There’s a factoid in my family’s past which I have never been able to confirm or disprove. The story goes that my great-great-whatever grandfather on my dad’s side shot all of his slaves at the conclusion of the civil war, just to show the Yankees that they couldn’t force him to set them free. If my paternal grandmother and her relatives were examples of that ancestor’s personality, I am ready to believe the legend. My grandma was a vicious bigot and a mean harpy.
For a second there, I thought you were my brother! He’s older than me, and we have a younger sister named Jessica, and she occasionnaly stops off at my grandmother’s place to see her. I also had a grandmother named Hazel. Although that’s your great-grandmother’s name, all of that put together made me have to reread to make sure you weren’t part of my family!
I recently found out about the death of my mom’s great-aunt.
It seems her husband was a radio preacher in the late 30’s. GG Aunt Tishie (ya, that was her name) was almost blind and GG Uncle Jim had hired a live in housekeeper. And he proceded to have an affair with the housekeeper, was apparently planning to marry her.
One day he called the police and told them he had accidently shot her. Twice. Said he was trying to shot a cat, and the rifle jammed. So he tried to pry the bullet out with a screwdriver, and the gun went off.
He spent the rest of his life in prison. I would of tacked on 10 years for a lame story.
There was also the very interesting story of how my Gram’s branch happened to leave Germany. Her grandfather threw a bottle at his schoolteacher and killed him. So he ran to Canada to escape the law, then later moved to Vermont.
mnemosyne, what a cool set of coincidences! Of course, I could just be trying to throw you off the track by saying that… 
Oh! So you and Dad had a son before you were married and gave him up for adoption ?
He’s 2 years older than me and you’ve never been able to find him ?
Do I mind that you waited till I was 26 to tell me ?
Course not Mom. Hows the dog ?
It is, but I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that no-one has a duty to re-open wounds, even for such a good cause as preserving history.
My dad is a Holocaust Survivor (not a Concentration-Camp survivor, though…people tend to conflate them). He spent about 4 years in hiding. And he won’t talk about it. I pestered him for years before I realized that my “need to know” didn’t outweigh the pain that reopening those memories would cause him and I’ve backed off.
Since then, he’s relaxed and shared a [sub]bit[/sub] of it, and I’m glad he did (and I think he’s glad too) but I was surprised when he did, as I’d resigned myself to never know.
Fenris
While I understand that the personal aspects of family history are often undiscussed, the huge aspect of nearly the entire family line dying out was what I thought I should know about. Even if it were from an earthquake or a fire, or even by just not having children. That we are some of the last of them, that’s what I was so surprised to learn.
As I have seen with many Jewish families, especially older members, memories of the holocaust are just too painful to discuss. Add in tremendous “survivor guilt” carried for 50 years and it’s no surprise that many older Jews “don’t know” or “don’t remember” family and friends from thier past.
There is a big concern in many Jewish communities that the last holocaust survivors will be dying of old age soon. This will reduce any first hand accounts to previously recorded information. With the increase of neo-Naziism in Eastern Europe (and the US) there is a very real fear that it can go more unchecked without survivors to tell their experiences.
Well, let’s see. Great Grandma got pregnant at age 16, by a local farmhand, while she worked as a domestic servant. She had my grandma, and treated her all her life as “a child of sin” (gotta love those Calvinists). GG married a local boy who actually adopted grandma, and tried his best to treat her decently, but great-grandma and her parents would have none of it. Finally GG shipped grandma off to America with GG’s parents at the age of 7. They treated her mostly like a servant, pulling her out of school after 4th grade so she could work. When GG and hubby moved to America, grandma shuttled between the two households, working for both of them as a servant.
Grandma was held up to her 4 half-sisters as an example of “the wages of sin”. Didn’t keep one of her halfsisters from having a daughter out of wedlock, tho.
Grandma was always frustrated that her mother would tell her nothing about her father. Finally, shortly before GG died, she told grandma that his name was Herbert, and that she’d kept a picture of him until just recently, then burned it 'cuz she knew she’d die soon. And refused to tell more.
Well, GG and grandma finally passed away, but after 10 years of searching, I identified Herbert (Huibrecht), from old employment records. Grandma would have been pleased. Despite her upbringing, she was a kindly, lovely woman.