Family stories can be valuable sources of information to the genealogist about family members long gone. However, we have to be careful of the truth of these stories!
My great grandfather was Martin Ditlev MADSEN. The family stories said that he was an orphan, that he jumped ship and that he changed his name. How do we go about proving or disproving these stories and what did we know when we started to learn about him.
We knew that he had been born in Denmark and arrived in Australia by ship.
Marriage to Mary Ann WARDLE at her father's house in Wallsend on 15 March 1881. We had a copy of the marriage certificate but this gave little information about him.
The couple had five children and their Birth Certificates gave a little more information. Each certificate showed different information relating to his Country of Birth and each one displayed his age.
William (b. 1882) - Denmark, age 26This allowed to us calculate his birth year as 1856. This was the only information that we had of Martin before his arrival in Australia!