For the past several years I’ve worked with a colleague on a project to locate photographs of the Revolutionary War generation. (See my new blog for additional information.) Along the way I’ve re-discovered many “lost” photos and identified some previously unidentified images. The simple truth is that our project is more complicated than the visual evidence found in these pictures taken after 1840.

If you’ve ever thought that all our ancestors died at a young age, think again. Disease, accidents, and diet all contributed to poor health, but the age range for the individuals we’re researching is eighty to one hundred–with a few more than 110!
 
Kids were important players in the formation of these United States. We’ve found an astonishing number of men who claimed to have served in the military at a young age beside their fathers. I guess if you were old enough to hold a gun you could join the fight for independence.

We’ve found many more photos than skeptics told us we would. They turn up in historical societies, family collections, and auction catalogs. Many are identified with a name but without a connection to the Revolutionary War. That’s our job. If you’ve got a photo you think meets our specifications, send me an e-mail. We’ll ferret out the facts.

As compelling as these images are, it’s the stories that have taught us a few things. For every picture, there is a life story. That’s no surprise, but many people contact us to tell the tale of their Revolutionary War ancestor. The sheer volume of oral history passed down for more than 200 years dwarfs the existing pictorial remnants. It’s remarkable.

What’s Your Family’s Story?
Do you have a family story that’s been passed down from generation to generation? It might be about a brave ancestor who served in the military or about someone who immigrated to live here. Or it could be about the ordinary struggles of living on the frontier.

My husband isn’t interested in finding his ancestors in the census but he loves a good yarn. While helping my son work on a school project, we stumbled across the published oral history of an ancestral small town. In the account was a story about how my husband’s ancestor saved the town’s livestock from a pack of wolves. Obviously this was tale my son found worth telling in front of his second grade class (with great embellishments from him, I’ll add). It wasn’t a story anyone in the family knew about but now it comes up at every reunion.

If you have an oral history tradition in your family, please write it down or record it. Don’t forget to tell it to the youngest members of the family to keep the oral tradition alive.

If you don’t have a mythical tale about a relative, you might find one in a published history of the town where your ancestors lived or in a genealogy. Search using the Stories and Publications tab on Ancestry.com as well the full-text search version of Google Books using the name of the town or specific individuals.

Ask relatives to relate stories they heard as children. At an uncle’s funeral, I met a distant cousin for the first time and she began telling me about my great-great-grandfather from stories she heard from her mother.

Proving the Stories
The problem with many of these family stories is proving them. In each one there is a kernel of truth but how much of the rest is fact vs. fiction and myth vs. reality?

Start by verifying the name of the person involved, then make sure they were alive in the historical period reported in their exploits. It could be that from the time of the actual event to now someone misspoke the name or mixed up relatives.

Watch for mixed up history. In each retelling, extra details are added by the teller some of which are difficult to verify. See what parts of the verbal legacy are from the actual period by listening for historical accuracy. For instance, a relative from the eighteenth century wouldn’t have carried a Colt pistol because it dates from the nineteenth century.

In the end, the story doesn’t have to be perfect. Stick to proving the facts and sit back and enjoy the entertainment value. Our nineteenth-century ancestors didn’t have computers, televisions, and radio for family gatherings. Instead they sat around the table, swapped tales and listened. In my opinion, it’s a long-lost art worth reviving.

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Maureen Taylor is the “The Photo Detective.” She writes about family history and photography on her blog at www.photodetective.com.