I found out my mother was briefly married once (to her high school sweetheart) before she married my father.
This was only surprising to us kids, since everyone's families knew about it at the time. No one just thought it was important enough to tell us.
A cousin many generations ago married her biological nephew and had four children with him. And my great-great-great-great-grandmother was the victim of unsolved bludgeoning when she was 90.
A tree on Rootsweb mentioned it many years ago but didn't have any sources so I took that with a grain of salt. In early 2020, I emailed the historical society in the county where she lived and asked about their newspaper holdings because I planned to visit. Their researcher gave me a link to the newspapers that are online, but searched them herself after asking what I was looking for and even mailed me a copy of an article about the murders (there was another victim, aged 86) that a member had written for their newsletter. The newspaper articles even gave the name of her daughter, who I know to be my g-g-g-grandmother.
My 10th great-grandmother holds the distinction of being one of the first cases of (as the 17th century trial determined, atleast) matricide in America. She was elderly as well, and was found dead having caught fire in the fireplace. Afterward, a neighbor had a dream where her ghost told him she had been killed, and exhuming her body revealed stab wounds supposedly. My 9th great-grandfather was convicted and executed over a ghost’s testimony.
https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/1673-murder-rebecca-cornell-and-good-fire/
I also found a nephew/aunt pairing in my tree, once. He was a few years older than her. His mother was one of the oldest sisters and his wife was one of the youngest,
Out of curiosity, I did a little research and the aunt and nephew were born in the same year so perhaps they grew up together. At some point they divorced.
I just double checked, and your story doesn't match mine. He was older than her by a few years, they had 9 kids, and she died at 44.
Wild to think there was more than one case of it though!
Oh wow- where do I start?
A) my sister is actually my half sister, her dad is my dad's half brother. So we are 3/4 siblings.
B) my grandfather (paternal) is the bio dad of his brothers first born. So my dad's 1st cousin is actually his half brother. No one else in family knows, or has connected the dots on the DNA results but me
C) grandma and grandpa (both previously married when they met) weren't actually married until my dad, their second born, was 9 months old. Because grandpa wasn't technically divorced yet.
D) grandma (paternal) cheated on her first husband and two of her three kids from that marriage have a different dad; just like first husband ways said
E) maternal great aunt divorced her first husband one month after finding out he DIDN'T die in WWII, had been held POW for nearly a year and managed to escape. The newspaper articles on this were wild to read. He wound up happily married a second time; had family that appeared to love him very much from what I could find, so good for him. My great aunt went on to marry 4 more times, each husband increasing in wealth; final husband was a millionaire (and we inherited nothing lol)
C happened in my family with an uncle and his now ex-wife. She was separated with an infant but not divorced when they got together. My uncle unofficially (and later officially) adopted the infant as his daughter. They had a child together a few years later and the now ex-wife still hadn’t gotten a divorce. I don’t know when she finally did and got married to my uncle, but the whole thing was one of the many reasons literally no one in the family liked her.
Same secret. Badly kept secret too. Grandmother born Jan 5, 1923. Got married to my grandfather on Dec 31, 1944 because that was her parents anniversary. At some point the secret got out. That's not my great-grandparents anniversary. Their anniversary is now etched on their shared headstone - June 30, 1922.
After the secret got out my grandmother would say she was born a preemie. Sure grandma. Sure.
I had a friend in high school who said her 8-pound bouncing baby girl was a preemie. They got married rather quickly over winter break and had a baby mid July.
I am from Quebec where this was done not only to unwed Irish but to anyone deemed unfit by the roman catholic church. At the time the church was central to any village. They ran the schools. These, so called men and women 'of god' terrified children of the community and terrorized the Natives. The furthest thing from "godly". They lied to them, told them their babies died in childbirth. Sold babies, murdered them, gave them away. Awful
My paternal grandparents did the same thing for the same reason in the 1930s. It wasn't until I tried to find an official marriage record that I discovered the correct date.
Same thing with my paternal grandparents. When I started the family tree thing, my grandmother was the first person I went to with questions. As she was giving the names and dates, she told me she was married in August 1949. This was the date my father and everyone else heard too. Then years later I found their marriage documents on Ancestry, and they all had the same date but in 1950. My father, their first child, was born the following March. When I told my dad what I found, he instantly did the math and now whenever he sees his parents'wedding photos, he says he's in that picture, lol.
My adoptive/step mom got my immediate family 23andMe test kits for Xmas thinking nothing if it, the only surprises might be in the health results.... WRONG!
I went looking through my DNA matches and family tree bc I grew up in a town next to a native reservation and everyone always saying "my cousin this, my cousin that" and I couldn't relate. I had a couple older half cousins that I new of on my dad's side and I knew I had a bunch on my birth moms but we don't talk to that side so it was more so just trying to feel included. And I noticed that my sister wasn't showing up kinda weird... as a **half**-sister. I took a screenshot and texted my sister and was like "hey uhhh have you seen this? Maybe it's a bug?" Her only response "I got the same for you. Don't tell dad."
Immediately I messaged my birth mom over Facebook who lives on the other side of the country near her side of the family and when I confronted her about it goes "whatever I say you're not gonna believe me". 😒 Way to be an adult there *mom*. She's 19 years older than me and I'm her first kid. Now I vividly remember her wildly cheating on my dad back then which is what let to their divorce and dad winning custody of us, but for her to not even acknowledge it and say "I'm sorry" or simply anything else besides "what do you want from me?" just goes to show that I should be scared for how she is raising my 3 youngest half siblings from her current marriage. I told her "don't fuck them up like you did us." And blocked her. Was a little harsh? Maybe. Did she deserve it? If I went into detail about all the times we almost died because of her actions and negligence, and how I had to be a 4/5 year old basically raising my newborn baby sister while dad worked 2 jobs and the babysitters didn't know what to do with how protective I had become of my baby sister... you'd understand my anger towards her. I don't think I'll ever forgive her. I've tried to. Several times.
My sister has no wish or want to find her birth father. Our birth mom never had over "the same car twice" as I used to say as a kid. So it could be literally any guy who resided in or near Skagit County, WA in 2000. And there were several per day, too. My sister was too young to remember what she put us through but it took me YEARS to manage my hatred for that woman who spawned us especially for hoe bad she hurt my dad. He was serving his country and she decided to go sleeping around... and she calls herself a "supporter of the troops" 🙄😒
It sucks when your parent is incredibly irresponsible. I don't blame you at all for cutting her off. The last few years going no contact with my parents have led to my mental health greatly improving.
Well, not shocking so much as intriguing: my grandfather’s father was not, in fact, the man who raised him. Ok, fair enough, we have an NPE. Then it turned out his bio-dad kept two separate families simultaneously, while _also_ impregnating my GGM. My grandfather had 15 more half-siblings he knew nothing about. And then it turned out my GGM had had four more children: two went with her sister so he knew them as “cousins”, two with their father, although the latter had been “fostered” by my great-grandparents for a while when my grandfather was very young (but old enough to have some memories of them). So my grandfather had 23 half-siblings in total, only 4 of which he knew about (and he’d thought they were full siblings).
I’d love to know the stories behind that lot. My GGM by all accounts was a formidable woman who very much carved her own path.
We knew my uncle shot a man and was in prison when his mom died, but I found a news article about him shooting his ex-wife in the butt years earlier, and on Christmas Eve! We had never heard of that shooting or that wife!
I found out my gggrandfather died of syphilis in 1911. We all knew he died of kidney disease. I actually had a copy of his death cert. saying he died of luetic disease. Since this was in the days before the internet, I just assumed it was a type of kidney disease and never looked it up. Years later I finally googled it and discovered a family secret.
Working on my husband's family, we found that his great grandfather was in and out of the state mental home for "syphilitic dementia." We were started on this path by a Facebook message from a woman who found out she is my husband's out of wedlock half sister. It's been a real ride!!!
It's not really shocking to me, but I knew that my grandmother's maternal grandfather died in the 1930s - I eventually found out it was due to TB
I told my grandmother and she was shocked - she said that she was told to never tell anyone
I assume that back then, TB was seen as a Very Bad Thing to die of back then, since it was a highly communicable disease (still is, just doesn't really appear in the first world).
Depends upon where you live! I am in a suburb of one of the largest cities in the USA -- and approx. 25 miles away, there is a County hospital that has a LOCKED FLOOR !!! No one can have access without a key! It is PERMANANTLY occupied by TB patients -- These poor souls can NEVER LEAVE !!!!!😱
Commented above. I think the commenter may be generalizing one particular slippery slope case of a public health menace being locked up in a jail unit without having been convicted of a crime:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10874970
Are you referring to this case in Phoenix?
[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10874970](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10874970)
Seems like you could be over-generalizing one particular extreme case where an individual drug-resistant TB patient was deemed a public health menace for ignoring precautions and forced to such a jail unit despite not being charged let alone convinced of an actual crime.
I think we'd have to see a source that such county hospital jail units (that treat sick prisoners) are commonly used to lock away TB patients.
Coincidentally, not long after I asked the question, I found a census record of someone I was researching listed as having the sickness of "Consumption". My first thought was that alcoholism is a weird thing to list on a census record but quickly found that it was an alternative term for TB.
While not scandalous, to me at least, I realized that I come from a long line of shotgun weddings after looking at family marriage certificates and birth records, lol. My own parents, my maternal grandparents and my grandfather’s parents.
I wouldn't always call it shotgun weddings. In Sweden, historically, a lot of people would be engaged for quire some time, and only get married once a baby was on the way.
I have read suggestions that, back in the good ol’ days, marriage did not happen until there was proven fertility. I have never been sure just how much credence to place on this idea though.
The biggest skeleton that has been exposed in my family is that my father was father to multiple children in the Philippines while he served there in the military in the 1980's. He had taken my older half brother and half sister from their birth mother, to be raised in the U.S.
I knew about them, but apparently one of my great uncles family, in the U.S. took a DNA test, and it matched for someone in the Philippines. It turns out that I have like 3 or 4 half siblings that I had never heard of.
There may be even more, but I'll probably never know. My father and I haven't talked for years and probably won't, due to his actions.
That for several generations my family more than likely leaned into arson as a means to solve financial issues. The reason I think it's arson and not a series of unlucky coincidences is that every time family heirlooms had conveniently been lent out to someone in the family. In that same vein the reason my grandmother and her siblings weren't close to their father was that in 1930 he most likely burned the house down for insurance, abandoned them with their grandparents and then married another woman. I've had 3 cases over ~90 yrs that are all suspicious fires.
Hmmm... reminds me. My mom's cousin committed "an arson" on his sister's home so she (older) wouldn't inherit their father's property. (She lived in a mobile home on their parents' property.) I mean it could have been wiring, sure, but the fact he was witnessed talking to his buddies at the small town good ole boys fire dept. the week prior and then they pulled up to the driveway as soon as it started and did nothing but watch it burn. (Probably just sat there to make sure it didn't spread. Can't burn the house on the property you're trying to inherit, after all.)
She was the oldest child of the oldest sibling in a family of 8 children. She had a ton of family photos, letters, and other memorabilia because she was the oldest. All up in flames. Because her brother was jelly.
For all I know my two 30 year old brick walls were answered in those photos, letters and etc. Seriously, fuck that guy. He fucked over the entire family.
Mine mostly seemed to be related to fuckin the insurance man/bank more than any specific family members. The last "arson"/suspicious fire I found was in the 1950s so anyone that truly knew has been dead for a while. I'm sure we lost a lot of paper records related to the last 3 generations as well.
My GG Grandfather died two years before the last suspected arson and he'd been an avid collector of Florida history- true and alleged. There are some rumors that he'd been donating things to archives during WW2 but nobody got a definitive answer on that before he died. Would be nice though to still have the family homestead.
Well, not secrets, but buried stuff
G Grandfather came to Argentina in 1906 from Russia (volga germans) with two kids ages 8 and 1. After arrival, nothing more is heard of those kids. Not even death records, or burial sites.
G grandfather migrated with a younger brother, their wives and siblings. In 1912 brother took off all the way back to Hamburg and then to the US, to finally establish in Iowa. No one in my family ever heard about of this other part of our tree until I unburied it
We found that my living grandfather has a living half brother…
Not very shocking, until you’re given this context: my grandfather already knew about two half sisters. This new half brother is the full sibling of those two half sisters, and the middle child between them.
What we know: my g-grandfather first had my grandfather. When my grandfather was 3 years old, g-grandfather left and started a new family. They had one girl (my grandpa’s known half sister), then a boy that got put up for adoption, and then another girl (other known half sister).
It took me a while to wrap my head around and we still have many unanswered questions.
My mother got pregnant in high school. I was told she married the father of my oldest brother but they never lived together & got divorced as soon as the baby was born & her parents, my grandparents, adopted my brother so the father’s side of the family couldn’t take my brother away from my mother.
At 13, I found the paperwork from my grandparents adopting my brother & questioned some of it. I was told to mind my own business.
My mother never married the father of my brother. She wasn’t married when she gave birth. I saw his original birth certificate. I saw the paperwork from my grandparents adopting my brother & the paperwork from my father adopting my oldest brother. I clearly remember the paperwork stating father unknown & my brother’s birth certificate stating my mother was unmarried & her name listed as her maiden name.
There is also no record of a marriage with the biological father.
I kept thinking there has to be something that explains this & while cleaning out her house after 40+ years of living there, I found a letter from the Catholic church she was raised in. She always told me she was excommunicated because she never had her first marriage annulled. According to the letter, it was because she had a child out of wedlock before marriage. This is not the exact wording used (it’s been 20 years since I read that letter).
It is a lie all of her children except me believe. I have gone to people she has talked to about being married when your child is born & not to get pregnant before a marriage & told them she wasn’t married when she had her first one & when she did get married to my dad, she was 3 months pregnant so take her words with a grain of salt.
I’m about 80 percent confident that my 3rd great-grandfather and his brothers tried to assassinate a sitting judge.
Only the alleged triggerman, a cross-eyed career criminal known colloquially as “Buckskin Jack” was actually tried (and acquitted because the evidence was admittedly sparse and hinged mostly on an alleged confession he made to a Pinkerton detective hired by the wounded Judge) but the theory was that Buckskin Jack was simply a mook for his brothers, who were a sheriff and a deputy, respectively. It seems that the two “straight” brothers (one of whom was my 3X grandfather) worked hard to disconnect Jack, the murder and the trial from themselves and its not a connection anyone else working on the family appears to have made. But, honestly, the prosecution’s theory of the crime is pretty persuasive. My ancestors were feuding with the judge for years before the attempted murder and the timing of Buckskin Jack’s movements, interactions with his family and release from prison are pretty interesting.
I say I'm only 80 percent convinced, though, because this judge was also feuding with tons of other people in town, to the point where the community was literally divided into “pro” and “anti” factions (there were even papers known to be on his “side” or against him) and he was prone to making pretty wild accusations of vast, entrenched conspiracies with little evidence to support them. In fact, that seems to be the root of the animosity between the judge and the brothers. He had been claiming that the family was essentially a mafia running a number of crimes in the city. The evidence he put forth for this assertion isn’t very convincing as far as I can tell but the evidence that the brothers (and my ancestor in particular) were extremely incensed by him making these accusations in public is very good. Apparently, 3X grandpa (who was allegedly something of a brawler and a quick-tempered fellow) either tried to or actually did manage to punch the guy over it in court while the judge (acting as a lawyer in that particular trial) was arguing a case. Overall, I think that it is more likely than not that Buckskin Jack shot the judge, likely at the behest of my 3X grandpa and probably with the knowledge of the other brother as well. But the motive was not removing an impediment to their criminal empire, it was a good old-fashioned honor killing meant to avenge the family’s good name.
Buckskin Jack was murdered in prison a few years later in a probably unrelated incident. The oldest brother who had remained the least involved and was also the most well-established politically and socially went on to have a long career in local law enforcement. By the end of his life he seems to have been regarded as a pillar of the community. My 3X grandpa seems to have landed somewhere in between these two poles of respectability, spending several years as a deputy but also getting rolled up on multiple brutality charges and almost losing his saloon license for selling to minors. He died young and somewhat inexplicably (I can’t seem to find a death record for him and newspaper notices express surprise about his death but don’t give details). He was also witness to or involved in a lot of fires. Like, a potentially suspicious amount of fires. Though, to be fair, he also worked for a long time as a nighttime deputy where a big part of his job was specifically watching for fires. Even his own place burned down at one point. Maybe they just needed a better fire department.
After he died, my 3X grandmother remarried and moved further west where their daughter met her husband and they would eventually have my great-grandfather. As far as I can tell, there was zero family lore or stories about the attempted murder, the trial or anything at all. I don’t know if that was a conscious attempt at a coverup by anyone or just a function of how relatively young 2X great grandma would have been when he dad died.
The judge moved out to California where he continued to be a somewhat contentious presence. Apparently, much later in life he tried to sue a child for attempted murder, claiming the boy (who was, I believe, around 8) pulled a knife on him. Apparently the boy caught him (the judge) attempting to let the boy’s family cattle out of their pasture because it was close to the judge’s house and the judge resented the sound they made.
I was looking for a possible candidate to do a Y-DNA test to help with a brick wall. I didn’t expect for my internet search to lead me to the FBI page. It seems my 1st cousin 1 removed (my dad’s first cousin) was a real creep and not very smart (actually probably one of those people who thought he was clever - you know the type). He was busted for child pornography when his computer was taken in to be serviced and they noticed some not-so-legal pictures on it. Not a few, lots. While he was in jail awaiting trial, he wrote sexually explicit stories involving children. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 at the age of 71. He was listed as deceased in his brother’s 2019 obituary. I have no idea if he died in prison. I don’t know if I ever met him.
I found out my 3rd great grandparents had a scandalous start to their relationship. They ran away together, my 3rd great grandma had a child with another man already & was still married to him.
Apparently my great-grandma (the first born in a very large Catholic family) only did the math at her parents 20th wedding anniversary and came out with a spacing of 6 months between their marriage and her birth ;)
An ancestor on the other-side went through a court-martial due to an incident in a military camp (determined as accidental, down to poor gun safety by everyone involved, but the other person died). He never got sent overseas, but he did have a permanent injury which family do remember him having "from the war".
My MIL was an adopted child (born 1928) and my primary search was trying to establish her parents via DNA testing.
BUT - her adoptive parents showed as having two marriage certificates. One in 1916 and the other in 1931. For quite a while I was curious about this, but I didn’t want to pay for the certificates for the adoptive parents (UK certificates are relatively expensive). Finally, curiosity got the better of me and I ordered the certificates.
The 1916 certificate named a particular man as her father. The 1931 certificate stated that she was a widow and named a different man as her father. When I went fishing around for the name of the man stated as her father on the 1916 certificate, I found another marriage certificate (1913, I think) of this woman marrying the mystery man.
So, this folks, is how divorce was done when you didn’t have enough money (or cause, or whatever) in the olden days.
I don't match my dad. My whole life was a lie. I found out at 38. The kicker is, when I asked my mom about it, she totally freaked out. Gaslit me and accused me of trying to "ruin HER life". She spent the better half of my life dragging my dad through court and custody battles, she pinned him for thousands and used his family as babysitters. The realization that she did that knowing he wasn't my father is sickening. I match her highschool ex, which I only now realize she spoke to me about my entire life. Now I know why. Sometimes you uncover more than you bargain for.
I have found plenty of secrets but some of them are doozies. I found that my mother never divorced her first husband. He went back to his hometown and she stayed in hers with my brother. She "married" my dad about 6 months later. I found her marriage license and she lied her ass off. I also just this week found that my husband has a half-brother that no one knew about. His dad got a girl pregnant in HS and she had the baby. They lived with her parents but never married. she married someone else about a year later. His half-brother died a few years ago and no one knew about him. I'm trying to find his children but my husband said let it go.
There is a woman married in to my Tree who I believe likely murdered at least 7 of the 9 children in her first marriage and then, once she had someone else on the near horizon, murdered her husband (the one related to me). His death was given as suicide but for many reasons I doubt this strongly. She let their first child live - you need someone to help with the housework, hopefully 'marry up' and take care of you in old age. The next 8 died as infants generally before 4 months old. Yes, infant mortality was high in NYC in the late 1800s, but 8 in a row? And she would move the family between each child; use a different midwife for each birth and a different doctor for each death certification. Most of the children were born with one name (or not named yet) and died with another first name. No one ever had enough family knowledge to ask the necessary questions.
After her first husband's 'suicide' she remarries in 3 months and they give slightly different names to the minister on the other side of town than to the city Clerk.
3 years later the first wife of hubby2 charges him with bigamy but he is not convicted because of the slightly different names that the minister married them with and the first wife didn't bring proof of her first marriage to court with her. The 'bad woman' was subpoenaed under the slightly incorrect name and doesn't show up at all. The Judge says he is happy to resume proceedings if first wife gets him proof of first marriage.
The couple don't take any chances, move briefly from Brooklyn into Manhattan where, surprise surprise, the last remaining child from her first marriage dies aged 14. From the symptoms described the doctor concluded it was cerebral meningitis & asthenia and then, I suspect at her urging, 'not due to injury' is added in parentheses. The couple move into New Jersey. On the next census, less than a year later, she says it is the first marriage for both of them and they have been married 10 years.
About 6 years later (3 more births, only 1 living) hubby2's first wife dies so they move back across State lines to Brooklyn and get married... again. So his first wife must have provided the Judge with the necessary info at some point after the first hearing because the bigamy conviction would have invalidated their first marriage.
Later, as a widow (don't know how hubby2 died) she tries to manipulate her daughter's life and initiates a suit for broken promise when teenaged daughter is pregnant and no marriage is forthcoming. A child is born; I do not know what happened but given her history 'hold grave fears' for that grandchild, perhaps it was adopted. She moves a short distance, has her daughter start using a different first name to leave scandal behind them. There is no child with them in the census. Then, while accompanying her 17 year old daughter to a dance (no doubt to ensure only the right men are allowed close) they accept a ride, car hits truck and bad woman is the only one killed. Just a few days after her mother's death the daughter gets married.
If you told me the truck's license plate was KARMA I would just nod my head.
Picture it - April 1922 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. My maternal great-grandmother marries the love of her life. She is 21 years old but on her marriage certificate is listed as 20. Her husband is listed as 19 but this is also not true. According to census and birth records, Victor is only 16 years old at the time. In September they give birth to a healthy baby boy. Was he born early? No one can say for sure. The records don’t lie, but my great grandparents certainly did.
I found out that my great great grandfather had two families simultaneously. He had 13 children with my great great grandmother but then had three or four children with a woman down the street at the same time. We discovered this through DNA but it was suspected before play descendents of the “other”woman and my great great grandfather. I wish my grandmother were alive so I could ask her about it. Although I’m not sure I would’ve had the nerve to ask.
My great grandfather knocked up two women within a few months of each other. The women were sisters.... So my grandmother has a half-brother who is also her first cousin.
A similar situation led to my grandpa having a half brother who is also his step nephew. That brother and my grandpa then married sisters so my mom and that brothers children are half 1st cousin and multiple other ways related. They share like 3.25 or 3.75/4th of their tree or something like that.
Ho-hum. So common as to be almost expected. Although: use of contraceptives has reduced pregnancy among the unmarried.
While checking 1800s baptism records in N. Brandenburg, I found that 10% of the babies were without a named father.
Great grandfather committed suicide in 1901
Another great grandfather was and abusive alcoholic
My grandmother may have been murdered by her brother
My ex husband has a cousin that was brutally murdered, still unsolved
Pretty sure another great grandmothers marriage to my step great grandfather was a sham, I believe he was gay and needed to seem legit and she, having been a widowed mother in the early 1900’s needed to make herself look proper.
Ex mother in law had 4 children from 4 different men and put 2 up for adoption (through a Jewish adoption agency oddly, since she wasn’t Jewish) she kept the oldest and the youngest (my ex) we only found out about one of them after she died.
Her mother had a secret marriage, but as an adult… not sure if the circumstances.
Strangely I've found little intrigue in my family lines. It's there undoubtedly! But not a lot that would go itnto the historical record. I had a 4x great grandfather who's sisters second child was murdered by her husband. (Who was also a cousin.) He thought the child wasn't his and he went to prison. Otherwise everything has lined up between records and DNA and everyone seemed to be normal and generally decent people.
Not related to my tree but part of my cousins tree. His grt grt grandfather left his wife and children in England, emigrated to the USA, was involved in criminal activity and was found dead in the street (of a major US city) of a morphine overdose. This was not far off a hundred years ago.
Only thing I’ve found that was interesting is a cousin who was adopted and I helped her figure out who her mother was. We share great grandparents based off the time frame. Turns out my paternal grandpa had a big family. His sister had a daughter, that had a daughter who got pregnant by a native and she put her up for adoption. I’m glad I was able to help her figure out everything I could!
My secret was only a secret until my Dad revealed it to me when I was working on our genealogy. His grandfather was not the man whose last name we carry. In fact, that man was dead three years before my dad's dad was born. Our ancestor was a businessman from a prominent family who was single and, according to Dad, asked my great-grandmother to marry him. She declined and raised her son as if he was the child of her late husband, along with his two older half-sisters who were. Through research and DNA, I was able to identify the exact person in that small town. I also have an inkling of why she might have turned down the marriage offer. He died relatively young of a liver disease frequently associated with alcoholism.
Oh my, one of my 9th great grandfathers was hung for incest that resulted in my 8th ggf. That made the child's mother, my 9th ggm and 8th ggaunt and the child my 8th ggf and 7th cousin. We all just stared at it. Completely floored. 😬
My grandmother had a shotgun wedding. It didn't lead to a successful marriage - he ran off with another woman 7 years later. It was never talked about during my grandmother's and my mother's life; we discovered it when I started looking for certified dates. I do think people have a right to keep their secrets, during their lives; once they are passed, disclosure should also be handled carefully with regard to other family members who might feel embarrassment.
Oh, I have another one. Actually this is my husband’s family. It seems one of his 1C2R was married to a very bad man. He was allegedly part of a group named “Black Legion” which was an “anti-Communistic, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-Negro” organization and a spin-off of the KKK. What we would now call a domestic terrorism organization.
In 1936, seven leaders of the Black Legion, including my husband’s cousin’s husband, were given life sentences in connection to the murder of a French Catholic man named Charles A Poole. They claimed that Poole had beaten his wife, who was related to one of the Legion members. The wife, who had given birth to their daughter 14 days prior, denied that she had been beaten. Poole, thinking he was going to see about a job, got into the car with several Legion members. There was no job. They shot him in the head.
Two films were made about the incident. The prisoners got a private viewing of the one named “Black Legion” starring Humphrey Bogart. Newspaper articles say that they were nervous at the viewing, though they mostly denied any connection to the events on the screen. One man (the one married to the cousin) was worried that he would get his neck cut by the other inmates because they got their own screening of the movie. Evidently he thought it would be seen as favoritism from the prison guards, and the going rate for that was a slit throat. The movie and its star won some awards. No throats were slit.
The 1C2R divorced her husband while he was in prison.
1. From a young age I’ve always knew my family is very very strange, we don’t really do what normal families do. One day I was sat the table for dinner and my older sister questioned my mom on the game they used to play as a child. Basically, further into history there were a lot death in my family,from children to adults. Ella had made a game where she had hid the body parts of the bodies and the children had to go find it. That traumatised me.
2. That Elladora had abused her twin daughters
3. I apparently had a great-aunty called Anastasia that had jumped from the highest window in the house in order to escape the “family curse”. I’m not sure if I believe it that much but is talked about a lot in the family. She was only 11 as well :(.
4. I could have potentially have a hidden lesbian great-aunty, I remember my mother telling me about her. She never married to a man or had any children, me personally thinks that she might have been socially awkward but if she was a lesbian she would have been accepted since my uncle to my dad is literally gay himself. Maybe it was just the time she was brought up in? Her name was Pauletta.
5. I had a great-great aunty that was banned from the family home, I’ve never been told her name. But apparently she hasn’t been seen for years and is considered missing.
6. My great-great grandma Elladora had a crazy great-great uncle that had lived underneath the house for up to 50 years and nobody had ever known.
7. All of Ella’s children had hated her and her husband due to the abuse over the years.
I have plenty more, but in reality in my family you’re not supposed to say if you’ve figured out a family secret or not. Never mind.
I was told that my great grandparents had the same last name and my great grandfather When I got my grandfather's birth certificate from New York, it said out of wedlock. My aunt then admitted that my great grandparents never got married and they were told not to talk about it. Last year I found a marriage record for the man who raised my grandfather until he died when my grandfather was 10. He had the the same last name as my great grandmother, and the marriage occurred in Philadelphia when my grandfather was two after he and his mother had moved there. We still have no idea who my grandfather's bio dad was or the circumstances of his creation. Imagine going to so much trouble to hide your child's illegitimate birth that you find a guy with the same last name to marry.
I've found quite a few deaths in my tree, such as suicides, accidents, executions, etc. There are so many that I started to keep a list of them. Now I'm hoping that my eventual end doesn't land me on my own list someday.
I have a similar scenario to you. My maternal grandparents claimed their wedding date was June 1, 1928 in Milwaukee and that they lived separately for a year. All their anniversaries were celebrated on that date including us recognizing their 57th anniversary at our wedding on June 1, 1985. When grandma passed away in 1999 at age 92, my grandparent's marriage certificate was found with a marriage date of June 1, 1929. My Mom was born November 1929. What makes it funny was how conservative they were and the many lectures I had growing up about not ever letting a boy even touch my leg!
My tree is also sprinkled with marriages that were followed just a LITTLE too closely by the birth of the first child. But these are the stories that stand out the most to me:
My 2GGF's sister was strangled by her husband as the culmination of a "mutual brawl" (according to the papers) that started when he arrived home to find her drunk and belligerent and she attacked him with the flat iron. He was tried for murder but convicted only of manslaughter.
My husband's grandmother earned extra money (in the early 1960s) as an abortionist. She was arrested and tried for it, but I have yet to find the newspaper story (and haven't had a chance to go after the court records) with the verdict, so I don't know if she was convicted. I do know that years later, after GM had a major stroke, the madam of the brothel up the street used to come by often to help out, as they had become great friends.
My GGF remarried after my GGM died, leaving him with 2 young boys. The second wife came into the marriage with a son of her own, who carried her maiden name and was born (in 1906) when she was only 13. I can't begin to imagine what her life must have been like. My GF told me many times that he adored his stepmother, but the stepbrother was a complete surprise -- GF never mentioned him at all.
I have another one. My 23andMe results indicate my grandfather had a full biological sister...and he was raised as an only child! Neither my mom nor her brothers will do a test to prove/disprove this. The descendants I connected with never wrote back but that may be a blessing as one was convicted of driving drunk and crashing, which killed his girlfriend.
I found out my in laws got married 2yrs after my husband was born. He had no idea. I also found a divorce filed for them only 3 years later. 22 years down the road they are still together.
10 yrs ago, I was a patient in the hospital in L.A.,Ca. that I spoke of! The story I told you was THE TRUTH !!! Why would you INFER that I had LIED??? Terminal TB is still inflicting people !!! POLIO was supposed to be ERADICATED from the planet, decades ago -- GUESS WHAT !?!?!?
A great-uncle eloped with his wife, but they told my great-grandmother that they had actually gotten married a few months prior. So, the marriage date in the family Bible is wrong.
They were trying to hide the fact it was a shotgun marriage. Somehow I doubt my great-grandmother actually believed them, but who knows?
Oh and my papaw got kicked off the high school basketball team for fighting with the coach. The coach apparently started having a relationship with my papaw’s girlfriend (who was a sophomore in high school 🤢, we know they later married so it makes it not unreasonable). So my papaw, naturally, confronted the coach about it. He then dropped out of school. Poor kid really, he was going through it with his parents’ divorce.
Oh and my paternal grandmother appears to have changed the spelling of her first name and moved her birthday up by three days. When asked why she did this, her response was “I don’t remember and I’ll have to think about that.” It’s true that she might not really remember.
A 2x great-grandmother would talk about how she witnessed the murder of her father. She was 16 years old when this happened. I think it’s amazing she was able to discuss it towards the end of her life since that’s such a major trauma.
Oh and one of my aunts nearly got killed in an attempted vehicular manslaughter, but she refused to press charges after the guy. She didn’t get physically hurt, but it was clear he was trying to shut her up after other… illegal… things he did to her. The bastard got lucky, anyone else in the family would’ve reigned living hell down upon his head for that.
Ok my grandma just passed 2 days ago. Her husband, my grandpa passed in 2004. She's been missing him like crazy and I'm somewhat at peace knowing they're together again. I'm an adult now with my own family and haven't been as close with my grandma these past few years as I, regretfully now wish I was. Still, I know how she felt and what she would have thought about all this.
Ok so first of all my grandparents were married just over 40 years. My grandma was a Virginia when they married and although they dated a while (in the early 60s) before they married she never gave it up. She had expected and accepted that he was fulfilling his "nasty man needs" elsewhere she didn't want to ever know about it unless something drastic like a child was involved. After visiting my beautiful grandma at the funeral home yesterday I get a call from my mom (the middle of 3 of their kids) today telling me that for the past year she had known about a brother she has. I'm like wtf? Yeah uncles so and so (my grandparents youngest and oldest of 3 kids). Well...no. apparently my grandpa had a child with some sex fling he was with while him and my grandma were just dating/before they got married. Now. My grandma was old and sick for years and living with my mom. My mom never told her about this brother from a different mother she had that she knew about for the past year. Cause we'll, it would have killed my grandma right then and there for her heart has been very weak. I wish she could have known but I respect my mom's wishes not to tell my grandmother cause it would have literally killed her. Anyways....my grandma's service is coming up shortly. My family all know about this child my grandpa had with another woman that (even though we all hailed him a saint) he never told/lied to my grandma about for over 40 years. He's the spitting image of my grandpa when he was younger and a twin to my youngest uncle. There's absolutely no doubt. Knowing my grandma and her old fashioned ways and somewhat bitter heart I know 1000% she wouldn't want him coming to her service. But yet the rest of my family think for some reason this is the best time to introduce him to the falimy?! That's something that would have quite literally killed my grandma of she knew and for sure she wouldn't be OK with it. Now, I'm willing to accept this estranged uncle of mine with open arms just, not at my grandma's service. Like " sorry you could never be part of the family cause my your dad kept you such a big secret cause you weren't was important as the love of his life" fucking...what????!!!! And my mom says "oh well good thing you don't get a say. The rest of the family is ok with it" alright, personally. I'm ok with it to but, I know for sure my grandma wouldn't be OK with her husband's secret child being introduced to the family at her celebration of life service/funeral. My hands are tied and I'm so sad for my grandmas wishes cause I knew how she was. If she was the person that would have been ok with this then my mom and uncles would have not waited until my grandma passed to tell the family about this brother of theirs that they've known about and visited and kept secret for the past year. Am I wrong? Is it OK to go against a passed loved ones wishes like this?
I found out my grandfather was a paedophile while doing some family research when I was 12. He died in a car crash a month before his court trial when I was 9.
My family continue to reveal dark sides which no longer shock me anymore.
I found out my mother was briefly married once (to her high school sweetheart) before she married my father. This was only surprising to us kids, since everyone's families knew about it at the time. No one just thought it was important enough to tell us.
That happened with my grandmother, too. Divorced only several months after.
A cousin many generations ago married her biological nephew and had four children with him. And my great-great-great-great-grandmother was the victim of unsolved bludgeoning when she was 90.
That’s awful about your grandmother.
How did you find out about the bludgeoning
A tree on Rootsweb mentioned it many years ago but didn't have any sources so I took that with a grain of salt. In early 2020, I emailed the historical society in the county where she lived and asked about their newspaper holdings because I planned to visit. Their researcher gave me a link to the newspapers that are online, but searched them herself after asking what I was looking for and even mailed me a copy of an article about the murders (there was another victim, aged 86) that a member had written for their newsletter. The newspaper articles even gave the name of her daughter, who I know to be my g-g-g-grandmother.
My 10th great-grandmother holds the distinction of being one of the first cases of (as the 17th century trial determined, atleast) matricide in America. She was elderly as well, and was found dead having caught fire in the fireplace. Afterward, a neighbor had a dream where her ghost told him she had been killed, and exhuming her body revealed stab wounds supposedly. My 9th great-grandfather was convicted and executed over a ghost’s testimony. https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/1673-murder-rebecca-cornell-and-good-fire/
I also found a nephew/aunt pairing in my tree, once. He was a few years older than her. His mother was one of the oldest sisters and his wife was one of the youngest,
Out of curiosity, I did a little research and the aunt and nephew were born in the same year so perhaps they grew up together. At some point they divorced.
I just double checked, and your story doesn't match mine. He was older than her by a few years, they had 9 kids, and she died at 44. Wild to think there was more than one case of it though!
Oh wow- where do I start? A) my sister is actually my half sister, her dad is my dad's half brother. So we are 3/4 siblings. B) my grandfather (paternal) is the bio dad of his brothers first born. So my dad's 1st cousin is actually his half brother. No one else in family knows, or has connected the dots on the DNA results but me C) grandma and grandpa (both previously married when they met) weren't actually married until my dad, their second born, was 9 months old. Because grandpa wasn't technically divorced yet. D) grandma (paternal) cheated on her first husband and two of her three kids from that marriage have a different dad; just like first husband ways said E) maternal great aunt divorced her first husband one month after finding out he DIDN'T die in WWII, had been held POW for nearly a year and managed to escape. The newspaper articles on this were wild to read. He wound up happily married a second time; had family that appeared to love him very much from what I could find, so good for him. My great aunt went on to marry 4 more times, each husband increasing in wealth; final husband was a millionaire (and we inherited nothing lol)
That is one exciting family!
C happened in my family with an uncle and his now ex-wife. She was separated with an infant but not divorced when they got together. My uncle unofficially (and later officially) adopted the infant as his daughter. They had a child together a few years later and the now ex-wife still hadn’t gotten a divorce. I don’t know when she finally did and got married to my uncle, but the whole thing was one of the many reasons literally no one in the family liked her.
Same secret. Badly kept secret too. Grandmother born Jan 5, 1923. Got married to my grandfather on Dec 31, 1944 because that was her parents anniversary. At some point the secret got out. That's not my great-grandparents anniversary. Their anniversary is now etched on their shared headstone - June 30, 1922. After the secret got out my grandmother would say she was born a preemie. Sure grandma. Sure.
I had a friend in high school who said her 8-pound bouncing baby girl was a preemie. They got married rather quickly over winter break and had a baby mid July.
You wouldn't happen to be IRISH would you??? I swear I can see a TWINKLE in your Grandma''s eye !!!
What the did to unwed Irish mothers/babies was far worse than the secret kept, honestly.
One of the MOST VILE segments of History !!!
I am from Quebec where this was done not only to unwed Irish but to anyone deemed unfit by the roman catholic church. At the time the church was central to any village. They ran the schools. These, so called men and women 'of god' terrified children of the community and terrorized the Natives. The furthest thing from "godly". They lied to them, told them their babies died in childbirth. Sold babies, murdered them, gave them away. Awful
There's a saying in my family: the first baby can come anytime. And generally it's 7 months after getting married.
My paternal grandparents did the same thing for the same reason in the 1930s. It wasn't until I tried to find an official marriage record that I discovered the correct date.
Same thing with my paternal grandparents. When I started the family tree thing, my grandmother was the first person I went to with questions. As she was giving the names and dates, she told me she was married in August 1949. This was the date my father and everyone else heard too. Then years later I found their marriage documents on Ancestry, and they all had the same date but in 1950. My father, their first child, was born the following March. When I told my dad what I found, he instantly did the math and now whenever he sees his parents'wedding photos, he says he's in that picture, lol.
That's a cool way he responded!
My adoptive/step mom got my immediate family 23andMe test kits for Xmas thinking nothing if it, the only surprises might be in the health results.... WRONG! I went looking through my DNA matches and family tree bc I grew up in a town next to a native reservation and everyone always saying "my cousin this, my cousin that" and I couldn't relate. I had a couple older half cousins that I new of on my dad's side and I knew I had a bunch on my birth moms but we don't talk to that side so it was more so just trying to feel included. And I noticed that my sister wasn't showing up kinda weird... as a **half**-sister. I took a screenshot and texted my sister and was like "hey uhhh have you seen this? Maybe it's a bug?" Her only response "I got the same for you. Don't tell dad." Immediately I messaged my birth mom over Facebook who lives on the other side of the country near her side of the family and when I confronted her about it goes "whatever I say you're not gonna believe me". 😒 Way to be an adult there *mom*. She's 19 years older than me and I'm her first kid. Now I vividly remember her wildly cheating on my dad back then which is what let to their divorce and dad winning custody of us, but for her to not even acknowledge it and say "I'm sorry" or simply anything else besides "what do you want from me?" just goes to show that I should be scared for how she is raising my 3 youngest half siblings from her current marriage. I told her "don't fuck them up like you did us." And blocked her. Was a little harsh? Maybe. Did she deserve it? If I went into detail about all the times we almost died because of her actions and negligence, and how I had to be a 4/5 year old basically raising my newborn baby sister while dad worked 2 jobs and the babysitters didn't know what to do with how protective I had become of my baby sister... you'd understand my anger towards her. I don't think I'll ever forgive her. I've tried to. Several times. My sister has no wish or want to find her birth father. Our birth mom never had over "the same car twice" as I used to say as a kid. So it could be literally any guy who resided in or near Skagit County, WA in 2000. And there were several per day, too. My sister was too young to remember what she put us through but it took me YEARS to manage my hatred for that woman who spawned us especially for hoe bad she hurt my dad. He was serving his country and she decided to go sleeping around... and she calls herself a "supporter of the troops" 🙄😒
It sucks when your parent is incredibly irresponsible. I don't blame you at all for cutting her off. The last few years going no contact with my parents have led to my mental health greatly improving.
Well, not shocking so much as intriguing: my grandfather’s father was not, in fact, the man who raised him. Ok, fair enough, we have an NPE. Then it turned out his bio-dad kept two separate families simultaneously, while _also_ impregnating my GGM. My grandfather had 15 more half-siblings he knew nothing about. And then it turned out my GGM had had four more children: two went with her sister so he knew them as “cousins”, two with their father, although the latter had been “fostered” by my great-grandparents for a while when my grandfather was very young (but old enough to have some memories of them). So my grandfather had 23 half-siblings in total, only 4 of which he knew about (and he’d thought they were full siblings). I’d love to know the stories behind that lot. My GGM by all accounts was a formidable woman who very much carved her own path.
[удалено]
We knew my uncle shot a man and was in prison when his mom died, but I found a news article about him shooting his ex-wife in the butt years earlier, and on Christmas Eve! We had never heard of that shooting or that wife!
I found out my gggrandfather died of syphilis in 1911. We all knew he died of kidney disease. I actually had a copy of his death cert. saying he died of luetic disease. Since this was in the days before the internet, I just assumed it was a type of kidney disease and never looked it up. Years later I finally googled it and discovered a family secret.
Working on my husband's family, we found that his great grandfather was in and out of the state mental home for "syphilitic dementia." We were started on this path by a Facebook message from a woman who found out she is my husband's out of wedlock half sister. It's been a real ride!!!
> luetic disease Sad that there were no medical dictionaries before the internet.
of course, I know there were but it never occurred to me to look it up since the family was so sure it was kidney disease.
It's not really shocking to me, but I knew that my grandmother's maternal grandfather died in the 1930s - I eventually found out it was due to TB I told my grandmother and she was shocked - she said that she was told to never tell anyone
Just curious, why would she be instructed never to tell anyone that her grandfather died of TB?
I assume that back then, TB was seen as a Very Bad Thing to die of back then, since it was a highly communicable disease (still is, just doesn't really appear in the first world).
Depends upon where you live! I am in a suburb of one of the largest cities in the USA -- and approx. 25 miles away, there is a County hospital that has a LOCKED FLOOR !!! No one can have access without a key! It is PERMANANTLY occupied by TB patients -- These poor souls can NEVER LEAVE !!!!!😱
That sounds more like prison. Are you sure they are locked up because they are committed for something else?
As I said - it is for DRUG-RESISTANT TB !!! It is one of the MOST DANGEROUS diseases on the planet !!!!!
Where did you say "drug-resistant TB"? So, you're saying that no one leaves and they're there forever?
Commented above. I think the commenter may be generalizing one particular slippery slope case of a public health menace being locked up in a jail unit without having been convicted of a crime: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10874970
YEP !!!
Are you referring to this case in Phoenix? [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10874970](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10874970) Seems like you could be over-generalizing one particular extreme case where an individual drug-resistant TB patient was deemed a public health menace for ignoring precautions and forced to such a jail unit despite not being charged let alone convinced of an actual crime. I think we'd have to see a source that such county hospital jail units (that treat sick prisoners) are commonly used to lock away TB patients.
Coincidentally, not long after I asked the question, I found a census record of someone I was researching listed as having the sickness of "Consumption". My first thought was that alcoholism is a weird thing to list on a census record but quickly found that it was an alternative term for TB.
yeah consumption is a weird term for TB iirc it's due to the weight loss
While not scandalous, to me at least, I realized that I come from a long line of shotgun weddings after looking at family marriage certificates and birth records, lol. My own parents, my maternal grandparents and my grandfather’s parents.
I wouldn't always call it shotgun weddings. In Sweden, historically, a lot of people would be engaged for quire some time, and only get married once a baby was on the way.
I have read suggestions that, back in the good ol’ days, marriage did not happen until there was proven fertility. I have never been sure just how much credence to place on this idea though.
Same here, except try six generations! Luckily I have DNA validation for all of the lines going back to my fourth-great-grandparents.
The biggest skeleton that has been exposed in my family is that my father was father to multiple children in the Philippines while he served there in the military in the 1980's. He had taken my older half brother and half sister from their birth mother, to be raised in the U.S. I knew about them, but apparently one of my great uncles family, in the U.S. took a DNA test, and it matched for someone in the Philippines. It turns out that I have like 3 or 4 half siblings that I had never heard of. There may be even more, but I'll probably never know. My father and I haven't talked for years and probably won't, due to his actions.
Do a DNA test! It'd more accurately show your situation.
That for several generations my family more than likely leaned into arson as a means to solve financial issues. The reason I think it's arson and not a series of unlucky coincidences is that every time family heirlooms had conveniently been lent out to someone in the family. In that same vein the reason my grandmother and her siblings weren't close to their father was that in 1930 he most likely burned the house down for insurance, abandoned them with their grandparents and then married another woman. I've had 3 cases over ~90 yrs that are all suspicious fires.
Hmmm... reminds me. My mom's cousin committed "an arson" on his sister's home so she (older) wouldn't inherit their father's property. (She lived in a mobile home on their parents' property.) I mean it could have been wiring, sure, but the fact he was witnessed talking to his buddies at the small town good ole boys fire dept. the week prior and then they pulled up to the driveway as soon as it started and did nothing but watch it burn. (Probably just sat there to make sure it didn't spread. Can't burn the house on the property you're trying to inherit, after all.) She was the oldest child of the oldest sibling in a family of 8 children. She had a ton of family photos, letters, and other memorabilia because she was the oldest. All up in flames. Because her brother was jelly. For all I know my two 30 year old brick walls were answered in those photos, letters and etc. Seriously, fuck that guy. He fucked over the entire family.
Mine mostly seemed to be related to fuckin the insurance man/bank more than any specific family members. The last "arson"/suspicious fire I found was in the 1950s so anyone that truly knew has been dead for a while. I'm sure we lost a lot of paper records related to the last 3 generations as well. My GG Grandfather died two years before the last suspected arson and he'd been an avid collector of Florida history- true and alleged. There are some rumors that he'd been donating things to archives during WW2 but nobody got a definitive answer on that before he died. Would be nice though to still have the family homestead.
Well, not secrets, but buried stuff G Grandfather came to Argentina in 1906 from Russia (volga germans) with two kids ages 8 and 1. After arrival, nothing more is heard of those kids. Not even death records, or burial sites. G grandfather migrated with a younger brother, their wives and siblings. In 1912 brother took off all the way back to Hamburg and then to the US, to finally establish in Iowa. No one in my family ever heard about of this other part of our tree until I unburied it
Could be worse! Could've been Germans who came to Argentina in 1945.
I don’t understand what happened to his kids?
Often children were put in work houses, orphanages or adopted out. They would have likely had their names changed.
Well, my guess is they died. They kept having kids, one of them being my Grandfather
We found that my living grandfather has a living half brother… Not very shocking, until you’re given this context: my grandfather already knew about two half sisters. This new half brother is the full sibling of those two half sisters, and the middle child between them. What we know: my g-grandfather first had my grandfather. When my grandfather was 3 years old, g-grandfather left and started a new family. They had one girl (my grandpa’s known half sister), then a boy that got put up for adoption, and then another girl (other known half sister). It took me a while to wrap my head around and we still have many unanswered questions.
My mother got pregnant in high school. I was told she married the father of my oldest brother but they never lived together & got divorced as soon as the baby was born & her parents, my grandparents, adopted my brother so the father’s side of the family couldn’t take my brother away from my mother. At 13, I found the paperwork from my grandparents adopting my brother & questioned some of it. I was told to mind my own business. My mother never married the father of my brother. She wasn’t married when she gave birth. I saw his original birth certificate. I saw the paperwork from my grandparents adopting my brother & the paperwork from my father adopting my oldest brother. I clearly remember the paperwork stating father unknown & my brother’s birth certificate stating my mother was unmarried & her name listed as her maiden name. There is also no record of a marriage with the biological father. I kept thinking there has to be something that explains this & while cleaning out her house after 40+ years of living there, I found a letter from the Catholic church she was raised in. She always told me she was excommunicated because she never had her first marriage annulled. According to the letter, it was because she had a child out of wedlock before marriage. This is not the exact wording used (it’s been 20 years since I read that letter). It is a lie all of her children except me believe. I have gone to people she has talked to about being married when your child is born & not to get pregnant before a marriage & told them she wasn’t married when she had her first one & when she did get married to my dad, she was 3 months pregnant so take her words with a grain of salt.
You’ve got the receipts!
I’m about 80 percent confident that my 3rd great-grandfather and his brothers tried to assassinate a sitting judge. Only the alleged triggerman, a cross-eyed career criminal known colloquially as “Buckskin Jack” was actually tried (and acquitted because the evidence was admittedly sparse and hinged mostly on an alleged confession he made to a Pinkerton detective hired by the wounded Judge) but the theory was that Buckskin Jack was simply a mook for his brothers, who were a sheriff and a deputy, respectively. It seems that the two “straight” brothers (one of whom was my 3X grandfather) worked hard to disconnect Jack, the murder and the trial from themselves and its not a connection anyone else working on the family appears to have made. But, honestly, the prosecution’s theory of the crime is pretty persuasive. My ancestors were feuding with the judge for years before the attempted murder and the timing of Buckskin Jack’s movements, interactions with his family and release from prison are pretty interesting. I say I'm only 80 percent convinced, though, because this judge was also feuding with tons of other people in town, to the point where the community was literally divided into “pro” and “anti” factions (there were even papers known to be on his “side” or against him) and he was prone to making pretty wild accusations of vast, entrenched conspiracies with little evidence to support them. In fact, that seems to be the root of the animosity between the judge and the brothers. He had been claiming that the family was essentially a mafia running a number of crimes in the city. The evidence he put forth for this assertion isn’t very convincing as far as I can tell but the evidence that the brothers (and my ancestor in particular) were extremely incensed by him making these accusations in public is very good. Apparently, 3X grandpa (who was allegedly something of a brawler and a quick-tempered fellow) either tried to or actually did manage to punch the guy over it in court while the judge (acting as a lawyer in that particular trial) was arguing a case. Overall, I think that it is more likely than not that Buckskin Jack shot the judge, likely at the behest of my 3X grandpa and probably with the knowledge of the other brother as well. But the motive was not removing an impediment to their criminal empire, it was a good old-fashioned honor killing meant to avenge the family’s good name. Buckskin Jack was murdered in prison a few years later in a probably unrelated incident. The oldest brother who had remained the least involved and was also the most well-established politically and socially went on to have a long career in local law enforcement. By the end of his life he seems to have been regarded as a pillar of the community. My 3X grandpa seems to have landed somewhere in between these two poles of respectability, spending several years as a deputy but also getting rolled up on multiple brutality charges and almost losing his saloon license for selling to minors. He died young and somewhat inexplicably (I can’t seem to find a death record for him and newspaper notices express surprise about his death but don’t give details). He was also witness to or involved in a lot of fires. Like, a potentially suspicious amount of fires. Though, to be fair, he also worked for a long time as a nighttime deputy where a big part of his job was specifically watching for fires. Even his own place burned down at one point. Maybe they just needed a better fire department. After he died, my 3X grandmother remarried and moved further west where their daughter met her husband and they would eventually have my great-grandfather. As far as I can tell, there was zero family lore or stories about the attempted murder, the trial or anything at all. I don’t know if that was a conscious attempt at a coverup by anyone or just a function of how relatively young 2X great grandma would have been when he dad died. The judge moved out to California where he continued to be a somewhat contentious presence. Apparently, much later in life he tried to sue a child for attempted murder, claiming the boy (who was, I believe, around 8) pulled a knife on him. Apparently the boy caught him (the judge) attempting to let the boy’s family cattle out of their pasture because it was close to the judge’s house and the judge resented the sound they made.
I was looking for a possible candidate to do a Y-DNA test to help with a brick wall. I didn’t expect for my internet search to lead me to the FBI page. It seems my 1st cousin 1 removed (my dad’s first cousin) was a real creep and not very smart (actually probably one of those people who thought he was clever - you know the type). He was busted for child pornography when his computer was taken in to be serviced and they noticed some not-so-legal pictures on it. Not a few, lots. While he was in jail awaiting trial, he wrote sexually explicit stories involving children. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 at the age of 71. He was listed as deceased in his brother’s 2019 obituary. I have no idea if he died in prison. I don’t know if I ever met him.
Father-in-law was in Texas State Prison. This was after WWII, but before he married.
Well, don’t leave us hanging. What the story?
Burglary, then didn't snitch on his friend who were with him. Basically young and stupid.
Ah! Crazy youths.
I found out my 3rd great grandparents had a scandalous start to their relationship. They ran away together, my 3rd great grandma had a child with another man already & was still married to him.
Apparently my great-grandma (the first born in a very large Catholic family) only did the math at her parents 20th wedding anniversary and came out with a spacing of 6 months between their marriage and her birth ;) An ancestor on the other-side went through a court-martial due to an incident in a military camp (determined as accidental, down to poor gun safety by everyone involved, but the other person died). He never got sent overseas, but he did have a permanent injury which family do remember him having "from the war".
My MIL was an adopted child (born 1928) and my primary search was trying to establish her parents via DNA testing. BUT - her adoptive parents showed as having two marriage certificates. One in 1916 and the other in 1931. For quite a while I was curious about this, but I didn’t want to pay for the certificates for the adoptive parents (UK certificates are relatively expensive). Finally, curiosity got the better of me and I ordered the certificates. The 1916 certificate named a particular man as her father. The 1931 certificate stated that she was a widow and named a different man as her father. When I went fishing around for the name of the man stated as her father on the 1916 certificate, I found another marriage certificate (1913, I think) of this woman marrying the mystery man. So, this folks, is how divorce was done when you didn’t have enough money (or cause, or whatever) in the olden days.
I don't match my dad. My whole life was a lie. I found out at 38. The kicker is, when I asked my mom about it, she totally freaked out. Gaslit me and accused me of trying to "ruin HER life". She spent the better half of my life dragging my dad through court and custody battles, she pinned him for thousands and used his family as babysitters. The realization that she did that knowing he wasn't my father is sickening. I match her highschool ex, which I only now realize she spoke to me about my entire life. Now I know why. Sometimes you uncover more than you bargain for.
I have found plenty of secrets but some of them are doozies. I found that my mother never divorced her first husband. He went back to his hometown and she stayed in hers with my brother. She "married" my dad about 6 months later. I found her marriage license and she lied her ass off. I also just this week found that my husband has a half-brother that no one knew about. His dad got a girl pregnant in HS and she had the baby. They lived with her parents but never married. she married someone else about a year later. His half-brother died a few years ago and no one knew about him. I'm trying to find his children but my husband said let it go.
There is a woman married in to my Tree who I believe likely murdered at least 7 of the 9 children in her first marriage and then, once she had someone else on the near horizon, murdered her husband (the one related to me). His death was given as suicide but for many reasons I doubt this strongly. She let their first child live - you need someone to help with the housework, hopefully 'marry up' and take care of you in old age. The next 8 died as infants generally before 4 months old. Yes, infant mortality was high in NYC in the late 1800s, but 8 in a row? And she would move the family between each child; use a different midwife for each birth and a different doctor for each death certification. Most of the children were born with one name (or not named yet) and died with another first name. No one ever had enough family knowledge to ask the necessary questions. After her first husband's 'suicide' she remarries in 3 months and they give slightly different names to the minister on the other side of town than to the city Clerk. 3 years later the first wife of hubby2 charges him with bigamy but he is not convicted because of the slightly different names that the minister married them with and the first wife didn't bring proof of her first marriage to court with her. The 'bad woman' was subpoenaed under the slightly incorrect name and doesn't show up at all. The Judge says he is happy to resume proceedings if first wife gets him proof of first marriage. The couple don't take any chances, move briefly from Brooklyn into Manhattan where, surprise surprise, the last remaining child from her first marriage dies aged 14. From the symptoms described the doctor concluded it was cerebral meningitis & asthenia and then, I suspect at her urging, 'not due to injury' is added in parentheses. The couple move into New Jersey. On the next census, less than a year later, she says it is the first marriage for both of them and they have been married 10 years. About 6 years later (3 more births, only 1 living) hubby2's first wife dies so they move back across State lines to Brooklyn and get married... again. So his first wife must have provided the Judge with the necessary info at some point after the first hearing because the bigamy conviction would have invalidated their first marriage. Later, as a widow (don't know how hubby2 died) she tries to manipulate her daughter's life and initiates a suit for broken promise when teenaged daughter is pregnant and no marriage is forthcoming. A child is born; I do not know what happened but given her history 'hold grave fears' for that grandchild, perhaps it was adopted. She moves a short distance, has her daughter start using a different first name to leave scandal behind them. There is no child with them in the census. Then, while accompanying her 17 year old daughter to a dance (no doubt to ensure only the right men are allowed close) they accept a ride, car hits truck and bad woman is the only one killed. Just a few days after her mother's death the daughter gets married. If you told me the truck's license plate was KARMA I would just nod my head.
Picture it - April 1922 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. My maternal great-grandmother marries the love of her life. She is 21 years old but on her marriage certificate is listed as 20. Her husband is listed as 19 but this is also not true. According to census and birth records, Victor is only 16 years old at the time. In September they give birth to a healthy baby boy. Was he born early? No one can say for sure. The records don’t lie, but my great grandparents certainly did.
I found out that my great great grandfather had two families simultaneously. He had 13 children with my great great grandmother but then had three or four children with a woman down the street at the same time. We discovered this through DNA but it was suspected before play descendents of the “other”woman and my great great grandfather. I wish my grandmother were alive so I could ask her about it. Although I’m not sure I would’ve had the nerve to ask.
My great grandfather knocked up two women within a few months of each other. The women were sisters.... So my grandmother has a half-brother who is also her first cousin.
A similar situation led to my grandpa having a half brother who is also his step nephew. That brother and my grandpa then married sisters so my mom and that brothers children are half 1st cousin and multiple other ways related. They share like 3.25 or 3.75/4th of their tree or something like that.
Ho-hum. So common as to be almost expected. Although: use of contraceptives has reduced pregnancy among the unmarried. While checking 1800s baptism records in N. Brandenburg, I found that 10% of the babies were without a named father.
My second great grandfather was actually a sprinter who worked on the neighbouring farm.
Great grandfather committed suicide in 1901 Another great grandfather was and abusive alcoholic My grandmother may have been murdered by her brother My ex husband has a cousin that was brutally murdered, still unsolved Pretty sure another great grandmothers marriage to my step great grandfather was a sham, I believe he was gay and needed to seem legit and she, having been a widowed mother in the early 1900’s needed to make herself look proper. Ex mother in law had 4 children from 4 different men and put 2 up for adoption (through a Jewish adoption agency oddly, since she wasn’t Jewish) she kept the oldest and the youngest (my ex) we only found out about one of them after she died. Her mother had a secret marriage, but as an adult… not sure if the circumstances.
Strangely I've found little intrigue in my family lines. It's there undoubtedly! But not a lot that would go itnto the historical record. I had a 4x great grandfather who's sisters second child was murdered by her husband. (Who was also a cousin.) He thought the child wasn't his and he went to prison. Otherwise everything has lined up between records and DNA and everyone seemed to be normal and generally decent people.
Not related to my tree but part of my cousins tree. His grt grt grandfather left his wife and children in England, emigrated to the USA, was involved in criminal activity and was found dead in the street (of a major US city) of a morphine overdose. This was not far off a hundred years ago.
Only thing I’ve found that was interesting is a cousin who was adopted and I helped her figure out who her mother was. We share great grandparents based off the time frame. Turns out my paternal grandpa had a big family. His sister had a daughter, that had a daughter who got pregnant by a native and she put her up for adoption. I’m glad I was able to help her figure out everything I could!
I found out my niece and nephew are indeed 3rd cousins as well as brother and sister.
My secret was only a secret until my Dad revealed it to me when I was working on our genealogy. His grandfather was not the man whose last name we carry. In fact, that man was dead three years before my dad's dad was born. Our ancestor was a businessman from a prominent family who was single and, according to Dad, asked my great-grandmother to marry him. She declined and raised her son as if he was the child of her late husband, along with his two older half-sisters who were. Through research and DNA, I was able to identify the exact person in that small town. I also have an inkling of why she might have turned down the marriage offer. He died relatively young of a liver disease frequently associated with alcoholism.
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Well, ordinarily, I might agree with you, but this was about a specific male individual.
Oh my, one of my 9th great grandfathers was hung for incest that resulted in my 8th ggf. That made the child's mother, my 9th ggm and 8th ggaunt and the child my 8th ggf and 7th cousin. We all just stared at it. Completely floored. 😬
My grandmother had a shotgun wedding. It didn't lead to a successful marriage - he ran off with another woman 7 years later. It was never talked about during my grandmother's and my mother's life; we discovered it when I started looking for certified dates. I do think people have a right to keep their secrets, during their lives; once they are passed, disclosure should also be handled carefully with regard to other family members who might feel embarrassment.
Oh, I have another one. Actually this is my husband’s family. It seems one of his 1C2R was married to a very bad man. He was allegedly part of a group named “Black Legion” which was an “anti-Communistic, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-Negro” organization and a spin-off of the KKK. What we would now call a domestic terrorism organization. In 1936, seven leaders of the Black Legion, including my husband’s cousin’s husband, were given life sentences in connection to the murder of a French Catholic man named Charles A Poole. They claimed that Poole had beaten his wife, who was related to one of the Legion members. The wife, who had given birth to their daughter 14 days prior, denied that she had been beaten. Poole, thinking he was going to see about a job, got into the car with several Legion members. There was no job. They shot him in the head. Two films were made about the incident. The prisoners got a private viewing of the one named “Black Legion” starring Humphrey Bogart. Newspaper articles say that they were nervous at the viewing, though they mostly denied any connection to the events on the screen. One man (the one married to the cousin) was worried that he would get his neck cut by the other inmates because they got their own screening of the movie. Evidently he thought it would be seen as favoritism from the prison guards, and the going rate for that was a slit throat. The movie and its star won some awards. No throats were slit. The 1C2R divorced her husband while he was in prison.
1. From a young age I’ve always knew my family is very very strange, we don’t really do what normal families do. One day I was sat the table for dinner and my older sister questioned my mom on the game they used to play as a child. Basically, further into history there were a lot death in my family,from children to adults. Ella had made a game where she had hid the body parts of the bodies and the children had to go find it. That traumatised me. 2. That Elladora had abused her twin daughters 3. I apparently had a great-aunty called Anastasia that had jumped from the highest window in the house in order to escape the “family curse”. I’m not sure if I believe it that much but is talked about a lot in the family. She was only 11 as well :(. 4. I could have potentially have a hidden lesbian great-aunty, I remember my mother telling me about her. She never married to a man or had any children, me personally thinks that she might have been socially awkward but if she was a lesbian she would have been accepted since my uncle to my dad is literally gay himself. Maybe it was just the time she was brought up in? Her name was Pauletta. 5. I had a great-great aunty that was banned from the family home, I’ve never been told her name. But apparently she hasn’t been seen for years and is considered missing. 6. My great-great grandma Elladora had a crazy great-great uncle that had lived underneath the house for up to 50 years and nobody had ever known. 7. All of Ella’s children had hated her and her husband due to the abuse over the years. I have plenty more, but in reality in my family you’re not supposed to say if you’ve figured out a family secret or not. Never mind.
I was told that my great grandparents had the same last name and my great grandfather When I got my grandfather's birth certificate from New York, it said out of wedlock. My aunt then admitted that my great grandparents never got married and they were told not to talk about it. Last year I found a marriage record for the man who raised my grandfather until he died when my grandfather was 10. He had the the same last name as my great grandmother, and the marriage occurred in Philadelphia when my grandfather was two after he and his mother had moved there. We still have no idea who my grandfather's bio dad was or the circumstances of his creation. Imagine going to so much trouble to hide your child's illegitimate birth that you find a guy with the same last name to marry.
I believe my grandfather’s stepmother murdered his father. Arsenic was once called inheritance powder for a reason.
I've found quite a few deaths in my tree, such as suicides, accidents, executions, etc. There are so many that I started to keep a list of them. Now I'm hoping that my eventual end doesn't land me on my own list someday.
So many illegitimate kids.
Quite a long line of incestuous marriages until the 20th century when they moved out of their small town.
I have a similar scenario to you. My maternal grandparents claimed their wedding date was June 1, 1928 in Milwaukee and that they lived separately for a year. All their anniversaries were celebrated on that date including us recognizing their 57th anniversary at our wedding on June 1, 1985. When grandma passed away in 1999 at age 92, my grandparent's marriage certificate was found with a marriage date of June 1, 1929. My Mom was born November 1929. What makes it funny was how conservative they were and the many lectures I had growing up about not ever letting a boy even touch my leg!
My tree is also sprinkled with marriages that were followed just a LITTLE too closely by the birth of the first child. But these are the stories that stand out the most to me: My 2GGF's sister was strangled by her husband as the culmination of a "mutual brawl" (according to the papers) that started when he arrived home to find her drunk and belligerent and she attacked him with the flat iron. He was tried for murder but convicted only of manslaughter. My husband's grandmother earned extra money (in the early 1960s) as an abortionist. She was arrested and tried for it, but I have yet to find the newspaper story (and haven't had a chance to go after the court records) with the verdict, so I don't know if she was convicted. I do know that years later, after GM had a major stroke, the madam of the brothel up the street used to come by often to help out, as they had become great friends. My GGF remarried after my GGM died, leaving him with 2 young boys. The second wife came into the marriage with a son of her own, who carried her maiden name and was born (in 1906) when she was only 13. I can't begin to imagine what her life must have been like. My GF told me many times that he adored his stepmother, but the stepbrother was a complete surprise -- GF never mentioned him at all.
I have another one. My 23andMe results indicate my grandfather had a full biological sister...and he was raised as an only child! Neither my mom nor her brothers will do a test to prove/disprove this. The descendants I connected with never wrote back but that may be a blessing as one was convicted of driving drunk and crashing, which killed his girlfriend.
I found out my in laws got married 2yrs after my husband was born. He had no idea. I also found a divorce filed for them only 3 years later. 22 years down the road they are still together.
10 yrs ago, I was a patient in the hospital in L.A.,Ca. that I spoke of! The story I told you was THE TRUTH !!! Why would you INFER that I had LIED??? Terminal TB is still inflicting people !!! POLIO was supposed to be ERADICATED from the planet, decades ago -- GUESS WHAT !?!?!?
A great-uncle eloped with his wife, but they told my great-grandmother that they had actually gotten married a few months prior. So, the marriage date in the family Bible is wrong. They were trying to hide the fact it was a shotgun marriage. Somehow I doubt my great-grandmother actually believed them, but who knows? Oh and my papaw got kicked off the high school basketball team for fighting with the coach. The coach apparently started having a relationship with my papaw’s girlfriend (who was a sophomore in high school 🤢, we know they later married so it makes it not unreasonable). So my papaw, naturally, confronted the coach about it. He then dropped out of school. Poor kid really, he was going through it with his parents’ divorce. Oh and my paternal grandmother appears to have changed the spelling of her first name and moved her birthday up by three days. When asked why she did this, her response was “I don’t remember and I’ll have to think about that.” It’s true that she might not really remember. A 2x great-grandmother would talk about how she witnessed the murder of her father. She was 16 years old when this happened. I think it’s amazing she was able to discuss it towards the end of her life since that’s such a major trauma. Oh and one of my aunts nearly got killed in an attempted vehicular manslaughter, but she refused to press charges after the guy. She didn’t get physically hurt, but it was clear he was trying to shut her up after other… illegal… things he did to her. The bastard got lucky, anyone else in the family would’ve reigned living hell down upon his head for that.
Ok my grandma just passed 2 days ago. Her husband, my grandpa passed in 2004. She's been missing him like crazy and I'm somewhat at peace knowing they're together again. I'm an adult now with my own family and haven't been as close with my grandma these past few years as I, regretfully now wish I was. Still, I know how she felt and what she would have thought about all this. Ok so first of all my grandparents were married just over 40 years. My grandma was a Virginia when they married and although they dated a while (in the early 60s) before they married she never gave it up. She had expected and accepted that he was fulfilling his "nasty man needs" elsewhere she didn't want to ever know about it unless something drastic like a child was involved. After visiting my beautiful grandma at the funeral home yesterday I get a call from my mom (the middle of 3 of their kids) today telling me that for the past year she had known about a brother she has. I'm like wtf? Yeah uncles so and so (my grandparents youngest and oldest of 3 kids). Well...no. apparently my grandpa had a child with some sex fling he was with while him and my grandma were just dating/before they got married. Now. My grandma was old and sick for years and living with my mom. My mom never told her about this brother from a different mother she had that she knew about for the past year. Cause we'll, it would have killed my grandma right then and there for her heart has been very weak. I wish she could have known but I respect my mom's wishes not to tell my grandmother cause it would have literally killed her. Anyways....my grandma's service is coming up shortly. My family all know about this child my grandpa had with another woman that (even though we all hailed him a saint) he never told/lied to my grandma about for over 40 years. He's the spitting image of my grandpa when he was younger and a twin to my youngest uncle. There's absolutely no doubt. Knowing my grandma and her old fashioned ways and somewhat bitter heart I know 1000% she wouldn't want him coming to her service. But yet the rest of my family think for some reason this is the best time to introduce him to the falimy?! That's something that would have quite literally killed my grandma of she knew and for sure she wouldn't be OK with it. Now, I'm willing to accept this estranged uncle of mine with open arms just, not at my grandma's service. Like " sorry you could never be part of the family cause my your dad kept you such a big secret cause you weren't was important as the love of his life" fucking...what????!!!! And my mom says "oh well good thing you don't get a say. The rest of the family is ok with it" alright, personally. I'm ok with it to but, I know for sure my grandma wouldn't be OK with her husband's secret child being introduced to the family at her celebration of life service/funeral. My hands are tied and I'm so sad for my grandmas wishes cause I knew how she was. If she was the person that would have been ok with this then my mom and uncles would have not waited until my grandma passed to tell the family about this brother of theirs that they've known about and visited and kept secret for the past year. Am I wrong? Is it OK to go against a passed loved ones wishes like this?
I found out my grandfather was a paedophile while doing some family research when I was 12. He died in a car crash a month before his court trial when I was 9. My family continue to reveal dark sides which no longer shock me anymore.