OMFG. I found my grandfather in the 1930 census. IN PRISON.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I trace some of my ancestry back to 17th New Amsterdam/New York/New Orange, and before that, The Netherlands. I’d always wondered why the family cleared out of Manhattan shortly after 1700, since available evidence indicates that had a decently profitable business (a tavern) about where Chinatown is today.

It seems it might have had something to do with the fact they lined themselves up with Governor Jacob Leisler. Leisler was an anti-royalist who disavowed the King and set himself up as Governor of New York, on the basis of a letter patent that he had with him when he arrived. For whatever reason, he was actually successful and remained for some time as Governor, though he had a streak of the martinet about him. Among other things, one ancestor was a captain in his militia.

Once Leisler was put down, my ancestors didn’t leave immediately, but I think the Leisler episode was a contributing factor in why, by 1710, they’d all moved out of the city.

I knew a little bit about the Leisler episode, but I didn’t realize how reviled he was until I very recently read about him in a history of NYC dating from 1853.

62

You should try growing up in Australia. If your family has been here for a few generations it’s almost impossible not to find a convict somewhere in the family tree. Being from South Australia we always thought we were purely free settlers until my brother started doing some serious research.

Sure enough, now in my 40s I find out I’m a direct descendent of a transported criminal. Haven’t bothered to find out what her crime was.

63

One of my distant relatives on my mother’s side of the family was a young man who served as an intelligence agent for the CSA; he was regarded as a spy by the Union and was captured after being betrayed by a woman. He refused to reveal anything whatever as to his contacts or methods of contact and was tortured by his Yankee captors; tortured to the extent of having his tongue cut off since he refused to use it. After further torture, he was tied by the feet to a horse and was drug behind the horse until he died. The sergeant in charge of the Yankee detail delivered his body to his family and was quoted as saying he never saw a more courageous man than this cousin. It is said that the sergeant in charge became insane over what he had done; the story is well documented and I believe Sampiro is somewhat familiar with the story. I have copies of some local newspaper stories about the matter.

64

Let’s see. Strange family updates.
Discovered one relative was a Presbyterian Martyr. A Covenanter. Monument and everything.

But then my dad started doing some fancy analysis. He’s good at that, having been in Market Research. And he talked to the people in the irish 1718 project… and he found why the family line has a strange branch extended all the way to Germany. It follows the old monasteries.

You know that book, ‘How the Irish Saved Civilization’? Yeah. Apparently, that was us. Columba was family, we staffed his monastery and so on.

And yes, that means we were dead square in the middle of the area when King Arthur may or may not have been wandering around.

Checking out your family tree is awesome.

65

It could have been worse; he could have married the sister before wifey #1 died.

66

Indeed. Apparently I have a very distant link to the Royal Family of Denmark.

67

I can beat that I think. One of my direct ancestors married his wife’s sister after his first wife died. When wife number two, the sister, died (he wore them out making kids) he then married the sisters’ niece. There was quite a disparity in age there as well.

68

Apparently not, although it was covered in the newspaper, the Port Gibson Reveille, at the time. Mary McFatter was the sister of my great-grandfather John Adams McFatter and the second wife of Louis Benjamin Westrope.

Louis and Mary had six young children – Lewis Lamar, Jewel, Mattie, Joseph, Mary Lou, and the infant Nellie. In June 1902, Louis and Annie, who was his his eldest daughter by his first wife, had left Mary alone with the children at the house to go to church – Mary had only given birth to Nellie a couple of months before, and maybe she wasn’t feeling well enough to get up and about.

Mary took the five older children out to the barn and shot them one by one. She then went and lit the house on fire, burning it and baby Nellie with it. She was found running through a local graveyard and placed in an asylum. When questioned, Mary said that she had killed her children because she was terrified of her children being orphaned and some cruel fate befalling them. I mean, obviously she and her husband were very much alive, and there was no logical reason to think that her children would be orphaned and abused, but she had become deranged and I suppose her poor mind had become obsessed with this notion.

In September 1902, her husband Louis removed her from the asylum after being convinced that her sanity had been restored. He took her to a boarding house type of place in Greenville, apparently hoping that a trip would help her recover. She wrote a letter saying that she couldn’t live without her children, slipped out of the boarding house, and threw herself into the river.

Louis eventually remarried and lived on until 1928. I believe his former brother-in-law, John Adams McFatter, named his son (and my grandfather) Louis after him.

You can read one of the news articles about this case that I typed up here.

Estella McFatter, a sister of John Adams and Mary, had a daughter named Alice Benedict who spent her entire adult life in the Hospital for the Insane in
Jackson, MS. Joseph Daniel McFatter, a brother of Estella, Mary, and John Adams, had a daughter of his own named Mary, who killed herself.

69

Abused, no; orphaned, yes. Parents living but unable and/or unwilling to take care of you, with no other close relative to step in? In the orphanage you went.

70

(bolding mine) Postpartum psychosis? Man, that’s harsh.

71

Actually,one of my ancestors appears to have been a Sherriff of Nottingham.

“With a Spoon!”

72

I have an ancestor (great great great grandfather?) who founded a town in Texas as a Quaker settlement. He was a buffalo hunter, Indian fighter… And a Quaker. :eek: I think he was also a freelance lawman of sorts.