Ireland has to rely on oral family history in creating their family trees - the information on Irish BMD records is simply insufficient to prove a unique descent. As for the specific example at issue, I personally have no doubt - none - that my great-grandfather worked on the construction of Rosslare Harbour. My evidence for that is the personal testimony of his daughters, some of whom were alive at the time, and whose other testimony has proved remarkably accurate for events far more remote than that. I have a hard time understanding why the testimony of direct witnesses should be disbelieved, simply because they told me this in person, rather than originate on a scrap of paper.

BarryD

Largely agree with you but people can also sometimes 'invent' stories or distort facts to suit their own agenda. In some cases this can become the 'truth', if others accept it and pass it on. You then get into a philosophical debate - which is 'true', what actually happened or what people believe to have happened. Life, politics & history, not just family history has many examples. Many 'facts' are reported in our daily media but if you examined them for yourself, you might find all sorts of distortions in them.

But in general I think, if the matter seems not contentious and esp if more than one relative has the same account, they are to be believed.

KildareFan

There's usually a grain of truth in family myths but not always 100%:
some of my cousins insist their ancestors were quakers because their mothers insisted that was the case; not so; the ancestors were Church of Ireland protestants, some of whom worked in a linen mill, which was owned by Quakers. The cottages they lived in were sometimes known as Quaker Cottages.
family myth that my great grandfather was killed in an accident in the linen mill - his death cert states he died of Bright's disease; but my grandfather's record in Guinness's states that his father died by accident.
family myth that another great grandfather drowned in a bog having had a few scoops on Christmas eve; his death cert states he drowned on Christmas eve
family myth that a great great great grandfather was a blacksmith who left Wexford after 1798; haven't found any evidence. His son was a blacksmith, which is backed up by birth/marriage certs.
family myth that great grandfather owned a pub which he drank his way through; not true that he owned a pub, but could have bought one with the amount he drank.

Waitsian

BarryD wrote:

But in general I think, if the matter seems not contentious and esp if more than one relative has the same account, they are to be believed.

I divide my research in two - genealogy and wider family history. To me genealogical facts are those that can be verified beyond all reasonable doubt.

Family history will include stories and hearsay that cannot be proven or verified. That's not to say they aren't true or didn't happen but that there is no evidence to prove it.

Others may and it seems do think differently. So be it.

Waitsian

Btw I find it strange that someone would use a quote of mine to start a thread and then close their account without allowing me the courtesy of a right to reply and therefore opening a debate.

In short, I'm a genealogist. I cannot nor indeed will not dismiss 'scraps of paper' as readily as she/he wishes me to, nor will I trumpet 'truths' or 'facts' without verification. They make for nice family stories but to me that's not genealogy.

BarryD

mod9maple wrote: »

Btw I find it strange that someone would use a quote of mine to start a thread and then close their account without allowing me the courtesy of a right to reply and therefore opening a debate.

True, very strange behaviour

Hermy

I think, regardless the source, whether it be a scrap of paper, a leather bound ledger or Auntie Mabel's memories it's vital that you know the veracity of your sources.

An early 20th century parish register I have had access to was apparently written up by a priest with alcohol issues and consequently the dates are mostly wrong.
A friend I'm helping with his tree relies a lot on the various stories his late mother told him down through the years and many of these stories have turned out to have more than a grain of truth to them.
I have a scrap of paper 169 years old but it only confuses me so always disregard scraps of paper.:p

In an ideal world we would have a paper record to back up every name, date and place in our tree, but particularly here in Ireland where so much of the paper record has been lost, I think every source that is available must be considered in attempting to build the picture of our past.

Waitsian

As ever the voice of reason Hermy. That's how I see you anyway!

pedroeibar1

I‘m very much with Mod9’s views on oral/written information scraps - they are great but remain just stepping stones, however valuable.

Some scraps have been hugely useful to me as pointers for where to dig for the facts. For example one verbal “scrap” on my maternal side – a childless great granduncle with a common name had emigrated to the US, had a “huge job” in a (named) well-known firm. Using that info I was able to concentrate / focus on a locality (otherwise he could have been anywhere in the US) and found a “suspect” in a few of the Federal censuses, but there was a wife and an adult child. Another discussion with the aged aunt asking was she sure he never married and she said he had no children but late in life “married a widow, an Italian woman with a daughter.” Those details fitted the Census data perfectly; more research and I was able to locate his original passage out – on SS Baltic - in the shipping records and found that he was going to stay with his (maternal) uncle who had paid his passage. That snippet led me to being able to close another loop as the christian name of the recipient uncle helped me to nail down an earlier generation of the family in Ireland.

That is what makes genealogy such fun. (And the great grand uncle did not have a huge job, he was a shipping clerk who it seems liked impressing people when he came home on holidays!)

kildarejohn

Just another example of oral tradition - My ggfather was said to have been brought up in a pub. But reviewing Griffiths Valuation, his family lived in a 5 shilling cottage, obviously too poor to be publicans. Another family with same surname had a pub elsewhere in the town. So that seemed to disprove the story.
But years later the Griffith Valuation map became available on line. This showed that, while on a different street, the 5/- cottage was actually in the backyard of the pub. So family story confirmed and likely relationship between cottage family and pub family opened up another line of enquiry.

Jellybaby1

My country mother-in-law, a farmer's wife, was describing a distant female relative. She said the relative 'was in business'. Nothing else was known, just 'she was in business'. To my city ears, I believed the relative had owned a business, but it turned out she worked behind the counter in a shop. So although not altogether wrong, the actual truth was different to what I understood the meaning of 'business' to be. Dubliners would have just said 'she worked in a shop'.

P. Breathnach

I went into a village on a mountainside in deepest Kerry. The first person I met was of a family that had been there for generations, and he told me stories of my ancestral family, stuff that was new to me. He also pointed out the houses they had occupied (one ruined, one still habitable, but empty) and told me that the woman who lived in a particular house was related to me.

Everything he told me turned out to be correct.

KildareFan

I too went into a hamlet in the Dublin mountains some years ago & met descendants of my great grandfather who were still living there, had a great chat, copious cups of tea, and took numerous photos of where my Great Grandfather was born, and took notes of extra information on people I'd identified in the 1901 & 1911 census.

A few months later I found I'd been on a wild goose chase up a blind alley. Great Grandfather never lived there - just someone with the same name! It was only when I got the certificates and checked the records that I found out where he was actually born. He was born a couple of miles from the hamlet I visited and he was probably related in some way to the nice people whose time I'd wasted and probably confused forever.

Note to self - don't leap to conclusions....

Jellybaby1

I'm sure they were happy to adopt you into their family anyway, Kildarefan. Country folk just love to talk about families, who is related to who, who married who, etc., etc. It's a big part of some of my in-law's lives. It can also be a great source for genealogists, but also can direct you very wrong.

shanew

I'd never completely trust family stories, but would keep them in mind as possible leads. Based on what I've found for my lot , these are mixed accuracy - some completely true, some have details 'crossed' e.g. right firstnames/wrong surname/generation/occupation or place, some suffer from a touch of Chinese whispers and/or exaggeration, but a few of the 'that cant be true' items turned out the be 100% accurate (like the left behind by the circus one - long story....)

Jellybaby1

It's all a game of Chinese Whispers really.