I have a rather large family on both mom and especially dad’s side. The last couple funerals I’ve been to turned up all sorts of family members from the woodwork. My mom’s cousins and their kids whom I used to play with and so on. I don’t remember any of them. My dad’s aunts and uncles that once babysat me or came to my high school basketball games or some such connection that is completely news to me. I felt like a dolt telling all these people I have no idea who they are.
I have a very large extended family with a lot of step-whatnots. And it’s still growing. I now have two step-step-great-grandchildren It was always clear to me.
But not so much to my kids. When I’m talking about some family members they’ll ask me the relationship and they’ll say “So, not related at all.”
Everything is pretty cut-and-dried on both sides of my family. We know all of the aunts and uncles and cousins, and greats and seconds.
Except this guy Andy Gotlieb showed up at one or two of my dad’s family reunions and while I’m sure it was established at some point who he was and why he was there, everyone has since forgotten. We just remember this weird dude named Andy Gotlieb.
I know/knew my parents’ sibs and their spouses - my mom, one of her brothers, and one of my dad’s brothers-in-law are all who remain of that generation. Oh, and a few of my mom’s cousins are still around, but only 3 are familiar to me, and one I haven’t seen in at least 40 years.
I know my cousins (only one has died, but one was widowed) but I don’t know any of their kids. I know some of their names, but I wouldn’t recognize any of them. I met a few of my husband’s aunts and uncles, and a couple cousins, but most he hasn’t seen in decades, and no one writes.
Then again, we’re spread all over the country.
Huh, I hadn’t thought about this in years, but there was a mysterious old lady called “Mrs. Fitchin” who showed up to my grandparents’ house for Christmas dinner one time. I think she came with one of my grandmother’s brothers and his family, so maybe she was his mother-in-law? (My grandmother’s generation would all have been in their early to mid-sixties at the time, so it’s not-too-unlikely that someone from the next generation up would have been still alive – although of course, they all seemed equally ancient to me when I was a kid.)
When I was very small, my great-grandparents old farm was still in the family, and although the land was rented out to a neighboring farmer to work, the farmhouse was still used as a family retreat in the summers. I can vaguely remember being introduced to various elderly family members when they would stop by the farmhouse. I don’t remember ever meeting anyone young, but then at 4-5 years old, everyone adult seems ancient.
A lot of my uncles were actually great-uncles but we simply called them “Uncle”. Some cousins aren’t actual cousins but “unofficially adopted” having been close friends of the family from when my Dad was little or being from the same village/migration from the Old Country. Most in-laws are called as if they were blood kin - usually “cousin”. We know who is who and somehow we manage to keep it all straight but it has caused some confusion when we have outings/picnics around less extended or “clan-ish” families.
I come from a large family, as does my wife. Both of my parents came from large families. We have a tendency to collect folks & make family out of them. Many of my aunts & uncles were/are foster parents, who adopted some of their foster brood. Not that the non-adopted ones are not family, they are, just unofficial family. Then if we add in the step brothers, sisters, & kids, things can get out of hand mighty quickly.
I once counted over 120 “cousins” that I have. While my wife only has about 50 or so “cousins” to her credit. There is no way that I can keep track of them all, & I do not even try. At least five of my sisters do keep track of this kind of thing. If I ever need to know this stuff, I will call them. Our family reunions are insane! We need at least five acres to hold one, as many of us like camping out.
At my uncles funeral there were over 200 folks who signed in as family. I believe that number. He was a school teacher for over 30 years. He often brought home some strays for the summer break & the winter holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, & Hanukkah. Many of these are considered family. He had 13 siblings & his dad was from a family of 11. He only had five bio-children, but add in their significant others & you get 13 kids. On average they have 3.5 kids. Some of those kids have kids…
Now if you include my foster kids, the non-adopted ones, & the official adopted ones, I have a fair sized family of my own.
My best friend has only three brothers. Yet, I am their fourth & oldest brother, so far. They include me in their family gatherings & I include them in mine. His folks were also foster parents, & so it grows.
My family has ousted some of the seamier members. One has to be very bad for that to happen.
Oh & just so Doris is not left out, My bio-cousin married a very smart & very pretty girl named Doris. She only had her mom & sister to bring into this mass. They were good friends for two years before they wed, so she knew what she was getting into.
You know, thinking about Doris, she likes big family get-togethers & she had been known to crash weddings… Hey! Were any of the a fore mentioned Doris’ fairly tall, with long dark hair, smart, & looked like they might be First Nations folk?
My parents were never very precise with words like “uncle”.
As in, “Uncle Bill” from Mom’s side was actually Mom’s cousin. And the woman Dad introduced as “Your Aunt Julia” was actually his Aunt Julia, his father’s youngest sister.
But the one I didn’t know was Uncle Lech. I only met him once, around 1988, as he only visited this part of the country every few decades. He traveled an extra 35 miles to see my Dad while he was visiting my grandfather. (He had last seen Dad in 1951).
What I know for certain: Dad called him “Uncle Lech” when talking about him, but just “Lech” in person, and he was in his late 90s. He seemed to be family to my grandfather (Dad’s mother had older siblings I never knew, but … Lech came with my Grandfather and one of Dad’s sisters, and my grandmother had been dead for a few years at that point.)
Years later this experience crossed with another fact in my mind to spit out a “that doesn’t make sense”: my grandfather was the oldest male child of his father. He had a few older sisters, but all his brothers were younger than him. And he was about 80 when I met Lech.
I think Lech was actually my Grandfather’s uncle, but I never thought to ask Dad about it.
Neither of my parents are really close to their families, so that makes it more complicated.
On my mom’s side there are various elderly people that I don’t have a CLUE as to how they are related to me. On my dad’s side it’s even worse.
“The Mafia”: My dad is somehow related to these people who live in NYC. They are of Italian descent and may or may not be involved with the actual Mafia.
“Lottie The Nazi”: Every so often I get to hear about a woman who spent her teenage years int he Hitler Youth, came to the United States and at some point went back and basically vanished. No idea what her last name is or if I’m truly related to her.
Oh, like my mom’s ‘cousin’ Julie. Julie is the granddaughter of my great-grandmother’s youngest sister. I have no earthly idea how that makes Julie related to my brother and me.
When my sister got married, my other sister had to drop out of the wedding party on almost no notice. When looking at the wedding photos at their 50th anniversary party, I realized I had no idea who the replacement maid of honor was.
I asked my sister, and it took something like an hour for her to remember her maid of honor was a cousin, who seemed to qualify only because she wore the same size dress.
My sister is pretty sure she never even talked to our cousin after the wedding.
I just quickly skimmed this thread so far. Interesting that for 32 posts, nobody seems to have noticed that the OP’s link is no good.
I seem to have kinfolk galore on both sides, most of whom I’ve never known nor met nor ever even heard of.
My father seems to have come from an especially large family. Or at least an especially well-documented family. Since the 1930’s or so, someone in the family (genealogically very distant from my most immediate kinfolk) have maintained an exquisitely detailed family genealogy. It covers seven or eight generations by now, and seems to be very thorough. There’s even some undocumented family lore tracing the family back to the days of the Spanish Inquisition.
Okay, that was the family tree on my father’s mother’s side. More recently, about fifteen years ago, I discovered that there also exists a fairly detailed family tree on my father’s father’s side. These include more of the relatives that I’ve known all my life.
AND, just about five years ago, I got re-connected with my cousins on my mother’s side, from whom I had been totally disconnected for the last 50 years. They too worked up a family tree on that side, covering about four generations by now.
Yes a number of relatives like this, even though my parents split up when I was young and I only had/have contact with my mother’s family.
As well as the obvious “elderly person who says they remember you well but guesses you don’t remember them and you have to admit you do not”, there are people I see at every family event and I could tell you their job, say, but I have no idea where they fit in the family tree.
I think I might be such a relative, actually.
Try and keep up now; my brother’s kids have an Aunt and Uncle, in my city and whom I am good friends with, even having stayed with their kids while they were having their last one! So their kids are cousins to my niece and nephew, who, of course, refer to me as Auntie Elbows. Over time it just evolved into those kids also calling me their Auntie, as we’re all related to many of the same people!
I have four extra nieces and nephews that I adore so I’m not complaining. But now, as they begin famlies of their own I can see how this will become confusing for their offspring one day!
Less confusing than my Mom’s family though. She had a dozen siblings, long since spread throughout North America. Most having produced large families themselves. That’s a whole lot of people I don’t know at all!
On my mom’s side, the families were small enough that it was easy enough to figure out everyone’s relations and keep track of them.
On my father’s side, the families were a bit bigger, and pretty much the last 3-4 generations lived within a 40 mile radius, with most of them in about a 15 mile radius. So I ended up with a lot of “Uncle So-and-So” and “Aunt Thus-and-Such” old-folks who I haven’t always been entirely clear on what their relations to me were. For example, “Uncle Speck” was some relation to my grandfather, but I’m not sure if he was my great-uncle, or maybe just a cousin of my grandfather’s generation, or possibly even my grandfather’s uncle (great-great uncle). I should probably ask my dad- he ought to know, and if he’s in the same boat, then my grandmother should know; she’s the last of that generation still around in the family (she turns 93 in July).
My grandfather had five siblings and eight half-siblings, as his father was a polygamist who was married to two sisters at the same time. It gets very complicated from there on.
My grandmother was one of 14 siblings. Family reunions were not literally cast of thousands, but they sure seemed like it. If it wasn’t for the old-timers, who knew everybody, half of the attendees could’ve been gate crashers as far as I’m concerned. I’m good with faces, but names sometimes escape me. Weddings, funerals, etc. Oy! Many of the old old-timers are gone now, and I’m quickly becoming one, we’re going to have to wear name tags that state how we’re all related to the original 14. Second, third, et al marriages make it interesting, as well as the attendant children from all those couplings. It used to be so simple…
My grandfather had a brother he never saw.
The brother was 18? and went west to be a cowboy or whatever when my grandfather was a baby. He eventually wound up in Utah and became a Mormon. They both lived into old age and exchanged some letters but never visited. My grandfather died in his 90’s in 1966. Thanks to the meticulous geneology of the Mormons I have names of several 2nd cousins of my generation in Utah and I’ve thought of trying to contact them but I’m not sure if I really care.