# Mysteries in your family.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 29, 2015, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109 "2015-05-29T13:04:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/41 "2015-05-31T19:21:54Z")
> [@Rushgeekgirl](#):
>
> My great-grands on my maternal grandfather’s side were poisoned. The only detail I was ever told was that they were poisoned and died when my grandfather was 12 and he was left caring for his younger brothers and sisters. He died before I was old enough to appreciate family stories. This would have been sometime in the 1920s in rural Tennessee. They were very poor sharecroppers so it likely wasn’t about money and likely wasn’t a jealous lover either, but who knows? It’s a mystery.
Lots of people died from eating poorly canned vegetables, especially green beans. I’d bet that’s what did it. My grandmother knew of two people who died that way; one of them died and her husband didn’t, because he didn’t like green beans. My grandmother would eat the beans my mom canned (using a pressure cooker and being very sterile), but she always boiled them to death first.
---
### Author:  [@Inna\_Minnit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inna_Minnit)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/42 "2015-05-31T22:11:47Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> What’s weird is you not asking. She’s your mom. You are her closest living relative. Normal adult parent/child relationships should be able to handle the questions you have.
If you don’t ask, the knowledge will pass with her. I have many questions with no answers because my mom could never clearly talk about her childhood. I will never know.
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### Author:  [@HelenGawn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelenGawn)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/43 "2015-06-01T00:14:13Z")
My dad’s mother and her brother were orphaned at a young age and taken in by different relatives some distance apart. Dad said her parents were murdered. The murderer was sent to prison, but his sentence was commuted by notorious Texas governor [Miriam “Ma” Ferguson.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_A._Ferguson) If Dad ever met his uncle, he never mentioned it, but his mother told him the uncle had a fishing boat on the Gulf Coast. He had the colorful name Bonner Wells, and Dad used to imagine him as a dashing, colorful figure.
I’d really like more details on this whole story, but anyone who might have known it is gone.
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### Author:  [@HeXen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeXen)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/44 "2015-06-01T00:24:24Z")
My dad was adopted so there’s that whole side of the family that’s unknown plus I only met my dad like twice in my life so that’s mostly a mystery too as well as his other kids.
My great grandfather that my great grandmother and grandmother would never talk about other than to say he died in WW2.
Actually now that i think about it, most of my family is a mystery to me, I haven’t heard from anyone outside of mother and grandmother in many years.
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### Author:  [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/45 "2015-06-01T01:19:26Z")
Our maternal grandfather lived out his life in a sleepy town in the Philippines. He died in 1976. Our sister discovered only a few years ago that, while studying at Washington State back in the 1920’s, he took the Oath of Allegiance. Don’t know how his status was changed after the Philippines gained independence in 1946.
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### Author:  [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/46 "2015-06-01T11:58:53Z")
I’d like to know how my last name came to be spelt the way it is.
It starts with an intimidating three-consonant sequence (including two infrequently used ones) that I’ve never come across in any language. As a result, it’s impossible to pronounce correctly if you’re not told how to.
The thing is, it’s not a hapax either. There are a few people with that name and they’re not directly related to me. It’s also relatively old with some instances attested in the 15th century (sometimes with an alternative, easier spelling). Probably very local, too.
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/47 "2015-06-01T12:32:25Z")
I’d love to see an ad for a genealogy website where the user describes tracking down her great-great grandfather, only to find that he was executed for kidnapping and barbecuing small children.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/48 "2015-06-01T12:34:19Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#):
>
> I’d love to see an ad for a genealogy website where the user describes tracking down her great-great grandfather, only to find that he was executed for kidnapping and barbecuing small children.
That’d be the story of the _nouveau riche_ guy who paid a small fortune to have his family tree looked up… and then a larger fortune to have it hushed up.
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### Author:  [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/49 "2015-06-01T13:01:08Z")
I working on genealogy right now and have a few.
My Great Grandmother had her first child in 1910. But when that child grew up, and sent for a birth certificate (for the newly enacted Social Security Program), it showed that he was a SECOND child. Oops, either a clerical error or another baby. The questions are such that I believe a child was born in 1907 or before.
How will I ever find out?
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/50 "2015-06-01T13:08:27Z")
> [@campp](#):
>
> I working on genealogy right now and have a few.
>
> My Great Grandmother had her first child in 1910. But when that child grew up, and sent for a birth certificate (for the newly enacted Social Security Program), it showed that he was a SECOND child. Oops, either a clerical error or another baby. The questions are such that I believe a child was born in 1907 or before.
>
> How will I ever find out?
The usual way: look at birth records in the recording agencies within 50 miles of g’grandma’s home.
Interestingly, this is how Robert Heinlein’s mysterious first marriage was confirmed. A researcher found his 1932 wedding license with Leslyn… and he was listed as “divorced.” It turned out that the family knew the whole story of the first short, disastrous marriage and no one had ever bothered to ask any of them about it.
So maybe you just need to ask the right question in the right place.
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### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/51 "2015-06-01T13:25:49Z")
My mother’s uncle disappeared, sometime around 1933. He had served in the US Navy, and become an ensign-then moved away . He stopped contact with the family, and dropped out of sight. Years ago, my dad made an attempt to find him-he wrote the US Navy Bureau of Personnel. The uncle’s last known address was a sailor’s home in Chicago-we never learned anything more. Most likely, he died in an accident.
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### Author:  [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/52 "2015-06-01T13:44:04Z")
> [@campp](#):
>
> I working on genealogy right now and have a few.
>
> My Great Grandmother had her first child in 1910. But when that child grew up, and sent for a birth certificate (for the newly enacted Social Security Program), it showed that he was a SECOND child. Oops, either a clerical error or another baby. The questions are such that I believe a child was born in 1907 or before.
>
> How will I ever find out?
If you can find her on the 1910 census then it might list the number of children she’d had and how many are living. That doesn’t mean she told the truth, but it might be there.
I have lots of little mysteries in my family. One of them I talked about before here, my great grand mother and father got divorced in the 1930s. She had at least 5 kids with him, one died young, the other I could never get a good birth date for. The oldest one died young and the youngest one took his birth date for some reason.
My great grandfather said the child wasn’t his, the wife and child said he was. Birth certificates are sealed in Maryland for 100 years unless you can prove a death. Since he took a different date of birth I can’t prove it’s him. For awhile I thought the father had a fake funeral for his son.
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/53 "2015-06-01T14:54:52Z")
My grandpa was kind of a nut. He filed fraudulent tax forms throughout the 70s and was embroiled in a lawsuit with the IRS when he died. The only reason my grandma didn’t have to take the fall was because my grandpa forged her signature on all the forms and knew nothing about it.
Anyway, he was also a primitive gold bug, and bought lots of gold which he then buried somewhere in the yard. He told his kids on his deathbed where he buried it, but they dug there and many other places in the yard in the 30 years since he died, and the gold never turned up.
The general consensus among the family is that he must have already dug up that gold before he died and understandably forgot during all the excitement of having terminal cancer. But my aunt finally sold that house this year, so it sure would suck if there’s still buried treasure somewhere on the property.
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### Author:  [@edwardcoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwardcoast)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/54 "2015-06-01T15:04:04Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#):
>
> **1.** I’m 47. My mother is 74. She has two sisters, all of whom are alive.
>
> My mom’s side of the family has always been a big mystery to me. Her dad died when she was young, and she has never talked about him. I vaguely recall she once said he “drank a lot,” but that’s it. Her mother (my grandmother) died a couple of years ago. They were never close despite living not far from each other.
>
> I have a nagging suspicion my mother’s childhood was not pleasant. I have a feeling bad things were happening in her household when she was growing up. Abuse of some kind? Not sure. And I will never know the answer because I would feel weird asking her about it.
>
> **2.** According to my genealogical research, my great great grandparents had 13 children. They lived in and around Dayton, Ohio throughout most of their life. After my gg grandfather died in 1913, my gg grandmother (at the age of 63) abruptly moved to Oakland, CA for a few years, and then moved back to Dayton. As far as I know we didn’t have any family in California at the time. Why did she move out there? An old love interest? I’ll never know.
Sometimes the actual true is something pretty boring and light-weight as a reason for their actions. Some family members simply don’t get along with others over the most trivial of situations because of one or more people having a borderline personality disorder. In other words, they tell others what to do all the time and how to run their life and are constantly critical, so other family members disassociate themselves from them for the betterment of their own mental health.
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### Author:  [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/55 "2015-06-01T15:38:37Z")
My dad thinks his father had a secret family out west that he was sending money too. The reasoning is that my granddad was a “hobo” (riding the rails, working here & there) before he met my grandma and spent time in British Columbia. He met my grandmother here in Ontario and they settled down and had 4 children (5 actually, one died of SIDS as an infant.) My dad says: “It was a mining town. Everybody’s dad worked at the mine. Everybody made the same salary. Every family had multiple children. Why was our family so poor?” Apparently years later (1990’s I think) a letter to my granddad arrived from a lawyer but it was delivered to the wrong apartment building and my grandmother’s sister found it. They gave it to my granddad and he was very upset and called the post office and ripped them a new one for misdelivering this letter. My dad wonders if it had something to do with the “secret family”.
My grandmother is a mystery all to herself. It’s a shame both my grandparents are gone now and I never got the chance to really talk to them. My dad says he never really talked to them either.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/56 "2015-06-01T15:50:41Z")
> [@Edward\_The\_Head](#):
>
> If you can find her on the 1910 census then it might list the number of children she’d had and how many are living. That doesn’t mean she told the truth, but it might be there.
Sorry, another relevant Heinlein story: on the 1950 census, the data for the Heinlein’s address is either wrongly entered or a string of fictitious BS - it’s just close enough to their names to be a prank or anti-gummint paranoia, but lists several children with bizarre names. Heinlein never had any children. I think a lot of census data is… questionable unless verified against more official records, from honest mistakes, misled census recorders and this kind of prank/privacy misdirection.
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### Author:  [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/57 "2015-06-01T16:40:59Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> Sorry, another relevant Heinlein story: on the 1950 census, the data for the Heinlein’s address is either wrongly entered or a string of fictitious BS - it’s just close enough to their names to be a prank or anti-gummint paranoia, but lists several children with bizarre names. Heinlein never had any children. I think a lot of census data is… questionable unless verified against more official records, from honest mistakes, misled census recorders and this kind of prank/privacy misdirection.
Not questioning the accuracy of your statement, but are you sure? The 1950 federal census data won’t be released until [2022](https://www.census.gov/history/www/genealogy/decennial_census_records/census_records_2.html).
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### Author:  [@chaika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaika)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/58 "2015-06-01T16:53:20Z")
I wonder what really happened to the great-aunt who “went bad” out in Montana. I also had a great-uncle who died mysteriously in childhood. The family rumors say he was killed by his mother and/or one of her many husbands.
One family mystery was solved. My grandmother (other side of the family from the above paragraph) cut off all contact with her family when they didn’t approve of the man she married. She never spoke about them again beyond a few trivial details. We all wondered and speculated about her past. After her death two of her siblings saw the obituary and contacted my aunt. I met them later, and they were very nice people. We learned a lot about her childhood and early youth. It seemed a tremendous shame that my grandmother made such a complete break with her family and that the relationships were never repaired on either side throughout her life.
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### Author:  [@ASanders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASanders)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/59 "2015-06-01T17:08:47Z")
Not a mystery, but a common situation. My grandfather came through Ellis Island sometime betwen 1914 and 1918 as a teenager. Left behind (in Minsk, I seem to recall) were his 9 siblings. I have no idea how to find them, what their name(s) are or were, or anything else. His to-be wife arrived from then-Hungary about the same time; they met here. I know absolutely nothing about her family.
My father despised his ethnic background and so didn’t talk about it. My grandparents died when I was a child. I remember them fondly but didn’t know enough then to ask the big questions. And my father has been gone now for 20 years, so I can’t appeal to him.
Somewhere in Russia I have cousins who look like me. ☹
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### Author:  [@edwardcoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwardcoast)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mysteries-in-your-family/721109/60 "2015-06-01T17:27:44Z")
> [@ASanders](#):
>
> Not a mystery, but a common situation. My grandfather came through Ellis Island sometime betwen 1914 and 1918 as a teenager. Left behind (in Minsk, I seem to recall) were his 9 siblings. I have no idea how to find them, what their name(s) are or were, or anything else. His to-be wife arrived from then-Hungary about the same time; they met here. I know absolutely nothing about her family.
>
> My father despised his ethnic background and so didn’t talk about it. My grandparents died when I was a child. I remember them fondly but didn’t know enough then to ask the big questions. And my father has been gone now for 20 years, so I can’t appeal to him.
>
> Somewhere in Russia I have cousins who look like me. ☹
You could always do DNA testing and that would put you in the database which might lead you to distance relatives. Family Tree DNA is a good one, because they store your DNA data without charging. There is also [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) to help find family.
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