Genie-ology

Like the genie, are some things better left bottled? I loaded Family TreeMaker last night and began to blow through the family legends.

The infamous half-aunt wasn’t born in Spokane, WA to a mother gone under the wing of her deceased young husband’s family, as we were told. No, L’s birthplace was in Illinois and there seems to be no trace of a father, deceased or otherwise. What was my maternal grandmother doing in Illinois, having a baby alone?

The paternal grandfather who took his origins to the grave out of hatred for his birth family admitted to being born in 1891 in Illinois on the 1920 census. (What is it with this Illinois connection?) True to character, he left two big blanks for the names of his mother and father but did own to the fact that they were from California.

This isn’t family history we are tracking, it should be called family mythology.

Some mistruths are literary license. My maternal great grandmother writes that she lost her husband and was left to support three penniless young children. In fact, she lost him in a divorce that she initiated.

Then there is the list her children – my grandmother O. N. Scott, my uncle J. W. (or H., depending on what record you believe) Scott, and Catherina L Stark...who is that? I was looking for the third sister who allegedly drank creek water when she was a young woman and died of typhoid. I expected her to be a Scott, though.

So, genie, here are my three questions: What are the names of my paternal great grandparents (and why were they so hated?); Who was half-aunt L’s father? And how about that legend that we are descended through the Carter line from Jacques Cartier and an Indian woman he married in Canada? All my research shows he had no offspring. No Indian wife to speak of, either. But that was a favorite story of my great-grandmother, who used “Cartier” as a pen name.

My husband will probably divorce me for staying up late at nights puzzling over all of this, but I have a strategy. I’m going to set him down in front of the computer with his notes and let him see how far he can get verifying that story about the silver mine in Arkansas.