Verb Tense & Genealogy

[Mardon]

If I am telling someone about my deceased great grandfather, this sounds
correct:

"Elisha Brown was my great grandfather."

and this sounds incorrect:

"Elisha Brown is my great grandfather."

But if I am describing my pedigree to someone, this sounds correct:

"Elisha Brown is my great grandfather."

and this sounds incorrect:

"Elisha Brown was my great grandfather."

Even if I rearrange the order of the sentence to:

"My great grandfather was Elisha Brown."

the tense of the verb seems to need to be different when I am describing
the person as opposed to when I am describing my pedigree.

Is there some sort of grammatical rule that applies in this situation?

[Mike Opdyke]

Post by Mardon
If I am telling someone about my deceased great grandfather, this sounds
"Elisha Brown was my great grandfather."
"Elisha Brown is my great grandfather."
"Elisha Brown is my great grandfather."
"Elisha Brown was my great grandfather."
"My great grandfather was Elisha Brown."
the tense of the verb seems to need to be different when I am describing
the person as opposed to when I am describing my pedigree.
Is there some sort of grammatical rule that applies in this situation?

I think what you're looking for here is what is referred to as the
"historical present."

The fact is that Elisha Brown was and is one of your great
grandfathers. Nothing, short of finding out you've made an error in
identification, can change that fact - including his death. I don't
think you can really go wrong here; however, to eliminate any
possibility of ambiguity you might include his birth and death dates
in parenthesis after his name, especially when using the present
tense. This may sound a bit odd to non-genealogists, but genealogists
will get it.

[Eric Walker]

Post by Mardon
If I am telling someone about my deceased great grandfather, this sounds
"Elisha Brown was my great grandfather."
"Elisha Brown is my great grandfather."
"Elisha Brown is my great grandfather."
"Elisha Brown was my great grandfather."
"My great grandfather was Elisha Brown."
the tense of the verb seems to need to be different when I am describing
the person as opposed to when I am describing my pedigree.
Is there some sort of grammatical rule that applies in this situation?

Yes, though "rule" is over-stating the case.

The present tense is commonly used to set forth general or universal
truths: Two times two *is* four. The world *is* round. When speaking of
genealogical facts, you are presenting a general truth, hence the feeling
that the simple present tense is wanted there (though the past would not
in any sense be "incorrect"); when speaking simply of historical fact,
the past tense is more natural, as the "being" is in the past. (I find
it slightly curious that when a person dies, they seem to undergo a sort
of factual disintegration, which is what gives the humor, such as it is,
to Casey Stengel's oft-quoted solecism "Most people my age are dead--you
could look it up.")