Mythbusting or Mythproving?
- Leslie Ryan
- Jul 23
- 3 min read
Every family has its handed down story of glory or mayhem! When we do genealogy, we are expected to prove or disprove the family's handed down story. We are either going to be Mythbusting or Mythproving!
A new friend just shared with me that her family legend was that two brothers immigrated from Scotland, sailed down the Mississippi from "Canada or up North," and when they got down south one went left to North Carolina, and one took the shorter trip to the right to Texas, in the early 1800's. Oh, and by the way, their father might have fought in The Revolution.
There are a LOT of problems with this story. Why would you cross the northern US/Canadian border to travel down the Mississippi? Wasn't it really hard to get to Missouri from Lake Itasca? But I agreed to look them up since she had the two brothers' names and where they lived.
While I Googled the Texas sibling I found A Centennial History of Anderson County Texas (Illustrated!) by Pauline Buck Hohes published in 1936, that included the family in question. Their entry begins, "... emigrated from Green County Scotland in 1676. Two brothers settled in North Carolina. Both reared large families..." It goes on to say that one of the brothers had been a Captain in General Washington's Army.
One of the Captain's sons was born in Georgia in 1799 and moved to Texas. Showing his "true pioneer's intrepidity...he left Georgia in a home-made boat..." but "made one mistake when he hit the Texas Coast." He thought he was sailing up the Brazos River, but it was the Trinity. And that's how he came to live in Anderson County.
Friends, we have here a great example of needing to double check all of the "facts" we find in family trees or even published books. Consider the source! Clearly, the person providing the information for this fine publication was not a primary source, or someone who was there and experienced the family history. This is another version of this family's legend. There is no "Green County" in Scotland. There were ancestors found in Greene County, GA, however, in 1799. So that's believable.
There was a cross-country trip, possibly in a home-made boat (!), and there was a river with a mistaken identity! The family name is actually found as the name of a town in Lanarkshire, Scotland, which makes this seem like a good possibility for further research, doesn't it?
The ancestor brother cited in the Centennial History as being a Revolutionary soldier was, indeed, a fighter from Virginia, but he was not a Captain. Normal Scottish migration could have brought the family to Virginia and then down to Georgia and the Carolinas, so this tracks. However, no documentation has been found yet (including at the DAR and SAR files) that ties our Texas settler directly to THAT ancestor.
Mythbusting or Mythbuilding? I think we have a little bit of both, don't you? Personally, I think this is a much more believable family legend than sailing down the Mississippi River and then splitting up East and West.
Hopefully, this helps you see that just copying another tree without documentation or verification can be problematic and embarrassing if you get called out on it! Always check your facts!
Summer is almost over! Halloween candies are for sale in the stores, and "Back to School" sales are underway. If you have been otherwise occupied as many of you are with kids at home, take a couple of minutes and email me about your brick wall. Always a free and no obligation peek at your tree! Meanwhile, stay cool, and enjoy the time with your families!
Regards,
Leslie Ryan
A Centennial History of Anderson County Texas (Illustrated!) by Pauline Buck Hohes published in 1936 is still advertised for sale on the internet, and is fully transcribed, indexed, and ready for viewing at Ancestry.com
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