I've definitely observed the effects of hazy oral memory more than a generation or two past. Since the arrival of the internet in our house, my mother's been doing the family history through written records, and she was shocked at how many of the stories she'd been passing on contained demonstrably false elements. I was...less surprised.
You're right, it is interesting to consider what events you know about from family stories. The two world wars come to mind, and the American Civil War. In all three cases, we were passed down misinformation. Not so surprising was my grandmother, as a small child in America during WWII, being told by her grandmother that the family was from the Netherlands and England. Internet research revealed they were almost entirely of German extraction.
You've now made me curious to give some thought to what else I know about from family stories.
Question, since your nineteenth-century history is much better than mine: how likely is it that two emigrants from Ireland in the 1850s would not have known a word of English and needed an Irish speaker's help in reading a menu when they arrived?
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Date: 2012-02-17 04:30 am (UTC)You're right, it is interesting to consider what events you know about from family stories. The two world wars come to mind, and the American Civil War. In all three cases, we were passed down misinformation. Not so surprising was my grandmother, as a small child in America during WWII, being told by her grandmother that the family was from the Netherlands and England. Internet research revealed they were almost entirely of German extraction.
You've now made me curious to give some thought to what else I know about from family stories.
Question, since your nineteenth-century history is much better than mine: how likely is it that two emigrants from Ireland in the 1850s would not have known a word of English and needed an Irish speaker's help in reading a menu when they arrived?