# What skeletons are in your family closet?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [April 2, 2014, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151 "2014-04-02T07:27:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/41 "2014-04-02T18:56:28Z")
My paternal grandmother was apparently in an orphanage for a while. No idea of the details. Ironically, her family was the one that when I looked into it had the deepest roots here in the US. All my other grandparents were 2nd/3rd generation US-born. Her folks went back to the 1700s when I gave up.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/42 "2014-04-02T19:15:17Z")
> [@Malthus](#):
>
> š
Oops. His BROTHERās wife.
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### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/43 "2014-04-02T19:19:22Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#):
>
> Oops. His BROTHERās wife.
And there I was, mentally picturing a murderous end to a bisexual, polyamorous marriage back in the 19th century ā¦ š
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/44 "2014-04-02T19:26:22Z")
> [@Malthus](#):
>
> And there I was, mentally picturing a murderous end to a bisexual, polyamorous marriage back in the 19th century ā¦ š
That would be a much better skeleton. š
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/45 "2014-04-02T19:27:06Z")
> [@StusBlues](#):
>
> I call stealth brag on both of these.
Also the last one. š
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### Author:  [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/46 "2014-04-02T19:29:50Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#):
>
> And a great great grandfather had the dubious honour of making an entire species of bird extinct.
Which species?
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### Author:  [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/47 "2014-04-02T19:46:50Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Iāve got a genuine Long-Lost Cousin-- Does that count?
My grandmother has a genuine identical cousin. Not making that up. You can tell them apart, because thereās a 17 year age difference, but from pictures, itās obvious that if they were the same age, they could pass for identical twins. I know thatās not a skeleton, but that line made me think of it, so I thought Iād share. Yes, the _Patty Duke Show_ premise is actually possible.
Yes, I am also aware that identical twins have identical DNA, and obviously my grandmother and her cousin do not, they just happen to look alike.
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### Author:  [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/48 "2014-04-02T19:57:25Z")
My great-grandmotherās father on my Dadās side and his brother laid in wait and shot and killed their brother-in-law. I donāt know any of the details, but gggpa took his family and fled Tennessee for Arkansas and then Indian Territory. His brother never went to trial, I donāt know why not.
My grandmother on my Motherās sideās grandfather was married to one woman and had an entirely different family with her sister (who was my grandmotherās grandmother). When the first wife died, he went and married the sister. None of this was known to my grandmother. I was doing family tree research and got caught in this strange tangle. I wrote a letter to her asking her to explain things, and she wrote me a letter saying her brother had known the truth, but she never had, and she was very upset about it.
That first family, my Dadās ancestors, had three straight generations of first cousins marrying each other.
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### Author:  [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/49 "2014-04-02T19:58:19Z")
A great-great grandfather of mine (who already had quite a history of public drunkenness and writing bad checks) ran away from home, leaving behind his wife and small daughter. His wife wanted to remarry and divorced him in absentia, rather than wait for years to have him declared dead. It was, if not a scandal, a topic of much interest. G-g grandpa didnāt go very far, married again to a woman who didnāt know about his past, and had a second family.
More recently, one of my cousins was shot to death by his girlfriend during an argument.
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### Author:  [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/50 "2014-04-02T20:11:49Z")
My late uncle helped rob a bank in his younger days. He was the inside man working as a teller. Did five years. Spent the rest of his life as a baptist preacher.
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### Author:  [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/51 "2014-04-02T20:51:31Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#):
>
> This reminds meā¦Iāve read that itās the height of family shame in Australia to be descended from convict settlers, even many generations later. Is/was that true?
Iām not from Australia, but from what I understand, itās quite the opposite. Itās a badge of honor to be descended from original convicts shipped from England.
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/52 "2014-04-02T20:53:26Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> One of my ancestors left his wife and two daughters to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on their trek to Utah and practiced polygamy there. He eventually became a Bishop, in Provo I think. I have like ten thousand fifth cousins in Utah, lol.
Conversely, a pair of my ancestors LEFT Utah because they were under big pressure to take on a second wife. When gāgrandma Johnsonās father found out, he told the sheriff that gāgrandpa Johnson had stolen all the food they were taking with them, so the sheriff rounded up a posse to bring him back to town. They offered to bring grandma back, and she said an 18th century equivalent to ānot only no, but HELL noā and camped out in a surveyorās shack for a couple weeks, with three kids, while she waited for things to get straightened out back in town, then they all continued on to Nevada, then California, and finally settled in what would become Chatsworth.
My motherās first husband, back in the late 50ās, decided he wanted to set himself up in a David Koresh kind of deal, with a compound and a commune and a lot of guns and multiple wives, and my mom also said āhell, no,ā grabbed my two older half-brothers, and split.
My dad was a staff sergeant at Castle AFB in Merced, California, also in the late 50ās, and editor of the base newspaper. In an attempt to drum up interest in the newspaper, he wrote an editorial about the āBond a Monthā program (a certain amount of the airmanās pay each month would go to buy a bond), featuring a hard-of-hearing airman who showed up, looking for his blond. The base commanderās wife saw the article and wanted that pervert of an editor off the base. My father, being recently married (see above), just acquired two kids, and 2 weeks short, got shuffled out the front door and in the back gate, where he hid out over the PX for two weeks until his time was up.
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### Author:  [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/53 "2014-04-02T21:16:57Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#):
>
> Which species?
The Isle of Wight Chough. You can read about him [here](http://www3.hants.gov.uk/museum/biology/taxidermy/taxidermy-a-to-z/hart-edward.htm), but heās more famous for [these specimens](http://www.ravishingbeasts.com/gallery/theatrical-taxidermy/601876).
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### Author:  [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/54 "2014-04-02T21:24:39Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#):
>
> Spent the rest of his life as a baptist preacher.
How do you cope with the shame? š
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### Author:  [@Lord\_Mondegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Mondegreen)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/55 "2014-04-02T22:42:55Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#):
>
> This reminds meā¦Iāve read that itās the height of family shame in Australia to be descended from convict settlers, even many generations later. Is/was that true?
Iām 50, so my useful memory of social attitudes goes back to, say, mid '70s onwards. I donāt recall it being an issue one way or the other in all that time. It wouldnāt surprise me if it was a bigger deal earlier than that, but I donāt know.
I found out only a few years ago that one pair of great-great-grandparents were both convicts. You could argue that it was covered up earlier, but to be honest I didnāt ever know much family history. Growing up 2000 miles from your nearest extended family can have that effect.
Finding out hasnāt changed my life in the slightest. Given the sheer percentage of Australian who must have at least one convict ancestor, I donāt think itās a big deal in general.
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### Author:  [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/56 "2014-04-02T22:58:46Z")
I have as close direct descendants active and very well-known-members of the [Jewish Mafia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_organized_crime).
On my motherās side. Fatherās side was squeaky-clean.
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### Author:  [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/57 "2014-04-02T23:11:23Z")
My bi-polar mother in law stabbed her first baby to death. And then went on to have two more children. I mean, Iām glad she did and everything because one of them is my husband, but shit! Sheās been in and out of mental hospitals most of her adulthood.
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### Author:  [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/58 "2014-04-02T23:28:12Z")
Weāre not sure about this one, but the evidence suggests my (now deceased) grandparents did not actually divorce back in the 60s (scanadalous enough in that time), as they told everyone, and my Grandmother probably did not actually marry her āsecond husbandā but just moved house and told everyone she had.
On a much more distant note, my motherās side of the family share a very uncommon surname with a regicide- one of the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I. Some of my family have tried to work out if he was definitely a relative, and if so, where heād be in the family tree, but so far without success.
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### Author:  [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/59 "2014-04-02T23:50:56Z")
uncle ed next to the suit coats.
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### Author:  [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2014, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-skeletons-are-in-your-family-closet/685151/60 "2014-04-02T23:58:35Z")
You donāt want to know their secretsā¦believe me.
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