EXPOSING THE MYTHS
Everyone has heard interesting stories from their older family members. These stories can be helpful when you decide to trace the family, but often they are a mixture of things they probably heard from their parents, and many times they turn out to be a combination of several family members. If the tales aren't accompanied by documents of proof, then it is up to you to either prove or disprove the information. There may be lots of clues there though. You can use these clues to go after the documents you need.
Do you have these kinds of stories in your Tolle family??
Let's expose the myths and the wrong information that is being passed along. I have found some that have not only been passed down, but also put into print. That is really scary. The next person comes along and copies all that junk and adds it to their own records without first proving it, and it goes on and on. Let's expose those dreaded myths once and for all.
Myth #1 - This one is from my Tolle
family. I went on a few wild goose chases when I
first
started hunting down my ancestors. One of the stories in my
own Tolle family was that our Tolle
family was French. My Dad and aunts didn't know anything at
all
about their
grandfather, except that they insisted that he was French.
They
also insisted that he came to California in the Gold Rush.
Even after I pointed out that he was only eleven years old
in
1849, they were still sure it was true. It took me quite a
while
to learn that he actually came out here in 1874, a married
man with four children already. And, I never did find any
French ancestors in anywhere my family tree.
(This
ancestor is Nathaniel Washington Tolle7; Nimrod
D. Tolle6; George Tolle Jr5; George
Tolle Sr4; Roger Tolle3; Tobias
Tolle2; Roger Tolle1.)
Myth #2 - Back in 1975 I wrote to a
lady in Grundy County,
Missouri about her Tolle family. At that time I hadn't gone
back too far with my own, and her husband's didn't seem to
connect to mine. She told me that she only knew the name of
the grandfather, but she claimed that the name was O'Tolle and the
grandfather
changed it to Tolle. Later, when I knew that this wasn't so, I
wrote and told
her. No response. The sad part about it is that this has
gone
into print. I have been contacted several times by people
who are looking for the O'Tolle family in Grundy County,
Missouri. This mis-information is being perpetually passed
on as truth. On a trip to Trenton, Missouri a few years ago,
I left some charts and notes about this branch of the family
at the genealogy
section of the city library. However, the story still goes on.
So now whenever someone contacts me looking for
their O'Tolle family, I know exactly who they are looking
for.
(The Tolle who was the victim of this
myth
is George H.
Tolle6; Reuben Hampton Tolle5;
Jonathan Tolle4; Roger Tolle3; Tobias
Tolle2; Roger Tolle1.)
Myth #3 -
Here is a link to a page with some interesting topics, including one called Family Legends, True or False. How do you solve them? It gives ideas on how to research these family stories.