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.
Oops. His BROTHER’s wife.
And there I was, mentally picturing a murderous end to a bisexual, polyamorous marriage back in the 19th century … 
That would be a much better skeleton.
Also the last one. 
Which species?
My grandmother has a genuine identical cousin. Not making that up. You can tell them apart, because there’s a 17 year age difference, but from pictures, it’s obvious that if they were the same age, they could pass for identical twins. I know that’s not a skeleton, but that line made me think of it, so I thought I’d 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.
My great-grandmother’s father on my Dad’s side and his brother laid in wait and shot and killed their brother-in-law. I don’t 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 don’t know why not.
My grandmother on my Mother’s side’s grandfather was married to one woman and had an entirely different family with her sister (who was my grandmother’s 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 Dad’s ancestors, had three straight generations of first cousins marrying each other.
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 didn’t go very far, married again to a woman who didn’t 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.
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.
I’m not from Australia, but from what I understand, it’s quite the opposite. It’s a badge of honor to be descended from original convicts shipped from England.
Conversely, a pair of my ancestors LEFT Utah because they were under big pressure to take on a second wife. When g’grandma Johnson’s father found out, he told the sheriff that g’grandpa 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 “not only no, but HELL no” and camped out in a surveyor’s 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 mother’s first husband, back in the late 50’s, 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 “hell, no,” grabbed my two older half-brothers, and split.
My dad was a staff sergeant at Castle AFB in Merced, California, also in the late 50’s, and editor of the base newspaper. In an attempt to drum up interest in the newspaper, he wrote an editorial about the “Bond a Month” program (a certain amount of the airman’s pay each month would go to buy a bond), featuring a hard-of-hearing airman who showed up, looking for his blond. The base commander’s 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.
The Isle of Wight Chough. You can read about him here, but he’s more famous for these specimens.
How do you cope with the shame?
I’m 50, so my useful memory of social attitudes goes back to, say, mid '70s onwards. I don’t recall it being an issue one way or the other in all that time. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a bigger deal earlier than that, but I don’t 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 didn’t ever know much family history. Growing up 2000 miles from your nearest extended family can have that effect.
Finding out hasn’t changed my life in the slightest. Given the sheer percentage of Australian who must have at least one convict ancestor, I don’t think it’s a big deal in general.
I have as close direct descendants active and very well-known-members of the Jewish Mafia.
On my mother’s side. Father’s side was squeaky-clean.
My bi-polar mother in law stabbed her first baby to death. And then went on to have two more children. I mean, I’m glad she did and everything because one of them is my husband, but shit! She’s been in and out of mental hospitals most of her adulthood.
We’re 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 ‘second husband’ but just moved house and told everyone she had.
On a much more distant note, my mother’s 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 he’d be in the family tree, but so far without success.
uncle ed next to the suit coats.
You don’t want to know their secrets…believe me.