Will the real Mr. X please stand up?

 How many of you remember the American television show To Tell The Truth? It ran from the mid-fifties to the late sixties and featured Bill Cullen, Peggy Cass and Kitty Carlisle. As a panel, the actors and others would ask questions of appearing guests to figure out who was who, announcing their choice. The presenter would confirm or refute this, telling them and the watching audience who the "real" person was. Sometimes the panelists were right, but when they weren't. the results were often surprising or very funny. 

In real life, however, attempting to tease out bits of information from individuals or paper records and put together the puzzle that is a life history can be both complicated and challenging. My almost axe-wielding two times great grandfather, whom I discussed in my previous post, is a case in point.

The genealogists at Ancestry have discovered his ruse. An identity cobbled together using bits of "true" information such as his mother's maiden name and a first name derived from a nickname for Malcom, the first name given him at birth by his parents. I now know his entire name, who his parents and siblings were, where he was born and the approximate year, whom he married in 1879 and was still married to and having children with when he met and then "married" my two times great grandmother and had children with her, raised under a name that was not his to bestow.

Thanks to DNA testing, and the YDNA provided by my maternal uncle, this and more will come to light and perhaps the descendants of both families will finally know of each other.

More to come...