Our speaker at the Barn this month was the ever popular David Annal giving his talk ‘My Ancestor was a liar. Ignorance, half-truths and wilful deceit’. The information left by our ancestors is all-too-frequently misleading, inaccurate or just plain wrong! As we become more experienced we find that they had any number of reasons to be economical with the truth.
An extremely interesting talk that covered many subjects about which our ancestors might be economical with the truth, including age, names, birthplace, parentage, marital status etc. Of course, sometimes our ancestors simply didn’t know the answer to the questions thrown at them by the clerks, registrars and enumerators. Various Acts of Parliament dissuaded some not to lie to officialdom such as. Rose’s Act of 1812 that sentenced those who wilfully misled to 14 years transportation.
The most common cause for not telling the truth was illegitimacy and the social stigma involved. Many illegitimate children would invent a father’s name on marriage if getting married in an area outside the locality where they were known.
David gave us many examples where ancestors lied and concluded with the fact that there was nothing that our ancestors didn’t lie about!