I have spent many years researching my family legends. All have been called fabrications by the leading experts in that area. Some were much more careful with their wording but the bottom line was the same.

My experience is not to discount anything. Take your time to think every thing through. Family legends are for the most part as true as the teller can remember. Take into consideration the teller may have been old and mentally weak by the time of the telling. He may be recalling statements made by his ancestor when he or she was in that same condition. I believe out and out lies are rare and are there for very good reason. The only lies were to prevent descendents were to hide the fact their ancestor was a Tory spy at a time went we hated the British with more animosity than we have held for any other country. Our history paints a fairly ‘clean’ war. The truth is it was the dirtiest, nastiest war we ever fought. War atrocities on both sides were horrific. Like a feud, they were in retaliation for some other atrocity. This included burning down homes with women and children inside. Anyone leaving the house was shot. At the time that information was related 1806, being a Tory spy was an unforgivable sin. Most of the untruths were honest mistakes. The names are usually the first thing to get wrong. Often the names get mixed up in the same story, later the names get worse. I was surprised that although the names were strongly mixed up in a century. Some of the unique information from 150 years back was still intact. That is good to remember unusual information valuable for conformation remains even though the story has degraded into pure rubbish. For instance… The legend goes… Mr. Bumpadue came from France with his family and smuggled Louis Mesnard out with them. Louis marries the daughter and inherits the business. The real story is Daniel Mesnard is smuggled out of the country as a young boy by his uncle Jacques DuBois Jacques does have a baby daughter. However, Jaques dies within a year of arriving in New York City. Dan is kicked out of the house by his aunt by marriage and works for the Vincent ship out fitters. He marries the daughter and inherits a large business. I suspect Bumpadue is really DuBois. Daniel’s boys mostly married into wealthy Dutch merchants. My ancestor marred a girl whos family knew a Jacques DuBois brother of the famous Dutch/Walloon Indian fighter Louis DuBois. The earliest mention of Louis stated he was the first of his line to come to America. Louis did precede his brother. Every thing fits nicely in retrospect.

The huge problems were with more accurate part of the legend. Here most everything but the out and out lies was fairly good only the names were mixed up between the characters. Unfortunately, sloppy research and organizations with there own agendas created a huge problem for me. To refute history you need a fairly air tight case. Even though the history was built on educated guesses it had been out there for a long time.

My advice is just keeping plugging away. You do need to assess is the project is doable. I have not tried to follow up of a McPherson legend. I am certain that one was close to right. The end of my line had an uncle the Red Murdock. The story is too far fetched to be believable. Now, anyone with an interest could have fabricated a story like that. If you are going to make something up why make it unbelievable? The Red Murdock was too obscure to be known where the tail was told. The legend had some of his adventures. The adventures were not correct but were close enough to what his descendents claimed that you can see the stories are essentially the same. At the time the stories were related there was no history of such a person plus these McPhersons live in the low lands they thought the Jacobite were fools. In my version the commentary was the Red Murdock was not very smart. The version was not brag but a dry commentary. Now he would be a great person in your tree but not then.

I have decided the project is not very doable. No family records still exist on any of the lines and the public records were burned in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. The tragedy is two 19th century men probably had that information but their notes were not kept after they died. Both men had no sons and back then genealogy was a man thing. The only good that came out of that was the Mesnards got a large cash of pictures probably because we were the only kin that was interested family history. I have sent those that would return by communications copies of the pictures and a family tree.