How ironic... my family brought lager to Chicago

I had to write a paper about my family history as my last assignment in history class this semester. In doing so I did more research into one side of my family’s history than anyone had done before and found out a bunch of interesting stuff. One of the things I found out is that my many-times-great grandfather came to Chicago from Germany and opened a brewery, which was the first to offer German lager in Chicago (and also Chicago’s first beer garden). It became very successful, but it ended up burning down in the Great Chicago Fire. His son later opened another brewery.

It just makes it so much more wrong that I hate beer as much as I do.

Another interesting thing I learned is that a bunch of that side of the family married various European nobility, and one of my great-great-grandfather’s daughters married Marshall Field Jr.

On the other side of the family, one of my ancestors fought for the Union in the Civil War and sustained an injury when his horse was “blown to pieces beneath him.” Yikes!

What interesting stuff is in your family history?

Not nearly as historical as yours, but I’ve been told that my father’s father came to America from Germany because his parents, who were fairly well-off, did not want him marrying a local girl who was of “lower class”. Whether he really wanted to marry her, or might have had to because she was having his child, was never made clear. He died at age 70 when I was a year old (he married late, to another younger German immigrant who died before I was born) and as far as I know we have no idea where in Germany he was from.

My great-granduncle, on my mother’s side, was a shipbuilder, in Buffalo. He ended up building an all iron/steel tugboat for use in his yard, and when the US Navy found out about it, and that it was working, they asked to buy a copy of his plans.

He, however, had no plans, having worked off drafting models, and gut feeling.

So, the Navy ended up contracting for their first all metal tugboat from him. And had naval architects recording every step as he build the silly thing.

My grandfather invented an automatic transmission. Tried to sell it to Ford during the Great Depression; they wouldn’t buy. So that’s why we’re not rich.

My great-grandfather invented the blind rivet during the Great Depression, and nobody wanted it (because the airplane-building industry was not exactly doing great), but then when WWII came out and they needed to build planes, suddenly they were interested. He also invented some other stuff.

My dear Grammy Jack was left on a doorstep in Ontario in a basket with a note pinned to the blankie. I could be anyone.

[cue spaceballs…“I’m a prince, I’m an honest to God Prince!”]

Wow, that’s fascinating! What kind of doorstep? (house? hospital? church?)

I haven’t done much digging into my family history, but I did once find an early mention of my family name, IIRC from mid 1800’s.

It was a passenger manifest, basically a customs declaration, from a shipping company.

It read…

Myfamilyname, Female fistname.
Traveling with a trunk and a child

I like to think that she was fleeing the shame of being an unwed mother in her staid European village, to start anew in the warm accepting embrace of America.

In reality, she was probably just coming to join her husband who had previously emigrated.

My grandfather was a B-17 pilot in WWII, and got shot down on one of his missions and was a POW for the remainder of the war*. In the late 70’sm he had his right hand blown off from what he thought was a “dud” firework that my family were lighting off on July 4th (this was before I was born.) My entire life, “Pop” had a hook in place of his right hand because of this accident.
(*He rarely talked about his experience as a POW, but he was quick to mention that it was nothing like Hogan’s Heroes.)

My last name is also relatively famous (Plenty of you already know it and lots of you can probably guess as to what it is.) But I have no freakin’ clue if I am even remotely related to those who share my name.

According to my grandfather:

One of my direct ancestors was the oldest son from a very wealthy family. Apparently the family helped to finance the building of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Anyway, this guy should have inherited either all or the vast majority of the family wealth. But, he went to war and became a POW in Turkey. Everyone assumed he’d never be back and the second son inherited everything. Then, he came back. He was given a small taxi company - I believe in Kiev but I could be misremembering that.

Also according to my granfather:

And this one’s a shocker :rolleyes: . Apparently one of my direct ancestors was a bastard child to one of the Romanovs. I can’t remember which one. Apparently, there are a lot of Romanov bastards.
I think that ancestor might have been the horse thief but it’s also possible at this point that grandpa was pulling my leg.

And one last one:
My grandfather’s uncle was a well known Yiddish Poet (and shoemaker). He’s definitely the most famous person from both sides of my family. It makes me happy that the only well known person in my family was a poet, instead of a murderer or politician.

As far as I know, my father’s family hasn’t done anything that anyone would find interesting. Well, except for the time my grandmother put glass in the meatloaf - and that isn’t nearly as interesting as it sounds.

I’ve mentioned this before, but my family used to run the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast. My great-great[sup]n[/sup] uncle was Thomas Andrews, who was the chief design engineer of the Titanic, and died thereon (he’s in the movie, talking about the lifeboats - lucky bastard got to meet Kate Winslet!) His uncle was my great-great-great grandfather, also Thomas Andrews, who was an eminent scientist, who conducted experiments exploring the relationships between gaseous, liquid, and solid states, that led to Boyle’s Law and the like. He also inadvertantly invented the electrical valve, but didn’t realise what he’d created, and never pursued it. We have his original papers, though in the 1970s a great-uncle-by-marriage gave away most of his steampunk scientific equipment to children of a former marriage, which is somewhat irritating.

My paternal grandmother was one of the first women to be sawn in half (there’s a picture of her in James Randi’s “Conjuring”).

The first of her five husbands was my grandfather, who was on the team of scientists that developed the first synthetic ruby. He soon left to explore his own scientific theory: that adding alcohol can turn anything into shit.