Not as juicy as some, but I have a long-lost cousin. The story went about how you’d expect: One of my uncles slept with a girl when they were both young and stupid, she got pregnant, sometime between the conception and the birth she decided she wanted nothing more to do with him and cut off all ties. When the daughter came of age, she decided that she wanted to get to know her father, and made contact with the family. From what I understand, she’s since come to a few family get-togethers, but I’ve never met her.
A little history lesson as background. My father grew up in the Great Depression in Jersey City. At the time the city was run by Frank “I am the law” Hague. Hague had total control of the city and in many ways the state. He was also on the National Democratic committee. He famously held a rally for FDR in 1932 and arraganged for 120,000 supporters to attend. Hague’s right hand man lived next to my father. He was the Sheriff.
All I ever heard was how much my father hated him. Liked his kids, hated him. Casually at Thanksgiving my aunt dropped that the Sheriff had a long and open affair with their who lived with them. In fact he would go on vacations with them to the shore.
I then read the book Mysteries of my Father by Thomas Fleming. Sheriff Fleming was his father and I got to hear the story from the perspective of the other family. Fascinating book by the way. I recommend it.
Some years ago, I asked my mom just out of simply family history curiosity how old her sister Aunt Liz was when she married Uncle Jim. And I got an unexpected surprise: Aunt Liz and Uncle Jim had never gotten married. Jim had already been married when he met my aunt circa 1960 but, being Catholic, wouldn’t get divorced so he could remarry. He and Liz just set up house together, had 6 kids, and presented themselves as a married couple for over 40 years. At the time Mom told me this, Uncle Jim and his legal wife were still living; they’ve both passed on since. Aunt Liz is still alive in her late 70s. As far as I know, none of my cousins know anything about this.
On the other side of the family, my father’s sister Lucy married at the age of 15 because she was pregnant. She and her husband also had another kid a few years later, then divorced. I had always assumed that these two cousins of mine were full brothers while we were growing up, then later learned that my erstwhile uncle wasn’t actually the father of Lucy’s first son. According to my parents, it was a boy she was in school with, but when confronted by her family said that it was this other, older man, who did accept responsibility. What puzzles me about this is why he would agree to marry her–was it some kind of noble gesture to help a young girl in trouble, or was he also having sex with this 15-year-old and did he think he was the father of her baby at the time? No idea.
Not so much juicy as sad: There was another uncle, Allan, who died just a few years ago, who I don’t think I ever saw sober in my entire life. He was never out-and-out drunk either, but he had a big bottle of “special” orange juice in the fridge that we kids weren’t allowed to touch when we visited Grandma’s house, and he tipped into it throughout the day. It was only around the time that he died that Mom told me his story. When Allen got out of the Army in the late '50s, he came home engaged to a girl he’d met in the Philippines; his parents were adamant against their white son marrying a Filipino woman and made him break it off. It broke his heart and he pretty much drank the rest of his life away.
There’s also something about Allen’s brother George, who’s always been a little weird, but I’ve never got the full story about him.
(Note: These are not my aunts’ and uncles’ real names.)
Wouldn’t it, though? That’s the bare bones of it. I could fill in more detail, but it would be pages and pages.
And then there is yet another Grandmother, my Stepfather’s mother, who had a maid named Eva that she was very protective of. Eva had murdered her husband with an ax to the head years before I came along, and I told that story in a thread called “Have you ever known a Murderer” or something like that.
I mention it here because I found out the full backstory when I was an adult, it was a doozy and could truly inspire a book.
As kids all we knew was that she killed her husband with an ax, so you better mind Eva. :eek:
Had an affair with their who?
To echo John Mace and Loach’s references to WASPy types marrying Catholics, it is amazing how scandalous people used to consider that.
My Mother’s family, as told in my post above the saga of Mayree and Matybelle, well, it is fairly obvious these folks weren’t exactly on the top of the social register in their Southern Georgia town, were themselves all put out and scandalized when their baby sister Junie (did you ever hear such horrid names?) married “one of them greasy Eye-talian Catholics” and practically ostracized her. The nerve of it all boggles my mind, I mean nobody was asking Mayree and MatyBelle to join the Junior League or The Garden Club. And yet they were better than Italian Catholics? They were Irish trash out of Appalachia, for crying out loud.
But I have to admit the situation was odd:
2 large extended families, with extremely ethnic sounding Italian names, suddenly show up in rural Georgia in the 1940s, flush with cash and buy big farms way out in the county. Rumor was they were running from the mob. Junie married one of the sons, and today the members of these families are very assimilated and respected in that area, and Junie and her husband had a very long and very happy and very Catholic marriage, so she had a much better life than her sisters.
When my grandmother’s boyfriend died, his wife turned up at the funeral.
And I have an uncle whose wife ran off with the Fuller Brush man, and he followed them to a place named Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (named after the TV show) and killed them both. He was eventually released from prison. I met him at various family functions, but I was very young and never found out about it until after he died.
My wife’s family has lots of skeletons. Her grandmother and grandfather were bootleggers during Prohibition, and got divorced because her grandfather didn’t think her youngest child was his. My mother in law told me about the time they were raided by the feds, and her mother hid the liquor in my mother in law’s bed (my MIL had a toothache).
It’s funny how some things (divorce, marrying a non-Catholic) were considered scandalous, while abuse of various kinds is not.
Regards,
Shodan
My same question. I think it makes them “bastards” as the NJ Rabbi did not have the “powers vested unto (him) from the State of Pennsylvania” to legally marry them.
Or… perhaps they just realized they were Jewish.
So much to unpack here…
Bubbe and Zayde are Jewish words for grandparents, so I think RJ’s parents knew they were Jewish. 
I’m guessing they meant they were actually New Jerseyans.
When my mother and my aunt got interested in genealogy, my grandmother tried to discourage them. “You don’t want to meet your relatives. They are all just poor white trash.”
When my mom and my aunt persisted, they discovered that many of our cousins owned ranches and oil wells. It turns out, WE are the poor relations. And Grandma’s sainted father turns out to be the instigator of one of the juicier scandals in the family history.
His wife got very sick.
His wife’s sister came to help take care of her.
The wife died.
The sister was discovered to be pregnant.
A shotgun wedding was arranged.
On the way to the altar, he escaped, and skipped town, in the company of a third woman.
I have never had the nerve to ask which of the three women we are descended from.
My great grandfather was an illegal immigrant. Came into the US from Canada, got my great grandmother pregnant and was deported a few months later. 4 years later comes back into the US, great grandmother ends up pregnant again. Great grandpa isn’t deported back to Canada, he is sent back to Scotland. Great grandmother never saw him again.
This has never been confirmed but this is what I think is the TRUE story:
My great uncle (my dad’s uncle) and his wife had an adopted son. We were always told that they couldn’t have kids of their own and my great uncle traveled to California to adopt a baby boy (this was in the '60’s). No one ever asked why he went to California (we’re all from Minnesota) or about any other details of the adoption.
One day I was looking at my mom’s photo albums and came across her and my dad’s wedding pictures. My dad’s uncle was in the wedding party. As I looked at his picture all I could think of was, “at that age, he looks exactly like his “adopted” son!”
So, I’m guessing the trip to California to adopt a baby boy, was really a trip to California (or wherever - who knows?) to pick up a baby boy that was actually his. A baby boy that was the result of an affair. He was always a bit shady - his nickname was Mafie, as in Mafia! He probably coerced the mother into giving him the baby.
“Aunt” I don’t know how that got left out. She was actually my grandmother’s cousin but she was orphaned and they were raised together like sisters.
Hell it was a scandal when lace curtain Irish married shanty Irish.
My mother brought my father over to meet her Italian family for the first time. After my grandmother said to her “He seems nice but mixed marriages don’t work.” She assumed his German last name was Jewish. My mother started laughing because if you had a gathering of my father’s family at the time you couldn’t throw a dead cat without hitting a priest or nun.
Mrs. Shark’s brother got the genealogy bug a few years ago and went to City Hall to get a copy of their parent’s marriage certificate.
Hmmmm . . . doesn’t seem to be one, nor divorce record for mom’s previous marriage.
My mom escaped from a mental hospital several years prior to my birth. She overpowered a guard and took off. If I remember right it took them several hours to catch her. She’d walked/run several miles by that point. Also, that she’d had a miscarriage prior to my birth.
One of my dad’s relatives married a woman who’d been in The League of German Women (aka the Nazi Girl Scouts) in her teenage years. According to my dad she was a mean woman who dumped her husband and went back to Germany at some point.
Highlight of the entire thread! 
I just said my family had no real terrible secrets for me to find out.
Alas, my son won’t be as lucky. He’s adopted, and his birth family had some serious issues. My son knows about all the ones I’m aware of, but if he ever tries to meet his birth mother, there are libale to be some more dark secrets.
Also, he’s interacted with maternal grandfather’s family (my wife’s Dad’s family) all his life, but almost nobody from his maternal grandmother’s family. Why? My wife’s Mom married my father-in-law, a Mexican-American in the Fifties when that just wasn’t done in Texas. Her white trash family pretty much disowned her. So, my wife has never really known her Mom’s relatives, and doesn’t think she missed much. That side may have some juicy stories if my son ever tracks them down.
I know…so classy.
I was also told that she would have liquor delivered to her house by taxi cab.
I’m still trying to figure out how to explain my family to our future kids.
My parents and some aunts, uncles and friends went to Las Vegas back in the 1970’s. One of the uncles came alone, as his wife apparently didn’t want to go. He lost his return plane ticket and another uncle had to buy him a new one. Much hilarity ensued revolving around “we all lost our money gambling and had to scrape up enough to buy John a new ticket because he was a doofus and lost his.”
Turns out he didn’t lose it. The hooker he brought back to his hotel room stole his wallet. Of course, he couldn’t tell his wife that.