I was reminded of the fallibility of first person accounts...again! And it is a bigger lesson in general in genealogy - it's not proven until it's proven!
Sigh, my father, bless his long passed soul. This time, I was pouring through his journals again, reading about his favourite aunt, Aunt Minnie.
The errors, the errors in his recounting of her.
What he said: She was my favourite aunt, I wished she was my granny instead of my granny...she was my grandfather's sister.
The truth (many hours and years of research later): She was his grandMOTHER's younger sister. I had incorrectly placed several people with his grandfather's sister Mary (though I had also allowed for the possibility of Wilhemina or that Minnie was a middle name Mary.
A few other mis-facts included her street name, where her husband was from.
So lessons learned (again). Check BOTH sides of the family...both Mary's were almost the same age (less than 5 years apart), both from Northern Ireland, both have been a challenge to create a document trail of due to the rather common-ness of the name MARY in Ireland (!!)
Also, consider ANY and all variations for street names given to you from a first person account. Lowland Street could be Leland or Lealand, or Avenue, or Road. Be specific when possible with the neighbourhood...there are endless Bally- options in all parts of Ireland for example, or putting London could take you from the UK, and send you across the pond to London, Ontario...
It's all part and parcel of the patience one hones when truly dedicated to the pursuit of family history, of documenting it all, of weaving the stories in with the facts and making sense of it for family one may or may not have met yet, and to honour the ancestors with a bit of accuracy to boot ;)
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