Nothing spreads faster than family legend … in my family, one of my ancestral last names changed slightly and the claim was it happened from one son’s experience in the US Army, and the claim was the Army made the change … until I found his military record and found that the Army did NOT change it!

In my family, not the gravestone… my great-grandfather portrayed himself as 10 years younger than he really was, to make it easier to get jobs. The incorrect birthdate is on his gravestone to this day.

My poor great-great Grandmother, Ellen Dreelan Grace already has every variation of her maiden name thanks to weird transcriptions, but now MH adds several new variations I couldn’t have imagined previously.

I’ve actually been writing about it in a blog I started about my passion for genealogy … latebloominggenealogist.blogspot.com/2025/05/go-e...

That was the end, I thought, and was perfectly satisfied, but I recently got a hospital file on him that had interviews with him about his life that confirmed everything I had found, AND had a photo of him (no one in the family had ever seen a photo of him). I had pretty much his entire life story!

He dropped out of the papers until a 1923 article from Scotland about his sister, who heard that he was in the hospital and came there to try to bring him home, which completely matched the family story, and the article gave details about his stint in the Royal Engineers, drilling water wells (3)

The story really intrigued me so I dropped everything and I kept looking for newspaper stories by his name, and found ones in 1916 about him being drafted in the Army, but resisting because he was actually American. Each story gave more info and I was convinced it was him (2)

It was actually a whim to check the British newspapers part of Findmypast. I was looking for British ancestors, typed in his name and found an article from 1915 mentioning a man named the same who was in England, and had been a member of the Burma Volunteer Artillery and drilling for oil there … (1)

Well, there’s not a short answer … but the family legend is that he never came over from Ireland, but ended up in the British Army. Turns out he did come to the US as a toddler, later went to Burma as an oil driller, and did end up in the British Army during WWI! Solving the mystery was the best!

Oh yes, there was a legendary great-great uncle that everyone in the family had heard different stories about, but no one really knew the real or the full story, but I was able to uncover pretty much the full story of his life, including finding the only known photo of him.

I’ve even been able to find deeds that my oil driller great-great-grandfather had for some properties he acquired to drill on, which was quite surprising … but helped me flesh out more of his life story. They’re a great resource!

Deeds are also good for establishing when people may have lived in a particular place; through deeds, I was able to establish that an ancestor bought property in 1845 in the village he resided in until the end of his life (1901), so that helps my research greatly!

My grandmother was one of those believers … she knew her father’s first name was Wojciech, which she interpreted as the Polish version of Walter, and that Ellis Island changed his name to Albert … but no, Albert IS the English version of Wojciech. Another family myth slain!