Stories from Ancestry.com

[Baztrachian]

One of my recent stories was inspired by research I did on Ancestry.com on behalf of my first wife who was born in 1964, the youngest child of a big family.

Seems she had a lot of questions about her deceased mother's past and a lot of what her mom had talked about didn't add up.

So I went digging.

I found my former MIL's marriage certificate out of North Dakota and the date was six months before my MIL's oldest child was born.

I found a newspaper 'society' article from my MIL's hometown that announced her departure for college in the fall.

I found my deceased FIL's enlistment papers for WW2, his addresses in NYC, and then his approximate date of return to North Dakota.

He had kept his train tickets as mementos of his travels so we had them to refer to.

It didn't take a wizard to figure out he had met my MIL on the train and then something happened where she suddenly abandoned her college plans, lost contact with her family for about ten years, and started pumping out kids.

The point being that the actual facts about family can blow the shit out of the old family legends that so many people grow up with.

When I did my own journey of discovery I found out my father was adopted in 1923 and that my lineage was not at all the same as my father's adopted parents.

Lots of other bullshit I grew up hearing was revealed to be bullshit as I dug up actual facts.

No idea what my point is in sharing this. Just thought I'd share it.

 

[Rob_Royale]

You could definitely spin this into a story.
"Granny, my research and dna test has revealed that the story of you and grandpa is BS. Tell me the truth."
Then have Grandma tell it.
"Well back in '67, Grandpa was in Vietnam and I met this guy at the train station. There were three guys with him and they were headed into town for a bachelor party."

 

[Reshbod]

I have a partial story somewhat related to this. My story has a 40 something married woman who is a historian/researcher. An older, widowed gentleman in his 70s, who attends her church get to talking and he reveals he'd like to find a lost love from back when he was young man. She offers to help him and dives into his family tree. The lost love has a common name and he doesn't recall anything about her parents or anything else. The work closely for months getting comfortable with each other. With the use of Sanborn maps and various other records she tracks her down. They discovered she had a long, happy life but had recently passed.

Dissappointed, the man thanks her for all her work. She tries to console him and before either know what's happening they are kissing. I have the basic outline, just need to sit and fill it out.