One of my cousins has gotten into geneology and she started digging into our Granny’s family. We all knew that Gran’s dad was married once before he married Gran’s mom. His first wife died in childbirth, and the baby was given to Gran’s dad’s brother and his wife to raise. Then a few years later Gran’s dad married Gran’s mom and fathered 9 more children.
What we didn’t know is that there was another wife between those two. They had two daughters, and then they divorced and she took off with the kids. This would have been around 1920 or so. Gran was shocked to say the least to find out she had two older half-sisters she never knew existed. They’re both long gone now so she’ll never get the chance to meet them. Kind of sad, really.
When I was about in my mid-20s, I learned the history of my (paternal) grandparents, and their love affair. My grandfather, being from Wales, was a Protestant. My grandmother, being from Ireland, was a Catholic. When they met as teachers and feel in love, there was friction with my grandmother’s father. So much friction, in fact, that he sent her off to the nunnery to protect her from the godless heathen that was my grandfather. She escaped, luckily, and they stayed married for many years, until my grandfather’s death. I learned the whole story when my grandmother died and I wondered why there were so many nuns at her funeral.
However, to add insult to injury, after the wedding, my grandmother’s father came to live with them in the house my grandfather built. That must have rankled. And my father had to stay in the same bedroom as him. I know that made him bitter.
My now-uncle-by-marriage’s first wife killed herself (by slitting her own throat! :eek:) but I knew about that as a teenager.
Yesterday I was looking up my step-sister’s family in the new 1940 census. (I had right away found most of my and MrsFtG’s families since they maintained stable residences. But my step family was … more mobile, shall we say. So I had to wait for more of the name indexing to be done.)
Anyway, found her father. He was married, with a step-daughter and also taking in his youngest sister. But …
Now, I knew he had been married before to a woman with a daughter (who was my step-sister’s mother). But … these aren’t them. They are completely new-to-me people.
Uh-oh.
Now, her father was not exactly careful about the legal niceties in such matters. Years later, he lived with a woman who had a son and they passed themselves as married. (Which lead to problems when he had to pretend to be divorced in order to marry my mother.) So I suspect they weren’t officially married.
But no one has ever told me about this, and I know some really deep secrets. In particular, the little sister, who I consider an aunt and I’m still in touch with has never said anything that I know of.
I hope the guy didn’t have any kids with the woman, as our family “tree” is already complicated enough without more half-siblings thrown in. (I have a half-sister, who has two half-siblings, one of which is my step-sister, who have two half siblings, who have two half-brothers. Don’t let anybody try to tell you that the morals of the 1950s and earlier were higher than today.)
My father’s first marriage: two sons. After the divorce, the ex remarried and had a son.
My father’s first post-divorce girlfriend: one daughter. GF #1 later married and had more children.
My father’s second post-divorce girlfriend: two daughters. GF #2 later married and had more children. I think her husbad had kids from a previous relationship.
My father’s second marriage: no children.
My father’s third marriage: three children (of which I am one).
Of my father’s eight children, three have children by multiple partners.
My father’s mother was married (and widowed) twice and had four children by her first husband and two by her second.
It can get confusing at times, figuring out which of my half-siblings’ half-siblings belong to whom.
Not really a secret, but my brother found an interesting news clipping about our great grandfather: “Frank Manny has a new monkey which he received from New York last week. Frank has been disconsolate ever since the boys fed matches to his other monkey and made a first-class corpse of his little form. We hope Frank will be happier now, and that the present monkey will be spared to brighten and cheer his declining years.”
I was about twelve when my grandma told me that we hadn’t been eating chicken all those times we went round for lunch. Instead, it was rabbit that my granddad caught.
I did find out that one of my maternal grandmother’s aunts was married to a man who had another wife at the same time - meaning he had two wives. They were Muslim like the rest of my family, but it’s not that common in Lebanon, which has always been relatively liberal for the region.
I was shocked that someone in my family had been in a polygamous marriage. I asked my grandmother about this. She told me the guy was rather well-to-do. Pretty much everyone else was rather poor, so I didn’t know how that worked out. My grandmother’s aunt and her husband had two children, both of whom are long dead. I think the other wife had a child as well.