Excellent Faye! Thank you - we've all fallen for at least one of those "don'ts" at some point in our research...I'm STILL trying to go back and make a note of the sources from my "early years" of hunting dead people! No disrespect intended, I've just learned to keep a touch of humor in the genealogy hunt to help keep the frustrations to a minimum! HaHa!
As to family stories...somewhere in that story will be a shread of truth, well hidden in some cases! In one of the cases that comes to mind, my grandmother always said her stepdad and - who we now know was her third - husband ran booze together in upstate New York during Prohibition. I never have found proof of that, but I did find the families living very close in 1930 (her parents and the third husband and his family) and add to that that the stepdad and third husband were working in the same area, possibly for the same outfit, during WWI...
The other case that comes to mind is that my grandmother falsified my father's birth certificate. I have no idea how she was able to pull it off (my dad has a copy of the certificate), but she put down that the mother was the President of the United States and the father was unknown. The child's name was given as the same as the doctor who delivered him...or so she said. Hang on, it gets odder...turns out the name of the doctor who delivered him is the same as - who we now know as her second - husband! Found that out from her stepdad's obituary. Grandma was listed as Mrs. (name of doctor) and the "doctor" was working at the local steel mill!
A round about way for me to remind everyone not to absolutely believe the stories, but to remember there is a bit of truth in there somewhere whether it's a name or location...it can all be used to help find out more about our ancestors.
