Genealogical Explosions, My Grandmother The Fake

[kathygnome]

Growing up my grandmother and I were not close. Not so much because of any particular animosity, but because she was never a warm or particularly caring woman. She was part of the WASP brahmin class in Worcester from "Uppah Burncoat" the elite suburban area, member of the women's club and of course the Daughters of the American Revolution. Though it was rumored that her genealogist may have bent the truth as was common at the time.

So in searching through genealogical stuff, I found myself on the DAR website which among other things hosts its own genealogical database and with a simple search and there she is. And there's the heritage going back, pretty much as described. Then even further way back to the 1500s. And there's her living in South Dakota. 

Wait. South Dakota?

I look through again and there's certainly a woman by my grandmother's name in the DAR. But it's not her. It's a completely different woman of the same name and roughly same age. Now I was absolutely assured that my grandmother was part of the DAR. This was one of those rock solid things. Supposedly back to the Mayflower.

And through some more searching I actually find my grandmother's information. Not in the DAR genealogies, but in a 1900 census record. And the details there are a bit less elite. It's a rooming house in New Hampshire that the family shared with another family. And here's the real kicker, her mother is named Marie. Not a big wasp name. And there next to it is noted "McB." As in Irish? As in "no good lazy shanty Irish" as my notoriously anti-Irish grandmother would have so indelicately put it? 

I always knew my grandmother was more than a bit of a social climber and that her application to the DAR had been done with possibly dubious genealogy. But I didn't quite see her as a half Irish poser who may very well have manifested her DAR status through identity theft.

Comments

[malwae.livejournal.com]

Well that's not the first time a kid has gone to extreme lengths to distance themselves from an embarrassing family. Does the record mention which town in NH?

[kathygnome.livejournal.com]

The record was from Concord and it lists their birthplace as Maine, which is fitting with oral history that says she came from Vinal Haven ME.

There's a subsequent list for the same family in Worcester, which is where my grandparents lived. So my guess is they moved from Maine, to NH, then to Worcester MA where she married my grandfather. Her parents seem to have died in the 1910-20 as they appear on the 10 census, but not on the 20.

[malwae.livejournal.com]

My family hails from that general region (Rockland, Searsport) but at least on my grandmother's side, they came south from Cutler, and never seemed to have aspired to become quality. My grandmother spoke with a heavy accent which I think was technically Down East but sounded like London cockney to me in many respects.

Heh, we're probably related.

[kathygnome.livejournal.com]

Family name from Maine is Arey.

[malwae.livejournal.com]

Bryant and Rich are the two main family names that I know of, but I know Rich was a made up name because an ancestor defected from the British Army in Canada and did a disappearing act to avoid being hanged. Bryant's the further north Downeast name, which has a few hushed scandals that probably had something to do with some of the Nova Scotia tribes donating to the genetic mix, as it were.