My sister and I have been working on our family tree together for two years and we keep finding evidence that challenges the stories we grew up with — our grandfather wasn't actually a war hero, our great-grandmother had children before her 'first' marriage — and we're realizing we have completely different ideas about what to do with these discoveries. She wants to preserve the family mythology for our kids while I think we owe it to ourselves and future generations to document what we've actually found, even when it's uncomfortable.
More people experience this than they realize.
Two people doing genealogy research together are discovering that they have fundamentally different relationships to family truth and the stories that hold families together.
“Where Are You with Genealogy & Family History?”
If this sounds familiar, the Library can help you find the bigger picture.