52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 33: Family Legend

Photo from Wikimedia Commons Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
Source: The Library of Congress - American Memory
Published in: The War of the Nations (New York), December 31, 1919

The prompt for this week is ‘Family Legend’. We all have them, right? But are they true? And if not, why does everyone keep repeating them? How did they even get started? Today, I’m going to share a relatively recent family ‘legend’ that shows how this might happen!

My story starts with a family gathering just two or three years ago. We were all sitting around after dinner, playing games and watching sports, when the topics of immigration and our ancestors came up. I mentioned a tidbit my grandma had told me many years ago about why her family came over from Austria Hungary. Her story, which she repeated to me more than once, was that her father, Paul Janco (I wrote about him for week 31) "knew that war was coming and that if his boys were going to fight in a war, he wanted them fighting for the right side!” So he picked up his family and settled them in the U.S. This was in about 1911, only a few years before the start of World War I. Grandma also mentioned that her father knew war was coming because he knew Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be assasinated.

As I told this story, I explained that I was never really sure what Grandma meant by "he knew Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be assisinated”. Did she use “he knew" in the sense that I used it with a child when he kept leaning back in his chair, and finally one day, he leaned too far and toppled over backwards. “I always KNEW that was going to happen if you kept it up!” Probably Grandma only meant that her dad knew the situation was tense and that assasination was a possibility. But did she mean that he actually KNEW about the plot, and was maybe even in on the planning? I’ll never know, I guess.

But what I DO know is that my nephew took that little tidbit and ran with it. “Cool! Our family started World War I!” Lots of laughter. It’s become a family joke that we bring up and laugh about anytime World War I is mentioned. We all know it’s not true, but it’s fun to laugh about.

But fast forward 100 years from now when a future great-great-great-grandaughter of my grandma is working on her family history. All she knows is that her mother told her that she can remember her crazy uncle telling the story of how his great-great-grandfather started World War 1. Will she take his story as fact? Will she repeat the story unverified? Will she spend countless frustrating hours trying to find evidence that verifies the story? Or will she MAYBE find evidence none of us today even consider to exist—will she verify that my great-grandfather WAS in on the assination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Not too likely, but it does make for an interesting story—and the start of a family legend! Beware!

To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, read my introductory blog post.