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Archiver > ROOTS > 2002-01 > 1010779327


From: "Lou Nelson" <>
Subject: [ROOTS-L] True Story Magazine
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 12:02:07 -0800


A cousin is the "oral family historian" and remembers his mother relating the following. In the early 1900s my great-grandfather, Franz Uher, wrote down the "real" story of the family. My grandmother, Frances Uher McKneely, got hold of it and sold it to "True Story" magazine for $500. The rest of the family was very angry and while they saw the magazine and read the article they threw them away. I had been told by libraries and university archives (where I have been searching for four years) that "True Story" magazine was a "love story pulp magazine" and would not have had true adventure stories. I see by the covers of some that are advertised on ebay that "True Story" carried a running feature "truth is stranger than fiction" and offered various sums for submissions. Now it seems to me that this exactly fits in with what my grandmother would have done! The particulars of the story that I have been able to find out are as follows. We believe the article would have appeared i!
n about 1923-24 or possibly a few years either side. I don't know the title of the article, nor whether my grandmother used her own name or an alias as author. There was a drawing with the article of a child wrapped in a blanket being carried by a fleeing woman, chased by man on horseback with a spear (either throwing or thrown). The content of the article would be of a peasant uprising against the Prince of the region, whereby the Prince gave his 5 year old son to his nanny with the family jewels & money. The child witnessed the killing of his father, mother & older sister. Then the nanny escaped the castle with the child, only to be hunted down and killed. She threw herself over the child and the spear killed her and the pursuers believed the child was killed too. Later a peasant loyal to the Prince found the child and knew him and took him home and hid him and raised him as his own. That child was my great-grandfather, Franz J. Uher, and he maintained that Uher was an ass!
umed name. He was born in 1826 in Bohemia and immigrated to the US in 1870 with his wife and 6 children. A seventh child was born on the voyage, which was my grandmother.

I have been watching on ebay for awhile now and questioning the sellers of True Story Magazines that I think might contain the article and also hopefully to put them on the alert to watch for the article. I have also tried writing True Story Magazine directly and contacted by phone several purported archives of the magazines with no success. Can anyone out there help to find the right magazine? Lou Hicks Nelson










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