Writing Historic Characters

[Indiana]

Hi. I'm new here so if I'm posting this in the wrong forum, forgive me and please point me to the right spot.

I have a question about writing historical characters and events as it relates to a science fiction story on which I'm currently working. The event took place in the late 1700's and over the years has become somewhat a legend— the story was never officially recorded at the time by the individuals involved just passed along orally over the decades, embellished by those who told it to become one of many variations that exist today.

I take one of these story variations and again embellish it to tell my own using the actual character names (plus a few of my own) to set up the rest of my story. At no point do I ever portray the actual characters in any negative way and the only character that does get killed is one that I created.

My question is, legally would the character's descendants have any grounds to file a lawsuit against me? I'm not worried so much about a defamation case as much as some family member coming after me for a share of any profits that I may make. This whole making a profit thing is very out there I know but I'm just curious to know if anyone has had any experience with something like this and their advice.

[WillTurner]

Well, the daughter of Johnny Cash's first wife objected to Walk The Line, but as far as I know no legal action took place.
In terms of descendants it becomes even fuzzier. People have different perceptions of recorded events, let alone legends. I think you're on safer ground than most here, especially if you do your research (I for one recently did a piece on Sir Morton Peto, the man who built the railway from Lowestoft harbour...don't ask)

[Struthers]

Well, come on. Even if the events you're describing took place in the late 1700's, that's still over two hundred years ago. About ten generations will have come and gone since then -- maybe more.

Put another way, any descendants of these characters alive today would only be about 1/1024th them. 1023/1024ths other people.

Unless the descendants of more than one character from your story have interbred...which will bring the key percentage up!

Anyway: put the standard disclaimer at the start of your story and be done with it. It's a stretch to think that anybody could actually prove in a conclusive way that they're related to somebody that far back, anyway.

[Indiana]

Thanks for the input. I was just curious what the standard procedure was for this.