I’m low on details but one day I will get around to grilling my grandmother about them. She told me this story about the grandparents of my grandfather (now deceased).
His grandfather was an inventor and he was involved with a tractor company and invented something that helped this company take off. Somehow he either lost or sold his interest in the company shortly before it became very succesful (the company still exists today). He became mentally ill and paranoid. He constantly accused his wife of adultery, which she was innocent of. She got fed up and took the kids and left. She and the kids found work picking cotton in the Texas/Oklahoma area (again, vague details but I’m pretty sure it actually happened in Texas). He showed up and in front of her children, shot her multiple times. He went to jail for a long, long time (surprisingly for Texas, not executed and was paroled at some point).
My great grandmother had to testify against her own father, and after she had married and had several children ( I think 4 or so) he was paroled. She was convinced he was going to come after her and had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a mental institution. My great grandfather struggled to raise 4 (or so) children by himself, but the state of California did not think his home was appropriate (from what I can gather- something to do with being poor and not having enough room for 4 or so kids- my g. grandfather was very well liked by all my family and reportably was doing the best he could) and removed some of the kids leaving only my grandfather and his brother still with their father. The other kids did not have any contact with our family until my grandfather’s brother tracked them down when they were all in their 60’s or so.
Also… on the other side of the family, one of my ancestors (can’t remember his name) was the man who ransomed/captured Cynthia Ann Parker (mother to Quanah Parker) from the Comanches.
I have a copy of the entire family tree on my father’s mother’s side, going back to the 1300s in Germany. It is quite prosaic – name, birth date, occupation, marriage, children, death date.
Better than that is a story my father’s aunt told me many decades ago. It involves a young woman in the family back in the 1800s. Seems this young woman fell in love with a sailor. The family strongly disapproved, sailors being the scum of the earth and all. They arranged a marriage with a more suitable person, a grocer or shopkeeper of some kind. On the morning of her wedding, she was looking out her bedroom window, and there, walking down the street, was her sailor! She told him to meet her at the railroad station. Shortly thereafter, her uncle saw her carrying some suitcases down the front steps and asked her what she was doing. She told him (truthfully) that she was taking the suitcases to the train station. Thinking she was just planning ahead for her honeymoon trip, he helped her carry all the luggage. And she eloped with the sailor.
With that, as far as my great aunt was concerned, the story was over. I was in my teens at the time and wanted desperately to know what happened next. “They got married, of course,” said my great aunt. And that was the end. So we have no idea whether the young bride came back with the sailor, or if they went to another town, or how the family reacted when they realized what she had done, and whether they ever spoke to her uncle again after he facilitated the elopement! And especially, whether she lived happily ever after or came to wish she’d married the grocer.
My great-great-Grandafther and his brother were (so the story goes) shipped to New Zealand aged about about fourteen after being caught stealing in England. On arrival in Onehunga they were pardoned, and migrated down to Foxton where they set up a company of some sort - transporting goods across the North Island, I think.
I don’t know how much of this is true, but there’s a school in Foxton with my last nae, and a street as well, so my ancestors probably did something down there.
My grandfather’s brother was the black sheep of the family and rode with Jesse James. My grandfather remembered Jesse coming to the house. Someone else in the family (from another country) that I recently met was also aware of the connection.
This same grandfather was in the Civil War and remembered soldiers searching through horse manure for undigested grains of corn so that they would have something to eat.
We have an old story that’s supposed to date back to when one branch of my family still lived in England (back before the late 1700’s). It’s about a guy who tore the head off a wolf. Evidently, there’s some sort of marker dedicated to it somewhere.
Of course, that could have been after my grandpa went senile and started inventing family history.
