I too had a "your great grandfather owned all this land" and, as he was a "labourer" in the censuses I don't think it was likely that he owned the land he worked on! Another family legend was that the husband of one of my Lincolnshire relatives was related to Leo Tolstoy. But when I read his obituary I found that his family back in Russia had a summer 'cottage' in the same area as the Tolstoy family. It's probable that the two families did know each other - but related - NO!. Elizabeth Pugh Yukon Canada

I have a definite "myth vs reality" story. My great-great grandfather changed his name to "Richard Freeman" when he emigrated to the United States. The family story was that now he was a "free man" in a way he never was when he was young and poor in England. The name he was born with was "Richard Huckbody." in 1843. His mother Sarah Huckbody (nee Mallowby) kept the Huckbody name and the family is peacefully in the census in the US. His daughter, Edith Ordelia Freeman (married name Garnett) 1875-1957 told this as the family story, which I have from older cousins who knew her, and my father (born in 1921. I had him recorded as the son of Nathan Huckbody/ The reality came up when the Lincolnshire court records came online and I discovered that Nathan had been convicted and transported to Australia in 1836 and the four youngest children clearly were not his. What was even more interesting was that the oldest son, John had been in the Navy, jumped ship in the United States, became a Mormon, and eventually came back to Lincolnshire and brought his mother and almost all his siblings to the US. He also used the Freeman name some of the time, presumably because the navy would have been looking for him. I did find John (the oldest brother) in one UK census after he came back and before they emigrated, and finding all this out allowed me to decipher his occupation, which was given as "Mormon priest." Someplace I have a potential name for Richard's real father, that I got from a descendant of the eldest brother, but I've never been able to locate anything on that name.