Family Legends--Fact or Fiction?

» methodius - Royal descent

We came across the "royal legend" in our own family.

My wife's maiden name was Greene, and when we were married we became interested in family history, and we asked her grandmother, who was the only one of our grandparents then still living, what she could tell us. She couldn't tell much about her second (of three) husbands, Allan Greene, who had died during the war. In fact she couldn't remember names, but she knew what diseases they had died of, what pills they took, and what hospitals they had been in. She remembered her husband had had a younger sister, but couldn't remember the name, and eventually about 6 years later we found her.

Great aunt Gladys told us her grandfather was a General Greene, who was in South West Africa. We found a book by Edward Tabler, "Pioneers of South West Africa and Ngamiland", which told us about Frederick Joseph Green, a famous explorer and elephant hunter. And his father "Robert" Green was rumoured to be of royal descent - possibly from William IV.

We later met Gladys's daughter, who told us the legend - this General Greene was the son of the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria. Back to the library where we found "The prince and his lady" by Mollie Gillen, who had carefully documented all the facts about William John Green (the Robert did not exist), who was born in Quebec in 1790, a year before the Duke of Kent got there. We wrote to Mollie Gillen, and she sent us photocopies of the Quebec church records documenting the family.

So the legend proved false, but it served the purpose of putting us on the track of the real family history, which was in some ways even more romantic and interesting than the legend. It also put us on the track of other branches of the family, who had spread all over the world, each with its own variant of the legend (it seems we were the only branch that hadn't heard it until after we began researching).

William John Green, 1790-1855, was the son of Eliza Green and William Goodall, a London merchant. Eliza may indeed have had an affair with Edward, Duke of Kent, but after William was born. William Green became Deputy Assistant Commissary General (that was the "General Greene"). He emigrated to the Cape Colony about 1847 with several of his 15 children, one of whom, Frederick Thomas (not Joseph) was an elephant hunter, and was also a general of sorts, in the Herero Liberation Army. He taught the Herero the use of guns, and praise songs to Kerina (as "Green" was pronounced by the Hereros) are still known by some people. A descendant, Mburumba Kerina, is credited with inventing the name Namibia.

Without the legend, we would probably not have come close to finding ANY of this - so the moral of the story is, record those legends, record the variants, record the details. The details may not be true, but they can set you on the track to the truth.

-- posted by methodius

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» DeannaC62 - What a great story!

I loved your detailed account of your own family legend! I believe there's always a bit of truth in the stories we hear. It's our job as family historians to ferret it out. Thanks for sharing your story.

-- posted by DeannaC62

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