After my father died a woman came looking for him. It turns out she was his half-sister. His father traveled a lot, and apparently got around, too.
My cousin got a divorce from his wife, who subsequently married my (and her ex-husband’s) uncle. The uncle and cousin were roughly the same age.
Neither of these were uncovered by me. The aunt/cousin thing was known throughout the family (kind of hard to hide). The other just popped up. The half-sister got in touch with my father’s other siblings, but I don’t think there was a lasting relationship formed. Neither my father nor his sibs liked their father, so they weren’t embracing another child by him. Although they did meet her and had her to visit.
I found out mine when I picked up the newspaper one morning, about 30 years ago. A brother and sister, both in their 70s, who had the same last name as me (not a common one) who lived in my dad’s hometown were found dead in the (let’s face it) hovel where they lived, from either hypothermia or carbon monoxide poisoning. I found out that they were my dad’s sperm donor’s brother and sister; my dad had not seen them in over 40 years and didn’t know that they were still alive. Neither ever married; the brother had worked as a short-order cook at a greasy-spoon in that town and had only retired a couple years earlier. The sister was mentally disabled; the descriptions of her sounded like a combination of schizophrenia and mild mental retardation. The brother hadn’t retired because “I have to take care of my sister”; he was unaware of the existence of Social Security, for either of them! :eek: He just knew that money was taken out of his check for taxes, but not where any of it went.
That’s a branch of my family tree about which I know almost nothing, and I have no desire to find out any more.
One of my distant ancestors on my mother’s side was arrested on suspicion of practicing witchcraft in 17th century New Hampshire. The records are scanty, but she was apparently released months later without ever being tried. I tried to tell some older relatives about that, but they didn’t want to hear such a scandalous story.
Pretty much all the people with my last name think it’s a German name, and my ancestors did speak German from at least 1700 until they came to the U.S. about 1890. But I discovered that the name is actually of Slavic, probably Polish, origin. Some older relatives on that side of the family didn’t want to hear about it, because they didn’t like Poles or Poland.
Well, there IS a big area of shared border between northeastern Germany and northwestern Poland, and I’m pretty sure that that border has been moved and disputed several times, not just the most famous time. I believe that which side of the Polish/German border people’s hearts are on has not always matched the location of the remainder of their bodies.
Probably the biggest is that when my grandfather and grandmother got engaged in the mid-1930, he had to travel up to Oregon from Sacramento to obtain an actual divorce from his first wife. They had been separated for years, but never actually divorced.
No, sadly he died in 1999 of a brain bleed or stroke thing. My Daddy died in 2013 of a brain aneurysm. Similar?, not sure. My sister is contact with My bro-cuz’s children and trying to foster a relationship of some kind. I am not so interested in that, if she succeeds and it gets to genetic testing I will participate. I have 8 sibs already, 2 more won’t make that much difference.
My Daddy was a horn-dog, it seems.
While I’m not really interested, my brother has spent quite a bit of time looking into our family history. He was telling me about our uncle who had a secret family before meeting up with our aunt. He had a twin brother that he didn’t tell anyone in our family about who showed up at his funeral and freaked everybody out.
There was also a mysterious girl who lived as sort of an adopted sister with my mom and my aunt growing up. The girl is seen in family snapshots but today nobody knows anything about her.
I discovered that my great grandfather committed suicide. I don’t know if my mother even knew about it, but if so that would have been a big scandal back in the day. He also had a couple of affairs before his wife finally divorced him, another scandalous thing back in the 1800s.
My great grandfather was an illegal alien. Emigrated from Scotland to Canada. From there is crossed into the US at Blaine, Washington. Met my great grandmother and she ended up pregnant with my grandfather. He was caught doing a minor misdeed and was deported back to Canada. A few years later ended back at my great grandmother’s doorstep and again, she ended up pregnant. He was deported back to Canada then was sent back to Scotland. Sadly, for our family, his last name is going to die out with a cousin.
Yup. Edward’s son John also shared many of his father’s unorthodox theological views and later left for the American colonies. He was close friends with fellow religious dissident Roger Williams and helped found Rhode Island with him.
Over a decade ago we found that my uncle (not related! My aunt is.) was seeing several other women and was also doing things he shouldn’t to my cousin. Having him go to prison seemed easy, but if he’s in prison how does my aunt have enough $$ for five kids?
He moved, got remarried, and still exists saying people lie about what happened. What an ****
After Zayda (Yiddish for Grandfather) passed away, my father and aunt were going through their parents’ papers (insurance and such). They came across their marriage certificates, both the American one and the Jewish one. When they got married, my grandparents were greenhorns in the US. They got a marriage license from wherever residents of Philadelphia get one. But the Rabbi they knew was across the river in New Jersey, so that’s where they got married. Dad and Aunt Tootsie read the documents, sat there in silence, looked at each other, and Dad said “I guess you know what this makes us.”
Looking at my Mom’s side of the family, her uncle was known as “System Sam” and had something to do with gamblers in the 30s and 40s. When Jim Rhodes was elected Mayor of Columbus in 1944 he fulfilled one of his campaign promises and as a result Uncle Sam spent his most of his honeymoon as a guest of the city.
In order for a U.S. marriage to be legally valid, you have to get a (secular, county-issued) marriage license issued first in the same county where the marriage ceremony takes place. So they were religiously married, but a religious marriage without a marriage license issued in the same jurisdiction before the ceremony has no legal validity.
