Can you really rewrite history? Sure! Genealogists do it all the time. Historian Gladys Cox Hansen, who has spent the past 40 years researching the victims of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, has managed to get city officials to agree to raise the official death toll in time for next year's centennial of the April 18, 1906, catastrophe. Her valiant research has shown that the real number of victims of the quake is much higher than the official death toll of 478, perhaps as high as 3,000 or more. Many of those unaccounted for were immigrants whose deaths were ignored, according to Ms. Hansen, as part of a government cover-up to downplay the disaster.

The reasons given by Ms. Hansen for her consuming passion for this research will resonate with many of you. "No one should be just left to disappear," she said. "Even if they find only your bones, your name on some ledger or some other tiny trace you once existed, people have the right to be remembered."

Genealogist Lou Barnes is also trying to have history rewritten to clear the tarnished name of his great-grandfather, Burton S. Barnes, one of the founding fathers of Longmont, Colorado. "They Came to Stay," a book published by the St. Vrain Historical Society in 1971, includes submissions from residents about Longmont’s founding fathers and mothers. What appears in print isn't always true, however, and Mr. Barnes has set out to prove that the passage "Many people claimed that Barnes left town after fleecing the colonists,” isn't the true story behind his great-grandfather's return to Michigan.

Are their stories or legends in your family tree that you aren't sure are really true? Have you discovered an ancestor linked to your family by other researchers who doesn't really belong? Don't be afraid to use your genealogy research to rewrite your own little bit of history.