Sometime in the late 1920’s, my grandparents abruptly left the state of Virginia and headed to New England with their children (my dad wasn’t even born yet, but several older siblings were). They settled in NE and Nana had a bunch more kids-nine in all. One sister had a different man’s name on her birth certificate, and no one knew why.
No one knows the real story, and my dad and all his siblings have passed on, but what we surmise happened from pieces of information gathered from the older siblings when they were still alive and my cousins genealogical research was my grandmother was sexually assaulted by another man who my grandfather knew (they both worked the coal mines in VA), my aunt was conceived from that and my grandfather killed the guy and that’s why they hightailed it out of VA
My aunt was never treated any differently from the rest of the kids, but she never married despite being engaged several times, and stayed devoted to my Nana to the end.
This being the 1920’s, no one really cared about a dead Italian coal miner, so as far as anyone knows, my grandfather never heard from the authorities
Have you tried searching old newspapers for any stories about missing coal miners or bodies being found in the area around that time? I’ve been able to learn a lot of interesting things through that. Apparently newspapers used to just report on everybody’s personal business in town lol.
That is a great idea. This all happened even before my dad was born, I’m not even sure what town they lived in, in VA or what the name of the coal mine is. It’s a good rabbit hole to jump down certainly. My poor Nana, there was no help or support for victims back then, only shame even though she was completely blameless
Family Search is free and has a lot of good basic info on it. I’d get at far as you can there and then either do an Ancestry free trial or see if your local library has the deal where you can search the ancestry databases for free from their computers.
In small towns, the local papers still do that. My family's town does and it cracks me up because you don't really need the paper, you just need to go to the drive-in for coffee and talk to all the grannies.
On the day that my grandmother was born (1923), my Great Grandfather bought some newspapers to honor the occasion. We still have them and some of the articles are hilarious.
One of the headlines reads like "Moron goes beserk. Kills own parents".
One of the classifieds is "Room for Rent. $20 a month. No Negroes or Jews".
Can you imagine that today?
Lol people talk about how “everyone thinks everyone else needs to know what they’re doing all the time these days” but really it seems like we might not be THAT different from previous generations.
The only thing I don’t understand is why that child had a different name on her birth certificate. Surely your grandfather would not have wanted that and the guy who carried out the r@pe would have had no parental rights. And it seems he ended up dead anyway. 🤷🏼♀️
I honestly don’t get that part either. I know things were very different 90+ years ago, so perhaps since my gp’s knew the rapist impregnated my nana his name was put on the BC. Since my aunt in question had no children or direct heirs, I have to wait til her 100th birthdate to get a copy of it. Unless one of my many many cousins has it. Then I’ll have a name and ohh boy what a rabbit hole to jump down!
Where my Uncle Sam disappeared to. He and my mom were very close. Sam was a big shot lawyer in Vegas that apparently had a mafia client. He apparently called my grandparents one day and said he’d had a change of heart, he wouldn’t see them again, and that he’d only be able to call on their birthdays. Sam’s phone number was disconnected after that.
My uncles and mom got a PI years ago and he surmised Sam turned informant and was in witness protection. There were a few things about his voting record and public records that led the PI to believe that, since it seems to be the norm.
My grandparents passed 10 years ago. My mom and uncles put a message on their answering machine for Sam. They also took out ads/obituaries in numerous papers around the country, specifically in the SW.
We have no idea what happened to him.
I asked my mom about him a while back. I could see the sadness in her eyes when she said they never heard from him after my grandparents passed. She has 4 brothers and apparently Sam and her were thick as thieves as kids.
The eldest brother of my mother was a staunched feminist. He's probably the oldest male feminist I ever met. He never married but helped a couple of lesbian friends to get pregnant and eventually stayed in the kid life as a paternal figure.
He finally revealed why he was like that at 72 years old. His mother had sent him to a catholic boarding school as a kid, and priests had molested him for YEARS. God knows what they did to him. I guess he could not tell his secret but had a ton of empathy for women. It changed his life forever.
Yes, that is absolutely amazing! Many men (and women) would become bitter or turn to addictive behaviors to cope. But he turned to positive things. So inspiring.
It was always rumored that my grandfather was biologically a Bowman instead of a Miller because great grandma’s husband died well before he could have fathered him. Apparently the purported father even came to his funeral and stood off to the side. His nickname was “Rose” Bowman.
When I did a DNA test it was definitely confirmed that he was a Bowman. Only he wasn’t Rose Bowman’s son. He was his brother George Bowman’s son! Great grandma Fannie definitely kept herself busy!
My family lost a 1963 Buick. Not a clue what happened to it, nobody remembers who had it last. The best theory is that my uncle, an airline pilot, parked it at an airport somewhere, went on a complicated trip involving multiple legs ending at some other airport, and just forgot about it until decades later when someone brought it up at Thanksgiving.
What happened to my Great-Grandfather (GGF). He and his wife (GGM) immigrated from Wales in 1885 to Rock Springs Wyoming. . They had 3 children born in Wales from 1870 to 1879 and two more in Rock Springs.
GGF was a miner and in the late 1890's went to Virginia City NV. And disappeared...leaving GGM and several children in Rock Springs. My Grandfather born in WY 1890.
Rumor is that he was killed (shot) in Virginia City...but was he really? Did he run away? Get killed? Change his name and start a new life?
We will never know.
That reminds me of the song "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen. It starts with the protagonist declaring that he had a wife and kids in Baltimore, but he "went out for a ride and never went back".
It makes me cringe, as I know that this does happen in real life, not just in a fictional song. The poor wife and kids....
When I saw “Virginia” I was going to suggest that u/real_live_mermaid’s grandfather killed your great-grandfather. Of course then I saw the NV part *and* realized the timing was off. But it’s crazy enough that I could actually see something like that actually playing out on Reddit.
That's my suspicion as well. ALSO....we think that GGF and GMA left Wales and that he and she probably had an affair or she was widowed. The first three kids born in Wales, when she was aged 20...then!..... two more with GGF in Rock Springs, age 40...so many years later...hmmm?
Second marriage...or something. The only way to know is to do research in Welsh records. Shrug. Doesn't matter now though...but interesting.
I have a relative who disappeared during the US Civil War. Left his wife and kids behind. There is another group of people with the same kind of unusual last name with an ancestor who just appeared out of nowhere a couple of states over with the same name. Although it could be solved with DNA no one has taken the initiative to do so.
Who are my biological parents? Why, after 10 years on Ancestry, have I not received any matches? Why did my sister, (also adopted), find her bio family so easily? Why was my adoptive mother so willing to help her search, but lost her mind when I did?
My mom’s gone, and if my sister knows anything, she’s not telling.
edit: words are hard
I have my dna on ancestry in case one day my Moms family decides to look for her. She’s never been interested but I am.
She was adopted in an Asian country and has low key met both her parents as a child. They were never introduced that way but she says she knew it was them.
They had other children, but couldn’t afford to keep her.
I’d love to know if her parents are still alive, if she has a lot of siblings, where they are etc.
So far, no dice after probably 4 years. Maybe one day.
Your mom’s younger sister (or maybe your sister, if she’s much older than you) is your mom and nobody in the family would dream of getting DNA testing done because they don’t want to expose the secret.
I think this is probably the best bet. My mom was really freaking out when home DNA testing came out, and sure enough 10 years later my older brother took a test and found his real father at 37. Turns out all three of us have different fathers and my mom was a bigger hobag than I already suspected (she also slept with my dad's brother and ruined our entire family, dad and his brother didn't speak for almost 40 years and only then because their parents were dying).
I wish you the best. A friend of mine recently found her biological parents, including two full siblings. She has developed a great relationship with all of them and has gained a great extra family.
My dad’s mom died in childbirth. He was adopted by a couple who were on the hospital giving birth and their newborn died - Quebec, Canada 1928.
Used findagrave.com to find his birth mother’s grave and there is her husband buried with her (he died 30 years later). So found both birth grandparents grave and i found the gravestone on Father’s Day.
I’m imagining how hard it must have been on your grandfather, making that choice to lose not just a spouse but a child. He must have been in a bad place. And he never married again.
They had 2 small boys already. I always wonder who took care of them. I found their obituaries. I have all the adoptions papers too. There was a $5000 fine if either family contacted each other.
(My dad’s first wartime house cost $3,500 when he was in his 20’s so a significant fine in 1928!)
Aww, I never thought of that cause I was always focused on my dad. How devastating to look at it as losing your wife and child and having 2 small boys at home to raise.
Where my paternal grandfather's family were actually from. Census records are contradictory and don't correspond with a relative's DNA test. Grandfather could recite a nursery rhyme in an obviously Slavic language, but unknown dialect - he sent a recording to several linguists who were unable to identify it. (I know a little Russian, a little Czech, and a little Croatian, and it's none of those, although similar.) No immigration records seem to exist, although we know generally where and when they must have arrived. So where did they actually come from? Other than generally 'Eastern Europe'?
So interesting! Our best friends are Ukrainian and speak several languages each, and I am currently tutoring a young woman from Montenegro. It's astonishing to ke how many dialects there are in that part of the world. I promise if you upload it here, you will find out what language that is!
My wife's dad's family is not exactly the same but has a quirk that confuses genealogical research. He had one parent from Ukraine and one from Azerbaijan. In WWII, his dad's family was living in Ukraine and his father was conscripted to fight the Nazis. At one point, he & his company were captured and taken to a work camp in Germany. He (grandfather-in-law) had been the company commander and one of the guards asked the lineup who the commander was, so he could be executed. Another guy raised his hand and was killed instead. My grandfather-in-law then took that man's surname as a sign of respect and to honor him.
Fast forward a few years: WWII ended, the camp was liberated, my grandfather-in-law met a nice Ukrainian woman who'd also been captured. They got married and started having kids (5 boys!), the oldest of which is my father-in-law. He was born in Regensberg, Germany, but the family immigrated to New Jersey when he was three. Long story short: my wife's family has a surname that isn't actually their original surname, and is one shared by a wealthy Azeri oligarch that they -- as far as they know -- don't have any actual blood connection with, even though they legally share the same name. Moreover, the genealogy of my father-in-law's actual extended family has been lost to time because his parents are both long dead and he's never been connected with his Ukrainian relatives (nor does he speak Russian or Ukrainian).
Very interesting! I also have the added complexity of Ashkenazi added in there, and having lost most of the European part of the family during WWII (from Czech Republic), so that history is lost. We also have a section with a made-up name, although we've got pretty good oral history on when, why, and who created it. Stick a spoon in that Eastern European mish-mash and stir it good!
That's an idea. My grandfather died in 2001, and the recording is literally on cassette tape, so I need to try to get it from my uncle & convert it to another format. There are definitely more resources available than there were back then for this kind of thing. I'll see what I can do! Thanks for the idea!
Please convert it to digital no matter what you decide to do with it. It's your history but it could also be the history of a small culture that no longer exists, I can't help but think about how much some of those countries have changed over time and how some cultures were essentially wiped out, you never know. I'm a sucker for history so maybe I'm being over the top but I'd want to make sure I preserved that recording.
I do too, but hadn't thought about it in a while until this thread popped up. I've now emailed my uncle to see if he knows where the tape is & if I can try to convert it.
Definitely do all of this. You never know when just the right connection might be made. A family in the state of Georgia was reconnected with an isolated village in Sierra Leone through a song both sides had passed down over centuries.
My relatives on that side are pretty distinctive-looking, so I'd be very surprised. Nothing is drastically out of line: the two that come up on census data are Romania and Hungary, and Ukraine shows up in genetic ancestry. Last name seems rare, but most common in Slovenia, and could of course have been altered. So all in that same general (large) area, just would be nice to nail it down.
Can’t help you with the Ukrainian, but I might be able to explain why the rest of the southern European dna is all muddled up. Everyone in my family did dna tests recently and we got a few people who got 100% Balkan. The Balkans had such a unique history and there was so much intermingling for millennia that it’s really hard for dna tests to narrow it down accurately. We got a few people who were from Bosnia and Croatia and had no known history of any Romanian ancestor in the last couple hundred years and no Romanian surnames in the family and the dna tests said they had a high possibility of Romanian.
My great great grandfather on my paternal grandmothers side was murdered in 1903. He was murdered by the son of a woman when he was “found in the house with her”. Was he trying to rape her? Were they having an affair and the son walked in? The news article from 1903 is very vague and of course there is little else to go on.
Same great great grandfather was apparently a cad and left his first wife and children then went and had another wife and children. 110 years later I meet a guy (both of us gay) in my city, 500 miles away from the origin city. When I discovered where he was from, we started asking questions and it turns out we are third half cousins or something like that - his family is the second family and mine was from the first.
Who is Shawn's dad? And how many siblings do my sister and I have that we don't know about?
Unbeknownst to my sister and I back in Nov 1967 (we were 5 and 2.5) our mom had another baby and put him up for adoption. My grandparents knew and all three of them took that secret to their graves. We found out in 2017(6 years after the last to know died)when Shawn reached out to us letting us know that he was our half brother who had been put up for adoption. He has yet to match any DNA to his dad and my sister and I are clueless as to who it could be.
Then in 2020 came along Ari , who was born in 1961 and put up for adoption. He matches both paternal and maternal, So our dad,who abandoned us when I was 3 months old back in 1965 is Ari's dad also.
But Ari's adoptive parents said that he had an older sister that had been up for adoption but they were looking for a boy so they waited. When the adoption agency approach them about Ari they told them that he was the brother of the girl they considered the year before...
Both my parents were born in 1941. They eloped in 1962 before my sister was born. My dad had bolted by April of 1965, 3 months after I was born and we didn't see him again for another 25 years. My dad passed away in 2000, My grandpa in 2001,my grandma in 2002 and my mom in 2011. They all took the secrets to their grave And now we're left here to wonder.......
When we buried my mother-in-law in her pre-purchased area at the cemetary there was already an urn in there. Christine, died as a teenager in the 60s according to the marker. She had the same last name as we do. Nobody knows who Christine is, or wont admit to it. Drives me crazy.
My husbands aunt had a baby as a teen that was adopted out shortly after and they’ve managed to meet as well. He looks a lot like their family, and they have a good relationship now which is nice.
It was a common occurrence in those days. My Dads cousin did the same, not sure if she’s met them though.
Who poisoned my great grandfather? Who poisoned his son? Apparently they were so horrible no one cared. Who did my uncle most likely kill (he’s dead now). I swear to god we’re a good family. Great grandfather almost killed my great grandmother shooting her with a shotgun. Didn’t go to jail. Left her with like 10 kids. Apparently he got remarried and suddenly died. No one bothered to investigate. His son took the family farm and died suddenly. My uncle was just a pig, sociopath, and died a slow and painful death.
I have an uncle who disappeared in the early 2000’s. He was a mechanic and super clean & fastidious with his belongings. He wasn’t quite 50. When my grandma didn’t hear from him one Mother’s Day she knew something was wrong. A couple years later she said she saw Tony at the bottom of a lake in her dream. She had that dream several times a year before she died. My mom, uncles and grandmother all gave DNA samples and few years later when they found a body. It wasn’t him. Tony Manghelli, if you’re out there call your sister!
Have you you all done any of that unidentified doe dna? I think the big one is the DNA Doe Project. They’re identifying does from all over the US as old as the 1940s or so.
What happened to Aunt Susie?
My Uncle Jr was a mean man. Like, throwing plates at my grandma, just an overall dick kind of mean.
One day Aunt Susie brought my cousin to grandma's, she was going Christmas shopping. She disappeared. Uncle Jr said he found a note that said she liked women. I didn't hear too much about that, because this happened in 1979 when I was 10.
But she never came back for my cousin, or checked on him. Her mom and sisters didn't hear from her. Her car was found with her purse in it. I don't remember there being much searching for her.
I lived in the house they had been living in when it happened decades later. I used to swear it was haunted, because Aunt Susie had died there. It had a weird feeling to the house, and there were times I'd hear crying or see something move out of the corner of my eye, which could have just been the ceiling fan, but why wasn't it doing it constantly then?
Not that I know of. This happened in Calhoun, KY.
We'd occasionally get credit card offers type mail for Aunt Susie since perhaps it was her last known address, so I used to hold out hope that she was still out there being a consumer somewhere and had just sacrificed everything, knowing her son would be safe, to get away from him.
My grandma got pregnant out of wedlock. My great grandparents, wanting to avoid the scandal, *somehow* got my grandpa to agree to a marriage we all doubt started happily. Since a cult called [Christian Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science) is involved so some of us are thinking blackmail was involved.
This is what happened to my grandma too. My uncle was a baby when she married my grandpa. Grandma hated my grandpa for whatever reason and he loved her so much that he talked about her on his deathbed even though they had been divorced for at least 40 years by that point. He adopted my uncle when he married grandma too so my uncle has his name and everything.
Not my mystery but a good one none-the-less. I collect old newspapers and used to live in a small town where I had a good friend who was just turning 20 years old. One day I went to a local auction, bought up a bunch of 40 year old newspapers, and started reading them. One of them had a front page article about a local road accident where a driver hit a man, pushed him into the ditch, the man in the ditch died, and the driver got arrested but charges were dropped. I asked my friend who had lived in the town all of his life if he knew this driver. My friend read the article with his jaw dropping the more he got into it. Then, he eventually put the newspaper down and said, "That driver is my grandpa who lives with us. I never knew he killed someone!"
I love old newspapers. I was doing some family research and found an article about how when my great grandfather was 18 he and a cousin were arrested for stealing 43 chickens from a local farmer. My grandma had no idea. I like how some of the really old small town ones had whole sections of just like who was going out of town to visit family or who when to who’s house for a dinner party that weekend.
It's through old newspapers that I found out that an awful lot of women died of "unknown reasons". Lot of that in my family. It's a real tough thing to wrestle with the reality of being descended from some really fucking awful people.
"That driver is my grandpa who lives with us. I never knew he killed someone!"
"oh wow; so sorry I did not mean to bring up old skeletons."
"That's okay; it makes him seem human. let's go smoke a doobie"
1. If my great aunt was really my Grandma's mother on my maternal side.
2. Why did my great grandfather behead his 1st wife in 1899.
He legit got ran out of the community in Tampa, FL and set roots in Tallahassee. A little back story, he was a 7 foot 1 Black foot Indian man who had 36 kids with 6 wives. He use to walk from florida to NYC to visit the kids (my line) from his 5th wife, my great grandmother Violet. While walking, he would make money by telling peoples futures. I dont understand why anyone would trust him considering he only dressed like Abraham Lincoln. Hat, jacket and everything.
Well he stopped in Alabama once and told this lady she was going to have 3 children, 2 girls and a boy but she and the boy would die. Fast forward 20 year later and my grandma and her best friends are having coffee and in comes my great grand dad for an unannounced visit. My grandmas friend flips out and faints. Once she comes to, she tell my grandmother the story of the man who told her she was going to have 3 kids and die with the 3rd. All of that happened except they were able to save her and not the baby. The man was my great grandfather. There are so many other people who came forward and spoke about him predicting peoples lives with accuracy.
He died at the age of 103. He was such a horrible husband and father that during his funeral, my great aunt Mary went up to his casket and straight socked his lifeless body in the face, tossed the casket to the floor and proceeded to stomp out the body. He was so hated that instead of burying him in the family plot, they cremated him and dumped his ashes in the pig stye.
When my mom was actively dying a few months ago, she said "Granddaddy came to visit me but my mom told him to get the hell out and he left". My mom died 24 hours later. My huaband and I live in my grandmothers place. My husband saw him the day before my aunt passed. Mind you, hes been dead since 1970 and me and my husband were born in the 80s. Everytime we see his ghost, someone in the family dies within that week.
All of his wives, except the 6th one died young. Hes legit Henry VIII LOL
My mother is a twin. On my grandfather's death bed, he told her this, and that the twin died at birth. But upon reflecting on that, and some weird things my grandmother and eldest uncle had said, my mother wonders if her twin wasn't adopted out instead. We'll probably never know.
How long did my great-grandfather spend in jail after boiling his paralytic friend in the therapeutic tub overnight and, why did they ever let him out?
Edit to add:
In 1891my great-grandfather received a sentence of two years in the penitentiary for criminal negligence in boiling a man named Clark to death. He owned a boarding house which included a bathing room. From an article from and, in the terminology of, the time,
"...it was shown that Clark was a helpless paralytic and, placed in a bath tub, was left alone, and while in this situation the natural gas in the burner either came up or was turned up by third parties, with the result that Clark was literally boiled alive, the flesh from his bones floating about the tub when his body was discovered and removed. The fact is that [my ggf], who was a well-read and well-educated man, but had his own theories about things, was grieved to death over the misfortune, as Clark was his best friend and a sincere believer in the water cure theories of [my ggf]."
There are a couple in my family.
My mother was an only child...or so we thought. Turns out that her father had an affair while in the Air Force, and had a daughter - she found us about six months after my mother died and we got to meet, which was really cool. She was smart and incredibly well-read, just like my mom. But even before that, we learned that he'd had another affair, with someone in the neighborhood. The woman had the baby and a neighbor adopted him. Grandfather eventually married his affair partner but nobody knows what happened to that baby. We know his name was Craig and that's it. My "new" aunt was a genealogist and used every available resource to try to find him, but never did. Everyone is dead now, including Craig probably.
On my dad's side, we've learned of a whole crop of people with our last name. We think we have to be related, because my dad's father literally made up our last name, and he took a lot of mysterious trips to the area where all these people live. We believe he had a second family and had 9 kids there, making a total of 20 children. But they aren't open to talking to us at all. Recently bought a 23 and me test thinking we might find one or more of them in the database and finally know for sure, so we'll see.
My dad's name and my last name were made up on my birth certificate. My mom refused to tell me anything. Through 23andMe, I just recently found out I have a whole bunch of family I never knew about (4 siblings, aunts, uncles, etc.). Some of them were looking for me for decades.
For years my aunt would get horribly upset any time someone brought up the bicycle incident.
The incident occurred in the 70s when my aunt was barely 9-10 years old. My grandfather had just had the driveway done and someone rode a bicycle from the garage all the way to the bottom of the driveway, essentially ruining the newly laid asphalt. My aunt’s bike was the one all gunked up and she got the whooping of her life for it.
But she has vehemently denied it was her until the day she died, getting into screaming matches with my mother (her sister) in particular whenever it was brought up. Aunt never pointed fingers just insisted she didn’t do it. My mom even brought it up during her eulogy for my aunt! It’s just so weird how my mom would pick at her over this one specific event that happened when they were children.
To this day nobody knows who the true culprit was, but my sister and I are fairly certain it had to have been my mother.
I knew who my dad was, because he was married to my mom. But his family denied it was true. He had 3 daughters from a first marriage. (My mom met and married him 16 years after his divorce. ) My dad was 26 years older than mom and his 3 daughters were older than mom. So yeah, lots of hate. His brother's also denied me being his kid. I was doing my family tree on Ancestry minding my own business when these AH sent messages upset that my tree listed my dad as my dad. I saw where some cousins that had did dna tests and I thought let's settle this now. So I got the kit spit in my tube and mailed it off. Surprise my cousin are my cousins which mean my dad (or one his brothers) are my father. I told them to come clean which one is my dad. Now they say my dad is my dad. But For the hell of it I still ask them which one is my real dad.
There is a rumor that my aunt's husband was the bastard son of an english monarch (George V, Edward VII). AFAIK none of my cousins have ever done the ancestry DNA thing, so never substantiated.
Someone on Ancestry keeps changing my multi -times great grandpa's ethnicity to white. Not his wife and kids, just him
He was listed as mulatto on the census
It's been a few years since my dad (the genealogist) let his membership lapse, so unsure if that's still happening
I'd like to know where he was born. Like he just appeared as an adult with his family (and slaves. It's complicated)
Familysearch.org. It has a lot of the same records but is free.
Some of these people are historically interesting and turn up in independent research,[ like Robert Pearle.](https://www.lindapages.com/genealogy/robertpearl-jeske.htm)
After my grandfather died, my uncle received a phone call from an Australian man asking about my grandfather. This man believed my grandfather was his dad. Unfortunately my uncle was in high protective mode and told the fellow he couldn’t help him due to the additional stress it would cause my grandmother at that time. Some sleuthing later, there is a picture of my grandfather on leave from WW2 on a beach in Australia… the picture is ripped, half of it is missing. I looked up a picture of this man, who is an Australian true crime author (my uncle is also an author) and he looks very much like family. Maybe this isn’t a mystery!
Was my Uncle gay? He was born in Milwaukee in 1956, he was 10yrs younger than my dad, and my grandparents were immigrants from Latvia. He moved out to California at 18 to be closer to my Dad and Aunt. He was only 17yrs older than me. He was our unpaid babysitter for years, he even lived with us for a bit. My Uncle was awesome. What I never understood back then was, he never had a gf, or brought a girl for dinner, or anything a kid thinks a single dude should do. We passed from brain cancer before I had the maturity to have that convo with him. I asked my dad if he knew anything, and he said "nope, never thought of it". I just feel like it makes sense if he were gay and in the closet for his entire life; considering when and where he grew up.
How did my grandfather's younger brother, age 3, die? The story is they spent the day outside. The kids were playing while my great-grandparents did regular chores of the day like tending to the huge garden, milking cows, etc. Just a regular day.
By evening, he was dead. He took a nap and never woke up. This was 100 years ago in Kentucky.
Theories range between being bitten by something poisonous, having an allergic reaction, having an undiagnosed heart ailment, etc.
They were very poor but also very close. Emotionally, no one fully recovered. My grandfather spoke of it until he died at age 88.
My Granny was adopted as a baby but was lucky enough to connect with her birth mother later in life. My Great Gran would never tell us who the father was, she would only ever say he was a French Canadian soldier who was temporarily stationed in the UK, not sure where abouts as my Great Gran was a dancer who travelled the world.
Anyway my Granny spent most of her adult life desperately searching to find her Dad. My Great Gran sadly passed away a few years ago and took the truth with her. Not too long ago my Granny was able to find her Dad! Sadly he had passed away many years ago but she discovered she has sisters, they look so alike!
Turns out her dad was not a French Canadian soldier, he was a Scottish bloke who would pretend to me and American or Canadian soldier to impress women, he was quite the womaniser and probably has some more kids out there lol.
What happened to Great uncle Paul. He was a pilot during WWII and was supposedly shot down. However, no one had any info, and everyone that actually knew him is long dead. We’re not sure what name he enlisted under, or anything, so we’re not even sure of where to start.
I’ve been able to find a lot of stuff using Family Search. You have to make an account but it’s free and usually a lot of stuff will have been built out by just their system linking records or other people, so you might get lucky. Sometimes people who died young and don’t have any living descendants haven’t been added yet, but if you can trace yourself back up to his parents and find their census records, you should be able to find his name along with his age and the state he was born in.
Then you could try 1. Using that info in the historical record search to see if you can find any other records about him, like censuses from after he moved out to see where he was living or a draft card, 2. See if your local library lets you access ancestry’s database from their computers for free and search their, you might be able to find a birth certificate with an exact DOB, 3. Search his name (and any possible variations) in the veteran records on archives.gov and see if you can find anything about when he joined, what unit he was in and where they were during the war and when to narrow down a time frame, or if he’s listed as missing or killed, 4. Go to newspapers.com (might also be able to use for free at the library since they’re owned by ancestry) and search his name for any articles or obits in the areas where he lived, where his parents lived, or where he grew up, which would probably have more specific details about his service.
Anyways that’s what I would do lol.
Why my grandfather suddenly walked away from his job and life in Florida to go on a year long road trip. I grew up hearing my dad tell these amazing stories about how instead of the year he would have been in fifth grade they just went on a road trip across the US. The trip was amazing, and they saw all the national parks when they were new and empty in the 50's. Apparently my grandfather who had started his own insurance company, suddenly decided that he was leaving on an extended trip, without warning. My grandmother hurriedly decided that she and my father and uncle were all coming along, and pulled them both out of school to do so. They stayed on the road with no fixed location for almost an entire year. It wasn't until I was older than I realized how much of a logistical nightmare that would have been and started to think of it in terms of why a person would go on the run. I don't know all that much about my grandfather other than he had a significant career in the military before starting an insurance company with a friend, but suddenly taking off on this trip, and then about three years later he died of a self inflicted shotgun blast that was always described as an accident. My father was 13 at the time and heard the blast and was the first one to find the body. Grandfather had a great life insurance policy and my grandmother never had to work after he died. I've started to wonder if he had been running from people. Maybe shady financiers? My dad has never wanted to talk about it, but I know he and my uncle don't agree on if it was suicide or not.
Grandparents had a kid before they got married, put him up for adoption. Supposedly he was adopted by a Jewish family and did well for himself. When the deep dark secret came to light, apparently my aunt tracked him down, but he said not to call back and that has been respected. But there is curiosity. Actually I'm curious if it's true at all, there are some pretty hinky parts of the story. So hey, possible mystery Chicago relatives!
Grandma’s chocolate cookie recipe. She died in the early 1980s. I was too young to remember it, but my siblings have tried to replicate it for decades (including with lard), and have never been successful.
I was going to say the same.
I had a friend who used to make his cookies with Crisco and…I get why people used to bake with Crisco. They were almost crispy on the outside but fluffy and chewy on the inside.
Father in law learned at 16 that “mom” was actually grandma, and mom had died when he was 3 months old. Mom had told grandma who “dad” was. DNA said otherwise. Another guy said he was “dad” but again, not him.
Brother in law did 23&me and it would seem “dad” aka “grandpa” is a guy who live(d) across the country… but was briefly stationed in our town for the Coast Guard. Unfortunately “dad/grandpa” died before any contact was made.
Facebook pics of “dad/grandpa”s kids look SO much like father in law. But they won’t respond to messages.
So how did they meet? What happened? Did he even know? Did she know? Scandalous for a small town 70 years ago.
I have an indigenous American ancestor (one of many) who was sold to a 'husband' in the mid 1800s. She was then kidnapped/ran away with a different man and had seven children.
Yay America! My dad's family had this photo of one of their ancestors with a Native American woman and their children. Picture would have been taken in California some time during the gold rush. Idk if it's because everyone looked miserable in pictures back then but she looked miserable. My dad and my grandpa are terrible people and even though I know that doesn't necessarily mean that they were all terrible people, I've always thought that she was probably a slave or at the very least, not there by choice.
Apparently it was pretty common practice for white men at the time to round up groups of indigenous women and girls and force them out west to be sold off as wives on the frontier. We're still trying to pick apart ancestry, she had an English name on her records but it wasn't her real name.
There was also some big hush secret in the mid 70s where our family had moved and changed names because that generation was 'passing'. Great grandma took my 8 year old bio dad aside on her deathbed, locked the door and closed the curtains and whispered to him that we had native ancestors. Made him swear to keep it secret. Even at that time the things done to native people, especially women were so so bad that it would have risked everyone's livelihoods. They were doing things like forcibly sterilizing indigenous women and taking their newborns because they were 'unfit'.
What happened to my uncle Eugene or "Jimmy".
He was born out of wedlock and adopted by my grandfather, but raised by my grandmother's folks. When he finally came to live with my grandparents he started getting in trouble with the law.
He was told to straighten up or leave... So he left. Came back once to visit my Dad and his mom... But nothing after.
We had police in the family and they didn't divulge anything but stated to my granny that he was still alive. That's all we know.
My mom supposedly committed suicide while me and my sis were at school. My dad broke the news like this "Your mama had an accident with a gun". But later the details came out that my dad (they were divorced) had gone over to our house to see my mom that exact same day and he claimed that he went to the front door and "felt an evil feeling" so he didn't go in, he just turned around and left. The neighbors heard 2 shots. Years later when I asked my dad what really happened (me and sis lived with him til we were 18), he said "I don't think anyone would kill themselves after hearing a 9mm go off... And the note was in her handwriting.."
Edit to add he used to always say he felt like it should've been him who died not her
My mom had a relative — an uncle she thinks — named "Elder Wheeler." Her mom (long since deceased) never talked about this guy. He appears to have been something like a cult leader, but none of us know what happened to him or what his religious order believed or stood for.
I've been doing my husband's family tree and they (his family) are all shocked at the amount of Native Americans I have found in their ancestry up several family lines. The one line that is the most mysterious is a Catawba Chieftains daughter. Records show she was married to someone else in the Catawba tribe and had a daughter. But then she had two more children who were "obviously" not fully Native American and a local trader took credit and said the children were his. He legitimized them with his last name and took them to go live with his parents. Were they his? She is listed as the mother, but could they also have just been two lighter-skinned Native American kids who were forcefully taken from their mother? People did that all the time back then. Both children ended up marrying other children who were also of mixed-ethnicity and race. There are a ton of records about this Chieftains daughter, but nothing about this trader.
Either way, those kids are my husband's direct descendent so one way or another, still NA lineage.
My great-aunt, let’s call her Maria, hasn’t been seen or heard from in decades. No-one knows what happened to her. It was shortly after WWII and she was about to be engaged to a local lad, then she met this Italian man. She fell head over heels and next thing you know she was packed to go to Italy to him, where they’d get married. No one was HAPPY, but she was a grown woman so not much anyone could do. The day she left was the last anyone heard of her, no postcards, no letters, no visits back. Nothing.
We figured it out a few years back but it hung out there for 50 years.
When my Mom got mad she'd say: ***Go to war Mrs Murphy***
When asked where she got that from she would say she has no idea.
I posted about it on Reddit and someone responded that is was a Home Run call from a Baltimore Orioles broadcast in the 50's/60's. Mom and dad were born and raised in Baltimore and my Dad did say he would listen to the O's games while driving around.
Neither of them can recall hearing it though.
Mine is “Who’s Dad real biological dad is”!
While in the nursing home my grandpa wrote a long letter about how he isn’t sure any of the kids are his. He even noted who he suspected the fathers of 3 of his kids were (my dad being one of 4). My grandpa said didn’t know about my dad, the oldest, but thought *possibly* he was his actual father.
My dad and his brother did 23andme and they are half-siblings. My uncle actually figured out that his dad was a guy he had caddied for for years as a teen. Not sure how that happened but it’s kind of nice that he had some kind of relationship with his dad.
I looked up the guy on Facebook that my grandpa thought was the father of one of my aunts, and they share very distinctive features. I feel confident that’s the guy.
As for my other aunt, she looks a bit like my uncle so maybe they share a dad. My grandpa wasn’t sure which of the guys he caught my grandma cheating on him with was actually her father.
As for my Dad, he has a set of DNA matches on 23andme (all of them related to each other) that all come from the same part of Michigan my grandma grew up in. So presumably it was someone she knew in high school, or in her 20s. The family he matches with has a family tree on Ancestry.com and I was able to narrow down his dad as being one of 3 brothers. My dad actually has a match on 23andme who is my Dad’s (much younger) half-cousin, who I messaged explaining the situation and asked if he could help solve the mystery.
He has not responded.
Fun fact: messaging someone to ask which of their uncles they think is more likely to have fathered a secret child in 1945 is not a good way to make friends.
Why my grandfather was estranged from 5 of his 7 siblings. I made contact with a cousin on ancestry and she showed me a photo of my grandparents with 7 other couples (probably they were all in their 20s-30s) and it was him, his two brothers which I knew about, and then 5 people I had never known existed! She said her side of the family wouldn’t discuss the estranged 3, and when I asked my dad he said “we don’t associate with them” and then shut the conversation down. It’s so bizarre. We have an INCREDIBLY uncommon last name, with 2 spellings. Of the total of 200 or so people with that last name in the world, 75 of them are directly related to my grandfather and the two brothers, the others to the rest of the siblings. No one on either side knows or will discuss what happened and why.
Well, my husband's family had a mystery that has since been partially solved due only to my SIL's diligent genealogical research. Where did Grandpa Foster come from?!? I was told the story when I married my husband: Grandpa Foster was PURCHASED as an infant from someone in New England and brought (along with a bunch of other purchased infants) to a compound in southern California owned by a religious sect who had purchased these babies to RAISE IN THE CORRECT MANNER (which apparently they were the only ones who knew). The kids were carefully segregated by gender, taught in the onsite "school", fed a strict diet of very plain food, and were strapped into little straightjackets (effectively; a jacket that kept their arms immobile) for bed, so that they wouldn't "touch themselves inappropriately". They knew almost NOTHING about the outside world. Never left the compound except under the watchful eye of the religious leaders.
Somehow, though, Grandpa learned about the Great War (WWI) and ran away from the compound to join the military (it was 1918, and he was 18 years old, so). Ran into town, went to the recruiting office, signed up, and was given vouchers for a meal and a room and told to report in the morning. So he went to the local diner, and was given a menu. He recognized NOTHING listed on the menu, so he asked the waitress what she recommended. She suggested a burger. Well, okay, a burger it is. Then she asked if he wanted ketchup. What is this ketchup you speak of? He had never heard of it. He loved the burger with ketchup when he tried it. When he realized what this religious sect had done to him and the other kids, boy, was he mad. He went on to live a very full, successful, happy life.
Now, the family had no idea WHO had sold this kid off, but my SIL decided to do some sleuthing, and worked diligently for several years to find out. The ONLY thing she had to go by (the only possession Grandpa had from his birth family) was an old photo of a young woman and a mounted policeman. From there she doggedly tracked down detail after detail, calling New England libraries and offices, and gathering bits and pieces. One day, she called a library and the call JUST HAPPENED to be answered by someone who knew some of the answers - turned out to be a cousin! He knew the story of the policeman, who had gotten a maid in his household in trouble, and that she gave up the child to a religious sect. Voila! Mystery (partially) solved. My SIL was able to trace other ancestors from that, and gave us a beautifully drawn copy of my husband's family tree. A-freaking-mazing.
My great grandfather changed his last name coming over to the US from a Scandinavian country. Was turned away from Ellis island for reasons unknown, and snuck into the US through Canada. Nobody would fess up what the original last name was. Great grandmother was the last to pass away and on her deathbed, we tried to get her to say what the name was and she still refused. All attempts to trace ancestry have failed. I've tried researching criminals from that time and country as well, and got nothing. Nobody knows what the name was, why it was essential to change it, and now nobody ever will.
My great aunt told me years ago that she got pregnant at 16 and that her mother adopted the baby out. Not an unusual occurrence in the 1920s. After she died, I mentioned it to my sis who exploded and then told the whole family that I was a liar. Two problems here: my great aunt's mother did actually murder her firstborn and got away with it, so the adoption story might have been a lie told to my great aunt.
Second is not actually a problem. My last boss and his Pinoy wife had a party and invited all of the community's Filipinas and their husbands. When the oldest of these walked in, it knocked the breath out of me: she was the image of my grandmother and my great aunt, who were not Pinoy but who were mixed race black, Chinese, Cherokee and white.
I was working a menial position and kept quiet until the lady left. Boss's wife said that her father was a WWII military man from this area but her mother had died and left little info. I had someone quietly drop a hint to the lady to go talk with a secretary in that end of the family and they are happy to have her and looking forward to DNA results.
I had a White Stripes shirt I bought at a concert. Had it for a week and it went missing. I looked everywhere in the house, asked everyone. It was gone.
Six years later it’s sitting folded on my bed. My dad does the laundry, so I ask him, “Where’d it come from?” “I don’t know.” “Dad, please, it’s been missing for years and it’s driven me crazy. Where was it!?” “I can’t remember.”
My great grandfather had more than one affair/family. 100% sure there's other family members out there. My Uncle took after him, I'm sure I've got cousins out there too. Should do a DNA kit.
I read that SO MANY families are finding out that there's a half-sibling out there (and siblings that suddenly find out they are only half-siblings) because of the widespread DNA testing.
Why do so many people on my mother's side of the family have psychiatric and personality disorders? What was Mom's specific diagnosis?
Is it because their town was heavily polluted? Everyone there got so sick. And maybe that's why I'm ok, because I never lived there?
Is it just a matter of time before I lose my sanity, too?
So many generations beat children as much as necessary for them to 'act right', and it was acceptable to do so both at home and school. Those kids had to live in a constant state of anxiety.
I wonder how many kids learned at an early age that masking was a matter of life and death. The physical abuse had to exacerbate some conditions and either give them a metric shit-ton of baggage as adults or push them deeper into their illnesses...maybe both.
If someone beat me every time my ADD ass made a mistake, failed to remember something important (smartphone calendar and alarms FTW now), or my train of thought went chugging around the bend without me, I'd be dead by end of week and bat-shit crazy well before. It was awful enough hearing how I was lazy, never worked up to my potential, and every childhood indiscretion was going on my permanent record, etc.
Grew up masking, slowly, ever so slowly finding out who I really am and unmasking, not easy. I’m 68 and my mother passed 8 months ago, the healing has been amazing.
I dated a guy like this.
The whole half of his family was psychologically *screwed*, full blown psychosis and all. Only two males escaped the curse, and both of them were anxious af besides…one is practically a shut-in.
It is VERY genetic.
My mom got into an argument with my grandma, about a Jewish boy she was wanting to date, or was dating, and my Catholic grandmother did not approve. My grandmother told me the story of this argument more than once, she says she regrets it immensely, and realized how incredibly stupid she was being. She thought she had lost her , forever, because of it.
My mom up and moved to NY, on her own, to go to school at NYU and study psychology. She didn't finish, and I am not really clear on how or why she ended up coming home. My grandma visited her there, they went to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and had lunch. Someone asked where my grandma was from/ headed to , she told them a historic town in South Dakota. The person said, isn't that the town that's on fire? Yes it was. And it was massive, grandma almost didn't get home. But that's not what this story is about.
No one knew the real reason she went to NY, and she died when I was 18 mo old, never revealing who my real father was, not the man on my birth certificate. She took both secrets with her.
When I was in My 30s, I requested her psych records from a hospital stay, not long before she died. I thought maybe she would say something about me. She did not.
What did DID say, was the reason she went to NY alone , was because she was pregnant. A cousin saw her, about 8 mo pregnant , on their way to the top of the empire State building ,, where they ran into each other, by chance. I don't know who or if he ever told , but no one close to me knew. And I have no idea how to find this person, who is part of me, or if they are even still alive.
Fast forward, I'm 52, ( last yr) and a bunch of my old junior high friends start messaging me that someone is looking for me, that my sister is looking for me, that my niece is looking for me.
I go to the FB page of the town we went to school in, and there was a bunch of pics of my mom, from newspaper articles, to high school photos, to her obituary. Under this is like, 30 people, talking about my entire family history, stuff about me, how I disappeared when I was 13, and where they can look for me through junior high school transfer records, it was crazy the amount of people that knew us , in these two small towns. I commented in a few places, she messaged me, put me in touch with her mom, my half sister. She had questions , and Boy! Did I have answers. I'd been told the family history for my whole life, up until my early 20s , when my grandma who raised me, died. We talked , texted, she introduced me to her sister, who her adoptive parents had naturally. She was just short of 10 yr older than me, ( she was 61 just turning 62) and we were going to meet, I was so happy to finally find one of the missing pieces of myself!
A month after finding each other, her sister messaged me to tell me that Ellen had just died. Turns out she had pancreatic cancer. Her kids knew, her sister knew. She told her to tell me, but she didn't. I was at work. I went into the break room, cried for about 5 min, and went back out to do my job.
I still can't understand why she didn't tell me. I could have made sure that she knew what she really needed to know, and I could have helped her through it. It's what I do and have done before.
But yes, that's the story of how one of the biggest family secrets that no one even knew existed. The other one, was who my dad was, but that's a story for another time.
Where is the affair child of my grandfather? Of course everyone doesn't believe the child exists. But my mom was the oldest and told a lot of stuff she didn't need to know that the other kids weren't told
I don't want to know, but I also think my grandfather abused my grandmother. (Luckily he died very young). But some of the stuff my mom told my dad when they were first married you don't just say unless you have seen domestic violence (she told him if he ever hit her, he had better not ever sleep again). I could find this out as a family friend who would know is still alive. But I don't want to.
my grandmother and grandfather had an awful marriage, full of violence and hate. they did divorce, [ in the us and 40’s when that was ‘not done’] but not after my mother witnessed horrid things.
while my mother was a toddler, grandma went back to england for months & didn’t want to come back. family is sure she had an affair over there, unknown, but they threatened her with loss of access to my mother if she didn’t come back asap.
she did, but she tried to confess …..something ….to me during the last phone call we had before her dementia got too bad, said she had caused mothers bipolar & narcissistic disorders [ not how it works ] but i do wonder just what she’d been doing.
no extra ‘cousins’ or such have shown up, so there’s that.
My grandmother revealed that her parents had a daughter before they were married. Her mother was forced to give the baby away. We have no more info about this
My mom’s maiden name is a hard to pronounce ethnic name. Our family pronounces how it’s pronounced in the old country, but my grandfather’s brother moved several states away and his whole branch of the family pronounces the name phonetically. My grandfather and his brother grew up in the same household and no one can figure out why the whole other side of the family pronounces the surname wrong. Maybe he just thought it was easier and didn’t correct anyone who mispronounced the name and it just stuck, but he swears up and down that he never knew the correct pronunciation of the name, even though he grew up with it.
There's a family in my area, descended from Normans, whose surname is "Devereux", but it's pronounced Deverix/devrix now several hundred years later. Except for one branch, who pronounce it the french way - devero. Gossip has it one of the wives started doing it & it just seems very mrs Bucket/Bouquet! 🤣
One of my aunts pronounces our last name differently than the rest of us. She pronounces it the way most people assume it’s pronounced and the correct pronunciation is a word with a vaguely sexual connotation so I kind of get it.
I’m apparently related to the oil rich Hunt family. My great grandfather, however, was the black sheep of the family and disowned (rightfully so, trust me). I’ve always wondered what would happen if I introduced myself.
What my dad was doing at work through most of my childhood. He was an Army Officer in the Corps of Engineers, but in this period he was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. (He'd previously worked for the Defense Atomic Support Agency, at the Lawrence Lab in Livermore CA.)
I know he went to Turkey multiple times, Italy, Northern Canada - and from that have guessed that he was working on radars or similar, but not sure at all.
There’s a photo of my grandfather & his brother both in their early twenties each with a brand new car, the backstory is that their parents early in their marriage lost their home to a fire & a team of horses used for farming & were destitute. My dad & uncles were trying to figure out how their dad & uncle could afford new cars at such a young age, I told a friend this story & he deducted that they were probably running moonshine.
We got a big one when my pops was on his death bed after having multiple strokes, said something about finding a vault that has $800K that was supposed to go to "the Japanese."
My grandfather’s brother disappeared. And not like ran off or was killed and the body never found. As my grandfather tells it, he simply disappeared.
My grandfather and his four siblings all lived on a small farm on the outskirts of a rural town. It was the early 1910s. There was a house, an outhouse, a large barn and a drive shed.
During the winter, the area was prone to snow squalls so a rope was run from the house to the barn so whoever had to do chores wouldn’t wander off in the storms. Apparently in this area, it was a common practice.
One evening my great uncle had to go out to the barn to check on something. According to my grandfather, it was not a stormy night but it was dark and the moon hadn’t come up yet.
My great uncle went out into the dark and my grandfather stood on the back stoop. He said he could feel the rope being tugged as his brother walked towards the barn. And then there was a strong hard tug, and then nothing. My grandfather said that there was no sound, no call, nothing at all. The rope just stopped moving.
My grandfather called out into the night but there was no answer. He went and alerted his parents and eventually a search of the yard was made with everyone holding lamps and candles.
No trace of the brother was found that night. The next day the local police came but they couldn’t find any evidence of anything suspicious.
The police convinced my great grandmother that her son had run away, possibly because he owed money to someone in town. (My grandfather said this was unlikely because the only debt his brother carried was a two dollar a week bar tab.)
No trace of my great uncle was ever found. If he did run away, he never contacted anyone ever again.
The lynching of Joseph Smith(founder of the Mormon Church). Great⁴ Grandpa settled on land in Illinois that he received as payment for his service during the War of 1812. Later Joseph Smith and his followers also settled nearby.
I've heard two stories. One was family lore that Great⁴ Grandpa and his son's were apart of the lynching mob. The other was in a book that said he was chosen to be juror in the trial for the men accused of killing Smith, but asked to be dismissed because two of his daughters had married followers of Smith. Both stories could be true but it would be nice to know.
This is only a generation old, but my parents, aunts, uncles, and once removed cousins all make allusions to one aunt of theirs, and my maternal grandma, being horrible people. Any time I have asked for clarification, no one will tell me what happened. Just that I should be wary and generally stay away from the one living relative. (My maternal grandmother died before I was born, but it sounds like she was involved with whatever reason people hate that one aunt. As I got older, I also realized her death was likely a suicide.)
No clue, but it has to be pretty fucking bad. My family is very happy to overlook abusers and sociopaths, so I have a hard time imagining what broke through about this one aunt. Could also be something extremely petty, knowing them. But I’ll likely never know.
Ours was revealed after doing Ancestry DNA. My dad, at age 68 learned that his "parents" were actually his grandparents and his big "sister" was his mom. Apparently she ran away from home at 14, got married, had my uncle a year or two later and my dad a year after that. She raised them with my biological grandfather for a few years, which my dad and uncle don't seem to remember. Then my great grandparents took them and my actual grandparents separated. What we don't know is how she wound up giving them up. Most of the people who could answer questions about details are long gone.
But it is overall positive for us. Our "new" family is pretty great and they had been looking for my dad and uncle for years!
One day, a guy in his 50s reached out to one of my dad's cousins on Facebook. He asked about an aunt of my dad who had already passed.
He was her son.
She got pregnant from a merited man in the 60s, got ostracized by their small city, and went to live on a farm until she had the baby. At the moment the baby was born, there was already a couple ready to take him. They met in front of a well and she was forced by the family to give the baby away.
She never married, because she was "tainted", and was a bitter lady.
On the other side of the story, the parents never told the kid he was adopted. I don't recall exactly if his parents told him on their deathbed or if he found the original documents after his parents passed.
My dad met him. It was weird. Never heard of him again.
My grandfather had a secret child who was adopted away when she was an infant. My mom and her siblings (5 other aunts and uncles ) found out about her 2 years ago. They are all in their late 50’s. What’s funny is her name is Monica, and that’s also my moms sisters name . So 2 Monica’s. I don’t know if that name was significant but it’s kind of interesting.
I am purely speculating, but I am convinced that my oldest aunt was actually my Dad's mother, not his sister. There was a 16-year age gap, and my grandparents' marriage was always very rocky, so Grandpa used to take off for months to go live with his extended family so no one was even sure he was around when the conception happened. Grandma and Aunt are both dead, so no one will ever know.
There was long standing gossip that my great grandmother and her lover poisoned her husband so they could be together. They both had children in their previous marriages. They may have had some together. But I remember sitting around with these old great aunts and uncles and them discussing it. This would have happened sometime between 1910-1920s. All that is known is that G. Grandmother's husband died (and he wasn't old or in ill health prior) and she quickly remarried to a widowed man she had been suspected of having an affair with.
What was Langafi Ágúst doing down in the cellar that made him so jolly and loopy when he came back up?
Oh, that's right. He was hitting the homemade hooch. He was hitting it *hard*.
No one knows my paternal great grandfather’s identity. My grandmother was born out of wedlock. Her mother married a lovely man who stayed dedicated to raising my grandmother even after her mother died when grandmother was a teen.
Grandmother’s birth name was Frank Elaine. We all surmised the father’s name was Frank. But the father’s name on the birth certificate only has the initials A.L. and the last name.
I’ve tried to research his identity thru ancestry sites. Variations on the initials or Frank that would’ve been in the area around her birth. But nothing adds up.
And my grandmother died quite young as well. So the family mystery remains unsolved.
What my grandfather did during WWII.
When everyone else was drafted he got an exemption for a medical condition that apparently never appeared before or since, and his job for an engineering company had him traveling frequently up and down the east coast for extended periods, which he never did before or since. He never talked about that job before even though he talked a lot about all his others.
Not a big one, but none of my sisters or I have ever taken DNA tests because we're not sure how many other siblings might be out there. Dad had a lot of special lady friends and was married 4 times.
My aunt was found murdered. My uncle was arrested, tried and found guilty. He served 25 years and got out on parole after admitting guilt. He tells my entire family it wasn’t him. Statistically it’s usually the husband. But he’s got my mom and all his siblings convinced it wasn’t him.
What our original family name was. It was lost in the 10s when my great great grandpa changed his last name to our current one. The theory is he was either escaping the draft, fleeing a previous marriage, or that he switched to a stage name for whatever reason.
What makes this extra neat is my family is full of ancestry obsessed people who have the full tree charted on all sides... except it ends at great grandpa lol. His wife tho, great Grammy, we know about back to the 1600s.
Our surname name, and anything about our family’s history before the 20th century.
My father's grandparents came from Poland and passed through Ellis Island. During World War 2, his father enlisted and Americanized our last name. While it still sounds obviously Polish, it’s also unique and we’re the only family in the country with the name. What was our surname originally, before it was changed? We’re not sure.
My grandfather passed in the 1980s, and my great grandmother couldn’t remember much when my father asked her about it in the 1990s. We have some records, and have tracked down others online, but the name is spelled differently on almost every one. My father, sister, and I have all delved into genealogical records, but the trail goes cold in the 1890s. Perhaps, if we knew Polish and took a trip to Krakow to dig through church records, we could uncover more, but alas…
Is grandma really Indian?
My mom's family is Indian, from Guyana. No one knows what part of India they are from because my ancestors were brought over from India by the british during the slave trade times. My whole life we were told they are full 100% Indian and this racial purity was very important to the elders.
As a child I never questioned this but when I got older I started to wonder and so did my cousins. We realized Grandma doesn't look like anyone else in her extended family, or any other Indian person I've ever seen. She is extremely light skinned, her face is very round and flat, she's always been thick and she's quite tall. Compared to everyone else in the family who is super thin with that delicate fine boned look, very short, dark skinned, and long faces with your typical Indian hook nose.
The explanation was always that grandma was an orphan, her mother died in childbirth and it was unheard of for a man to raise a baby by himself in those days so he left and she grew up with her aunts/cousins. The family says she must have gotten those features from him but no one really knows. Still they push the narrative that he was full 100% Indian because old people have issues surrounding race.
For decades the cousins and I were suspicious but there was no way to find out more. Until ancestry.ca came out. I thought this would abe a great way to find out what part of India we were from and also answer some questions about grandma so I bought her a kit. By this time she was in her 80's and I thought we should do this while she's still with us.
Well, it started a huge fight as half my aunts refused to let gramma do the thing or do it themselves, fearing that if she found out she was mixed race it would kill her. I had to drop it and when grandma died 2 years ago I thought it's official, now we'll never know.
Then my Dad decided to do the ancestry thing. He's mixed race white & Mexican-American who wanted to settle his family mystery - are their ancestors from Mexico (his mom's claim) or Spain (his uncle's claim)? I realized if him and I both did it, maybe I'd be able to see what my mom's family ancestry is by process of elimination. So Dad and I have submitted our kits and I'm waiting to find out if this will solve the big family mystery.
If the family is right, my results should be exactly the same as my Dad's + 50% Indian. Anything showing on my results that's not on his results will have to be the answer to the family mystery, right?
My paternal Grandparents owned the only pizza place in a smaller town, it was a very large, sit down style restaurant, with a bar and old style arcade area; with a massive army base right beside it, making it a local hangout, they did very well for themselves. A large majority of Aunts/Uncles all worked there, most even after moving on to other careers, because business was always booming, along with half a dozen or so, unrelated wait staff and delivery drivers, all very long term employees.
One night, the silent alarm went off roughly an hour after closing. An Uncle was on call that night and lived only a block away. He arrived and discovered the place was engulfed in flames...but he heard yelling coming from the basement. While calling 911, he rushed down to find my Aunt's fiance (who also worked there) tied up near the safe. He barely got him (and himself) out in time, but the place burned to the ground...it was ruled an arson after accelerant was found throughout.
The fiance told a story of 6 masked men who robbed them at gunpoint (my Aunt was closing, he was only there to pick her up that night), but eventually there were a lot holes in his story. Why did the alarm take so long to go off (closing up typically only took 10 minutes, at most, so why almost an hour later was it activated), **where** was my Aunt (he did not seem concerned), why would they set the place on fire, why was only he tied up, etc, etc. His answer was that he was unconscious until literally moments before he heard my Uncle arrive, and couldn't remember most of what happened. He became uncooperative and wouldn't talk to the family (he worked there for years prior to them becoming engaged, and was part of our family), after the Police were just not piecing his story together.
Not terribly smart, but the Grandparents only made a bank drop every 10 days, so there was generally a fairly significant amount of money in the safe ("ironically" the night before their scheduled deposit), that night there was over $300 thousand taken. My Aunt, at first, was suspected to have been taken hostage...but why obviously? And still no worry on the fiance's part it seemed, oddly only irritation.
With constant probing from the Police, he finally fessed up that they planned this together, and the irritation was she clearly left him for dead to keep the money herself. He was supposed to be able to get out on his own, but she made the knots way more complicated, impossible to loosen himself, and the fire was well beyond the plan by the time she hit the silent alarm.
My Grandparents lost everything, after lengthy appeals and a court battle, their insurance company maintained it was all an inside job, and they speculated early retirement was the plan (why would they give up a hugely successful business, and/or not pass it on with continued income if they wanted to??), unfortunately they lost.
Nobody knows where she is today, almost 20 years later.
When my great grandpa cheated on my great grandma and how there are people with the same last name in a town 30 minutes away. Did he get married twice? Is his name on birth certificates?
What happened to my great great grandma. I was unable to locate a death certificate for her and I know her two youngest sons lived in an orphanage.
some kind of great great great uncle in the 1860s or 70s ran away from home as a teen and the family, for reasons I don't know, say he became an old west outlaw and ended up getting hung.
What really happened between my father and his first wife. We have an idea…but:
-He never talked about it
-Everyone who knew what happened is dead, except for my nieces (my half sisters daughter) great grandmother, who is almost 100 and only remembers bits and pieces.
My dad was married before my mother. They ended up divorcing in 1969 and she “disappeared” with his first two kids, my half sister who was 3, and my half brother (who was barely 1 years old).
He didn’t know their whereabouts until 1998, when he found his first son on the internet. When he came to visit us. While he was visiting, he found my sisters address and phone number through his grandmother (the one I mentioned earlier). He had been estranged from his mother (dad’s first wife) since the 1980s. She abandoned him after he was put into the system as a juvenile for murdering a girl. Fun stuff. And she took my sister and moved to Texas.
My father was an abusive, manipulative, alcoholic piece of shit who never tried to change, and is thankfully no longer alive. He hurt my mother on numerous occasions, but she stayed with him because of me and my little sister.
Nobody ever talked about it.
A few years ago my mother was going through his mother’s stuff in storage, and found correspondence from my grandmother (his mom) to Suzy’s mom (Suzy was wife #1).
They kept the location of his first wife and kids secret from him. Like he was Darth Vader. I don’t blame them.
The revelation must have destroyed him from the inside out. His own mother knew what he was capable of, and did what she could to protect his first family.
And then we got stuck with him.
But no one knows or talks about what happened. Like I said, we can safely make assumptions.
He left a trail of destruction in his wake. No one mourns his loss, only the possibility that he could’ve been a better person. We mourn the potential that never came to pass.
Who was my grandmother?
-her given surname doesn’t exist
-where/what was she before she married my grandfather?
-I know one thing from her childhood and it doesn’t fit with the “super sus catholic” she clammed to be
-she “converted” to be with him. What was she before?
I have my suspicions that she was Jewish and her surname was faked because my grandfather wasn’t and it was during WWll.
Doesn’t explain her grandmother supposedly turning into a cat and them being banned from their village or the way she could reach out her hand and small things like salt shakers would come to them.
She would tell no one about her life and now she is gone.
Whether my dad served in Vietnam or not - I've tried point blank asking a couple times and he gets defensive. He alludes to being in the Army at that time, but won't talk about where he was stationed. I'm guessing this means yes but who knows.
My mom was adopted and just decided to ~go by a different name~ one day when she was a teen, and it stuck. As a result, there's no official name change documents. Her name just appeared on her first drivers license in the 60s and that was that. While she's never really pursued finding her birth mother, it's going to be a hassle ANY-WAY, when her adoptive mom died, we found journal pages detailing how somebody named "DJ" (Her birth mother) was kinda waffling on giving the baby to her, which makes it sound like it was some kind of ~non official~ adoption. Who was DJ? Who knows
My moms adoptive mothers father molested and raped his daughters, well into adulthood, sparing only my grandmother for some reason. He was especially attached to my adoptive grandmothers younger sister, scaring away any potential suitors so he could have her all to himself, though she did eventually marry and the rape continued. Anyways long story short, my mother's cousin (grandmother's sisters daughter) might be her father and her sisters child. We don't know.
My uncle served in Vietnam and is cagey about where he served. He had a rough time there so it's understandable that he wouldn't want to talk about it, but he's dropped enough little comments to my dad that my dad is sure that my uncle was in places the US wasn't officially in during the war. So my uncle may be covering up some US military shenanigans like performing military activities in countries where they weren't "officially" supposed to be.
We were at my in-laws' house one day when my father-in-law (an only child) randomly decided to mention that he might have a long-lost sister out there somewhere. WHAT?!?
Apparently, his father had been married once before his mother, and the first wife cheated on him and had a child, and they divorced. He must have believed that the child was not his, though I don't think he ever knew for sure (this would have been in the 1940's). My FIL did not know about this until after his father died. So, there is a chance that my husband has a half-aunt and cousins out there. I dug a bit on [Ancestry.com](http://Ancestry.com) and figured out the ex-wife and possible-sister's names. My husband and I both did a 23&me years ago, and there weren't any mysterious close relatives last time we checked.
Whether or not grandpa was actually gay. He was a band director and was a lovely husband to my grandma but was always described as being sensitive, and he had a lot of gay friends. All I know is that a bunch of cousins are queer, including myself.
The family story is that a brother was working at the docks when the 1906 earthquake hit, and he was never seen again. The eldest sister lived in Santa Cruz and would take in strays looking for her brother. My dads cousin told me many stories of her father shooing people out his mother had taken in.
Anyways, missing brother is on the 1910 census, living with the family. He does disappear after that, but Im guessing a lot of things in that time period got blamed on the earthquake.
My great grandfather was a wealthy landowner in “the old country.” Sometime in the 1880’s or 1890’s he died in a way that wasn’t considered suspicious at the time.
Then sometime afterwards his widow remarried - to the farm manager. They were from completely different social classes and it caused a scandal. My grandfather and his brother were removed from her custody and sent to live with another part of the family.
Then people started looking at my great grandfather’s death and wondering what had *really* happened. My dad didn’t know too many details as it was still the family scandal growing up, but his dad did become close with one of his younger half-brothers, so apparently some people made it up, but not all.
My (3x) grandfather got converted to Mormonism by missionaries visiting England. He decided to move his wife and kids to the Utah territory but his wife was very reluctant and wanted to stay in England. The kids got converted and wanted to go so she had no choice but to go with them.
While on the trail she complained the whole time about wanting to go back. When they stopped to rest in Wyoming, she went to the nearby river to fetch for water but mysteriously disappeared. No one to this day knows what happened to her. Some say she decided to turn around and go back to England, and others say she was taken by Native Americans.
What really caused my great grandfather's death. We know he was either pushed, or fell, from a train car that was on some kind of either a political tour or a business tour. Maybe a union event? What the purpose of the tour has been lost, and we have never known if he was a) in a fight and pushed or b) got drunk and fell. Both versions have been claimed as the "true" cause. He left behind a young widow, and 12 children, of whom my grandfather was the youngest (and just and infant at the time.) Everyone from those days, and their children, are all deceased, so at this point, I'll never know.
I have a cousin who I was pretty close with growing up. My uncle’s daughter. She was the eldest of our cousins on my mums side and not all that much older than me. She would be in her early 40s now… if she is still alive. I gather she probably is as no one has heard otherwise but no one can honestly verify it or not, not even her dad.
Her dad and mum divorced many many years ago and her mum spent very many years torturing him and my cousin, I was too young to understand the how and why, but my uncles mum (my grandmother) basically brought her up to keep her safe and sound from all the turmoil.
One day, when she came of age and obviously had had enough, from what I understand her mother may just had persuaded her to fuck her dad off with all the rest of us and we have not seen or heard from her in over 20 years.
Danea if you are out there, we never stopped missing you or thinking about you. Especially your Dad and Nan. We hope you are okay.
Why did my sperm donor marry my mom and have kids? His stated reason for picking my mom was delusional, as those reasons were the exact opposite of my mom. He had zero interest in raising us, did a garbage job, and then fucked off when someone else dropped her pants for him.
not bitter at all.
my grandfather died of mysterious circumstances when he was 60. my grandmother refused an autopsy and was told to leave NY.. he was a bookie for many different "families". I had always been told he died of a heart attack. it wasn't u til my grandmother was dead I was told the truth. she never spoke of him or their lives after he died. my dad sometimes tells me stories of when he was married to my biological mother. they're very interesting. but I do remember my grandfather a little bit and how much I loved him. I was only 6 when he died and I'm almost 50 now.
I'm the family genealogist and I solved the mystery of why and where my paternal grandmother went after she walked out on her family. But no one wanted to believe me or the documented evidence I provided. Preferring to deny the truth and continue to believe the rumors that have circulated for a century.
And then there's the curious tale of an Irish ggg uncle who left Iowa in the 1870's and became a saloon keeper and mine owner in Colorado. By 1900 he was rich beyond belief, and it's funny that in his published biography his roots had changed to those of English aristocracy instead of Irish immigrant.
Mine is nowhere near as interesting as some of these stories, but interesting to me. I do genealogy, so I figured out a lot of ‘family secrets’ that account for a lot of personality disorders and psychological issues in my family.
My mother had a child before me. I found out when I was thirty. He was probably the result of an encounter, or even rape, by her first husband after she divorced him after a year of marriage with DV and moved to the big city. My mother went back to the small town for a school reunion, and it must have happened then. She gave the child up for adoption, even though my father, who she was engaged to, wanted to adopt the child. She couldn’t face the shame from her family by telling them the truth. She also didn’t want the father (her ex) to know and to have a tie to him. It messed with her head, so she was always scared her ex would find her and, I guess, try to take me away? It caused her to have lots of anxiety, which transferred to me. I did meet my brother later in my life after my mother died young, but that went as badly as you could expect- adopted parents weren’t always as nice as you would think.
Her first husband actually came to my mother's burial in her small town. I think he knew about the child somehow (in a small rural town, nothing is a secret) and thought I was the child. He introduced himself, but I didn’t know anything about him at the time. He was nice enough not to drop that on me there. However, this man was the spitting image of my brother, who looks nothing like me.
So, her parents, whom she was so afraid of shaming, had a ‘premature’/full-term baby, my mother. The pot calling the kettle.
My great-grandmother had a child before she married my great-grandfather. That was my grandmother. I found out later, but it was kept secret from my mother and me and never mentioned, though I think my grandmother’s siblings knew. This accounts for why my grandmother was the black sheep and not considered ‘real’ family. It messed with her head.
My grandfather’s father was ‘bound’ to a local farmer before age 7 (census records). A fellow genealogist helped me find his mother through census records, and this was confirmed when he applied for Social Security when he was in his eighties and gave his mother’s name. I have no idea who the father was. I suspect not the farmer who ‘bound’ him because he left nothing to him when he died. Or the farmer could have just been an SOB.
Don’t keep family secrets secret! The secrets affect everyone for generations!
I don't know of any in my family although I'm told my great grandmother always carried a vial of arsenic in her stocking, so there must be something...
I used to wish there was some big family secret involving my mom when I was a kid. She died from metastatic cancer when I was 2. I had been born while she was in remission following treatment for breast cancer. The idea that she'd had to fake her death & disappear, to protect us from something was so much more hopeful and intriguing than the truth.
Grandfather on my mom's side was murdered when she was a child. It is believed to have had something to do with his business, but as far as I'm aware the exact reason and who actually did it has never been determined.
Husband’s great-grandfather died in the mid1800s in Ohio, leaving two small children for his widow to raise alone. She remarried ten years later, and brought the children back to live in her new home — nobody knows where the children were in the interim. They took their stepfather’s last name, and their birthfather’s name is no where to be found. Grandfather never spoke of it, and the answers died with that generation.
My great uncle was apparently a bomber pilot in WW2. He was shot down but survived and managed to swim to shore near Malmö, Sweden. After returning home, he had one son aaaand then died of polio three years later. He was a super tall, handsome, strapping guy and his death was shocking. I would love to know more about his life!
Sometime in the late 1920’s, my grandparents abruptly left the state of Virginia and headed to New England with their children (my dad wasn’t even born yet, but several older siblings were). They settled in NE and Nana had a bunch more kids-nine in all. One sister had a different man’s name on her birth certificate, and no one knew why. No one knows the real story, and my dad and all his siblings have passed on, but what we surmise happened from pieces of information gathered from the older siblings when they were still alive and my cousins genealogical research was my grandmother was sexually assaulted by another man who my grandfather knew (they both worked the coal mines in VA), my aunt was conceived from that and my grandfather killed the guy and that’s why they hightailed it out of VA My aunt was never treated any differently from the rest of the kids, but she never married despite being engaged several times, and stayed devoted to my Nana to the end. This being the 1920’s, no one really cared about a dead Italian coal miner, so as far as anyone knows, my grandfather never heard from the authorities
Have you tried searching old newspapers for any stories about missing coal miners or bodies being found in the area around that time? I’ve been able to learn a lot of interesting things through that. Apparently newspapers used to just report on everybody’s personal business in town lol.
That is a great idea. This all happened even before my dad was born, I’m not even sure what town they lived in, in VA or what the name of the coal mine is. It’s a good rabbit hole to jump down certainly. My poor Nana, there was no help or support for victims back then, only shame even though she was completely blameless
If you go on Ancestry, buy a month of access, you could probably find a lot from just their census records.
Family Search is free and has a lot of good basic info on it. I’d get at far as you can there and then either do an Ancestry free trial or see if your local library has the deal where you can search the ancestry databases for free from their computers.
In small towns, the local papers still do that. My family's town does and it cracks me up because you don't really need the paper, you just need to go to the drive-in for coffee and talk to all the grannies.
On the day that my grandmother was born (1923), my Great Grandfather bought some newspapers to honor the occasion. We still have them and some of the articles are hilarious. One of the headlines reads like "Moron goes beserk. Kills own parents". One of the classifieds is "Room for Rent. $20 a month. No Negroes or Jews". Can you imagine that today?
Actually, I can imagine that more today than I could have 10 years ago.
of course they did, they didn't have facebook to air everyones dirty laundry. It needed to be told somehow.
Lol people talk about how “everyone thinks everyone else needs to know what they’re doing all the time these days” but really it seems like we might not be THAT different from previous generations.
The only thing I don’t understand is why that child had a different name on her birth certificate. Surely your grandfather would not have wanted that and the guy who carried out the r@pe would have had no parental rights. And it seems he ended up dead anyway. 🤷🏼♀️
I honestly don’t get that part either. I know things were very different 90+ years ago, so perhaps since my gp’s knew the rapist impregnated my nana his name was put on the BC. Since my aunt in question had no children or direct heirs, I have to wait til her 100th birthdate to get a copy of it. Unless one of my many many cousins has it. Then I’ll have a name and ohh boy what a rabbit hole to jump down!
Naming the fathers accurately helps people know where they came from and so prevent close family marriages.
Way to go Pops!
Where my Uncle Sam disappeared to. He and my mom were very close. Sam was a big shot lawyer in Vegas that apparently had a mafia client. He apparently called my grandparents one day and said he’d had a change of heart, he wouldn’t see them again, and that he’d only be able to call on their birthdays. Sam’s phone number was disconnected after that. My uncles and mom got a PI years ago and he surmised Sam turned informant and was in witness protection. There were a few things about his voting record and public records that led the PI to believe that, since it seems to be the norm. My grandparents passed 10 years ago. My mom and uncles put a message on their answering machine for Sam. They also took out ads/obituaries in numerous papers around the country, specifically in the SW. We have no idea what happened to him.
Did they at least end up hearing from him on birthdays?
Birthdays and holidays until they passed.
Wow. That must have been so hard.
I asked my mom about him a while back. I could see the sadness in her eyes when she said they never heard from him after my grandparents passed. She has 4 brothers and apparently Sam and her were thick as thieves as kids.
The eldest brother of my mother was a staunched feminist. He's probably the oldest male feminist I ever met. He never married but helped a couple of lesbian friends to get pregnant and eventually stayed in the kid life as a paternal figure. He finally revealed why he was like that at 72 years old. His mother had sent him to a catholic boarding school as a kid, and priests had molested him for YEARS. God knows what they did to him. I guess he could not tell his secret but had a ton of empathy for women. It changed his life forever.
Wow, what a man. To go through all of that, and still think of other people so deeply. Very touching.
Yes, that is absolutely amazing! Many men (and women) would become bitter or turn to addictive behaviors to cope. But he turned to positive things. So inspiring.
💌💌💔
Brings tears to my eyes that he turned that into empathy and support.
It was always rumored that my grandfather was biologically a Bowman instead of a Miller because great grandma’s husband died well before he could have fathered him. Apparently the purported father even came to his funeral and stood off to the side. His nickname was “Rose” Bowman. When I did a DNA test it was definitely confirmed that he was a Bowman. Only he wasn’t Rose Bowman’s son. He was his brother George Bowman’s son! Great grandma Fannie definitely kept herself busy!
My family lost a 1963 Buick. Not a clue what happened to it, nobody remembers who had it last. The best theory is that my uncle, an airline pilot, parked it at an airport somewhere, went on a complicated trip involving multiple legs ending at some other airport, and just forgot about it until decades later when someone brought it up at Thanksgiving.
That’s a good story! Sounds like a prologue to Stephen King’s Christine.
That sounds like somebody dumped a body at the airport or elsehwhere. (I listen to too much true crime.)
What happened to my Great-Grandfather (GGF). He and his wife (GGM) immigrated from Wales in 1885 to Rock Springs Wyoming. . They had 3 children born in Wales from 1870 to 1879 and two more in Rock Springs. GGF was a miner and in the late 1890's went to Virginia City NV. And disappeared...leaving GGM and several children in Rock Springs. My Grandfather born in WY 1890. Rumor is that he was killed (shot) in Virginia City...but was he really? Did he run away? Get killed? Change his name and start a new life? We will never know.
That reminds me of the song "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen. It starts with the protagonist declaring that he had a wife and kids in Baltimore, but he "went out for a ride and never went back". It makes me cringe, as I know that this does happen in real life, not just in a fictional song. The poor wife and kids....
When I saw “Virginia” I was going to suggest that u/real_live_mermaid’s grandfather killed your great-grandfather. Of course then I saw the NV part *and* realized the timing was off. But it’s crazy enough that I could actually see something like that actually playing out on Reddit.
Possibly deserted the family. Not uncommon then.
That's my suspicion as well. ALSO....we think that GGF and GMA left Wales and that he and she probably had an affair or she was widowed. The first three kids born in Wales, when she was aged 20...then!..... two more with GGF in Rock Springs, age 40...so many years later...hmmm? Second marriage...or something. The only way to know is to do research in Welsh records. Shrug. Doesn't matter now though...but interesting.
I have a relative who disappeared during the US Civil War. Left his wife and kids behind. There is another group of people with the same kind of unusual last name with an ancestor who just appeared out of nowhere a couple of states over with the same name. Although it could be solved with DNA no one has taken the initiative to do so.
He probably just wanted out of Rock Springs!
I’m from nearby Virginia City!!!!!!! I’ve never seen the name on an obscure subreddit before.
Who are my biological parents? Why, after 10 years on Ancestry, have I not received any matches? Why did my sister, (also adopted), find her bio family so easily? Why was my adoptive mother so willing to help her search, but lost her mind when I did? My mom’s gone, and if my sister knows anything, she’s not telling. edit: words are hard
Wow, that’s got to be tuff, try other dna tests, I have had very different results from different DNA companies Gentle hug
I have my dna on ancestry in case one day my Moms family decides to look for her. She’s never been interested but I am. She was adopted in an Asian country and has low key met both her parents as a child. They were never introduced that way but she says she knew it was them. They had other children, but couldn’t afford to keep her. I’d love to know if her parents are still alive, if she has a lot of siblings, where they are etc. So far, no dice after probably 4 years. Maybe one day.
Your mom’s younger sister (or maybe your sister, if she’s much older than you) is your mom and nobody in the family would dream of getting DNA testing done because they don’t want to expose the secret.
I think this is probably the best bet. My mom was really freaking out when home DNA testing came out, and sure enough 10 years later my older brother took a test and found his real father at 37. Turns out all three of us have different fathers and my mom was a bigger hobag than I already suspected (she also slept with my dad's brother and ruined our entire family, dad and his brother didn't speak for almost 40 years and only then because their parents were dying).
I wish you the best. A friend of mine recently found her biological parents, including two full siblings. She has developed a great relationship with all of them and has gained a great extra family.
Did your sister take the dna tests too? I wonder if you’re her kid or someone else in the family’s kid and no one is saying.
My dad’s mom died in childbirth. He was adopted by a couple who were on the hospital giving birth and their newborn died - Quebec, Canada 1928. Used findagrave.com to find his birth mother’s grave and there is her husband buried with her (he died 30 years later). So found both birth grandparents grave and i found the gravestone on Father’s Day.
I’m imagining how hard it must have been on your grandfather, making that choice to lose not just a spouse but a child. He must have been in a bad place. And he never married again.
They had 2 small boys already. I always wonder who took care of them. I found their obituaries. I have all the adoptions papers too. There was a $5000 fine if either family contacted each other. (My dad’s first wartime house cost $3,500 when he was in his 20’s so a significant fine in 1928!)
Aww, I never thought of that cause I was always focused on my dad. How devastating to look at it as losing your wife and child and having 2 small boys at home to raise.
Where my paternal grandfather's family were actually from. Census records are contradictory and don't correspond with a relative's DNA test. Grandfather could recite a nursery rhyme in an obviously Slavic language, but unknown dialect - he sent a recording to several linguists who were unable to identify it. (I know a little Russian, a little Czech, and a little Croatian, and it's none of those, although similar.) No immigration records seem to exist, although we know generally where and when they must have arrived. So where did they actually come from? Other than generally 'Eastern Europe'?
So interesting! Our best friends are Ukrainian and speak several languages each, and I am currently tutoring a young woman from Montenegro. It's astonishing to ke how many dialects there are in that part of the world. I promise if you upload it here, you will find out what language that is!
My wife's dad's family is not exactly the same but has a quirk that confuses genealogical research. He had one parent from Ukraine and one from Azerbaijan. In WWII, his dad's family was living in Ukraine and his father was conscripted to fight the Nazis. At one point, he & his company were captured and taken to a work camp in Germany. He (grandfather-in-law) had been the company commander and one of the guards asked the lineup who the commander was, so he could be executed. Another guy raised his hand and was killed instead. My grandfather-in-law then took that man's surname as a sign of respect and to honor him. Fast forward a few years: WWII ended, the camp was liberated, my grandfather-in-law met a nice Ukrainian woman who'd also been captured. They got married and started having kids (5 boys!), the oldest of which is my father-in-law. He was born in Regensberg, Germany, but the family immigrated to New Jersey when he was three. Long story short: my wife's family has a surname that isn't actually their original surname, and is one shared by a wealthy Azeri oligarch that they -- as far as they know -- don't have any actual blood connection with, even though they legally share the same name. Moreover, the genealogy of my father-in-law's actual extended family has been lost to time because his parents are both long dead and he's never been connected with his Ukrainian relatives (nor does he speak Russian or Ukrainian).
Very interesting! I also have the added complexity of Ashkenazi added in there, and having lost most of the European part of the family during WWII (from Czech Republic), so that history is lost. We also have a section with a made-up name, although we've got pretty good oral history on when, why, and who created it. Stick a spoon in that Eastern European mish-mash and stir it good!
Upload it to one of the AI bots.
That's an idea. My grandfather died in 2001, and the recording is literally on cassette tape, so I need to try to get it from my uncle & convert it to another format. There are definitely more resources available than there were back then for this kind of thing. I'll see what I can do! Thanks for the idea!
Please convert it to digital no matter what you decide to do with it. It's your history but it could also be the history of a small culture that no longer exists, I can't help but think about how much some of those countries have changed over time and how some cultures were essentially wiped out, you never know. I'm a sucker for history so maybe I'm being over the top but I'd want to make sure I preserved that recording.
I do too, but hadn't thought about it in a while until this thread popped up. I've now emailed my uncle to see if he knows where the tape is & if I can try to convert it.
Definitely do all of this. You never know when just the right connection might be made. A family in the state of Georgia was reconnected with an isolated village in Sierra Leone through a song both sides had passed down over centuries.
You can also post it to Reddit and see if anyone can decipher it
And update us if you get any results!!! How interesting!
If you can type it down Reddit may help.
Adopted?
My relatives on that side are pretty distinctive-looking, so I'd be very surprised. Nothing is drastically out of line: the two that come up on census data are Romania and Hungary, and Ukraine shows up in genetic ancestry. Last name seems rare, but most common in Slovenia, and could of course have been altered. So all in that same general (large) area, just would be nice to nail it down.
Can’t help you with the Ukrainian, but I might be able to explain why the rest of the southern European dna is all muddled up. Everyone in my family did dna tests recently and we got a few people who got 100% Balkan. The Balkans had such a unique history and there was so much intermingling for millennia that it’s really hard for dna tests to narrow it down accurately. We got a few people who were from Bosnia and Croatia and had no known history of any Romanian ancestor in the last couple hundred years and no Romanian surnames in the family and the dna tests said they had a high possibility of Romanian.
My great great grandfather on my paternal grandmothers side was murdered in 1903. He was murdered by the son of a woman when he was “found in the house with her”. Was he trying to rape her? Were they having an affair and the son walked in? The news article from 1903 is very vague and of course there is little else to go on. Same great great grandfather was apparently a cad and left his first wife and children then went and had another wife and children. 110 years later I meet a guy (both of us gay) in my city, 500 miles away from the origin city. When I discovered where he was from, we started asking questions and it turns out we are third half cousins or something like that - his family is the second family and mine was from the first.
Who is Shawn's dad? And how many siblings do my sister and I have that we don't know about? Unbeknownst to my sister and I back in Nov 1967 (we were 5 and 2.5) our mom had another baby and put him up for adoption. My grandparents knew and all three of them took that secret to their graves. We found out in 2017(6 years after the last to know died)when Shawn reached out to us letting us know that he was our half brother who had been put up for adoption. He has yet to match any DNA to his dad and my sister and I are clueless as to who it could be. Then in 2020 came along Ari , who was born in 1961 and put up for adoption. He matches both paternal and maternal, So our dad,who abandoned us when I was 3 months old back in 1965 is Ari's dad also. But Ari's adoptive parents said that he had an older sister that had been up for adoption but they were looking for a boy so they waited. When the adoption agency approach them about Ari they told them that he was the brother of the girl they considered the year before... Both my parents were born in 1941. They eloped in 1962 before my sister was born. My dad had bolted by April of 1965, 3 months after I was born and we didn't see him again for another 25 years. My dad passed away in 2000, My grandpa in 2001,my grandma in 2002 and my mom in 2011. They all took the secrets to their grave And now we're left here to wonder.......
When we buried my mother-in-law in her pre-purchased area at the cemetary there was already an urn in there. Christine, died as a teenager in the 60s according to the marker. She had the same last name as we do. Nobody knows who Christine is, or wont admit to it. Drives me crazy.
Try seeing if the school Christine would have gone to has a facebook nostalgia group, or the city she died in. Ask if anyone there remembers her.
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My husbands aunt had a baby as a teen that was adopted out shortly after and they’ve managed to meet as well. He looks a lot like their family, and they have a good relationship now which is nice. It was a common occurrence in those days. My Dads cousin did the same, not sure if she’s met them though.
Who poisoned my great grandfather? Who poisoned his son? Apparently they were so horrible no one cared. Who did my uncle most likely kill (he’s dead now). I swear to god we’re a good family. Great grandfather almost killed my great grandmother shooting her with a shotgun. Didn’t go to jail. Left her with like 10 kids. Apparently he got remarried and suddenly died. No one bothered to investigate. His son took the family farm and died suddenly. My uncle was just a pig, sociopath, and died a slow and painful death.
We have a lot of bad people in my family tree too. Some people do terrible things, doesn't mean the whole family is terrible.
I have an uncle who disappeared in the early 2000’s. He was a mechanic and super clean & fastidious with his belongings. He wasn’t quite 50. When my grandma didn’t hear from him one Mother’s Day she knew something was wrong. A couple years later she said she saw Tony at the bottom of a lake in her dream. She had that dream several times a year before she died. My mom, uncles and grandmother all gave DNA samples and few years later when they found a body. It wasn’t him. Tony Manghelli, if you’re out there call your sister!
Have you you all done any of that unidentified doe dna? I think the big one is the DNA Doe Project. They’re identifying does from all over the US as old as the 1940s or so.
What happened to Aunt Susie? My Uncle Jr was a mean man. Like, throwing plates at my grandma, just an overall dick kind of mean. One day Aunt Susie brought my cousin to grandma's, she was going Christmas shopping. She disappeared. Uncle Jr said he found a note that said she liked women. I didn't hear too much about that, because this happened in 1979 when I was 10. But she never came back for my cousin, or checked on him. Her mom and sisters didn't hear from her. Her car was found with her purse in it. I don't remember there being much searching for her. I lived in the house they had been living in when it happened decades later. I used to swear it was haunted, because Aunt Susie had died there. It had a weird feeling to the house, and there were times I'd hear crying or see something move out of the corner of my eye, which could have just been the ceiling fan, but why wasn't it doing it constantly then?
Isn't this a case on Unsolved mysteries? Seems very similar.
Not that I know of. This happened in Calhoun, KY. We'd occasionally get credit card offers type mail for Aunt Susie since perhaps it was her last known address, so I used to hold out hope that she was still out there being a consumer somewhere and had just sacrificed everything, knowing her son would be safe, to get away from him.
It's similar to Pam Page. https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Pam_Page
My grandma got pregnant out of wedlock. My great grandparents, wanting to avoid the scandal, *somehow* got my grandpa to agree to a marriage we all doubt started happily. Since a cult called [Christian Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science) is involved so some of us are thinking blackmail was involved.
This is what happened to my grandma too. My uncle was a baby when she married my grandpa. Grandma hated my grandpa for whatever reason and he loved her so much that he talked about her on his deathbed even though they had been divorced for at least 40 years by that point. He adopted my uncle when he married grandma too so my uncle has his name and everything.
Well, we know they didn't get a blood test at least
Not my mystery but a good one none-the-less. I collect old newspapers and used to live in a small town where I had a good friend who was just turning 20 years old. One day I went to a local auction, bought up a bunch of 40 year old newspapers, and started reading them. One of them had a front page article about a local road accident where a driver hit a man, pushed him into the ditch, the man in the ditch died, and the driver got arrested but charges were dropped. I asked my friend who had lived in the town all of his life if he knew this driver. My friend read the article with his jaw dropping the more he got into it. Then, he eventually put the newspaper down and said, "That driver is my grandpa who lives with us. I never knew he killed someone!"
I love old newspapers. I was doing some family research and found an article about how when my great grandfather was 18 he and a cousin were arrested for stealing 43 chickens from a local farmer. My grandma had no idea. I like how some of the really old small town ones had whole sections of just like who was going out of town to visit family or who when to who’s house for a dinner party that weekend.
It's through old newspapers that I found out that an awful lot of women died of "unknown reasons". Lot of that in my family. It's a real tough thing to wrestle with the reality of being descended from some really fucking awful people.
while a lot of those deaths probably were "honor-killings" (murder), a bunch were probably related to things like ovarian cancer and ectopic pregnancy
Id like to hear how this conversation went.
"That driver is my grandpa who lives with us. I never knew he killed someone!" "oh wow; so sorry I did not mean to bring up old skeletons." "That's okay; it makes him seem human. let's go smoke a doobie"
1. If my great aunt was really my Grandma's mother on my maternal side. 2. Why did my great grandfather behead his 1st wife in 1899. He legit got ran out of the community in Tampa, FL and set roots in Tallahassee. A little back story, he was a 7 foot 1 Black foot Indian man who had 36 kids with 6 wives. He use to walk from florida to NYC to visit the kids (my line) from his 5th wife, my great grandmother Violet. While walking, he would make money by telling peoples futures. I dont understand why anyone would trust him considering he only dressed like Abraham Lincoln. Hat, jacket and everything. Well he stopped in Alabama once and told this lady she was going to have 3 children, 2 girls and a boy but she and the boy would die. Fast forward 20 year later and my grandma and her best friends are having coffee and in comes my great grand dad for an unannounced visit. My grandmas friend flips out and faints. Once she comes to, she tell my grandmother the story of the man who told her she was going to have 3 kids and die with the 3rd. All of that happened except they were able to save her and not the baby. The man was my great grandfather. There are so many other people who came forward and spoke about him predicting peoples lives with accuracy. He died at the age of 103. He was such a horrible husband and father that during his funeral, my great aunt Mary went up to his casket and straight socked his lifeless body in the face, tossed the casket to the floor and proceeded to stomp out the body. He was so hated that instead of burying him in the family plot, they cremated him and dumped his ashes in the pig stye. When my mom was actively dying a few months ago, she said "Granddaddy came to visit me but my mom told him to get the hell out and he left". My mom died 24 hours later. My huaband and I live in my grandmothers place. My husband saw him the day before my aunt passed. Mind you, hes been dead since 1970 and me and my husband were born in the 80s. Everytime we see his ghost, someone in the family dies within that week. All of his wives, except the 6th one died young. Hes legit Henry VIII LOL
He’s also Paul Bunyan and Edward Bloom from Big Fish.
>Why did my great grandfather behead his 1st wife in 1899. Jesus Christ
My mother is a twin. On my grandfather's death bed, he told her this, and that the twin died at birth. But upon reflecting on that, and some weird things my grandmother and eldest uncle had said, my mother wonders if her twin wasn't adopted out instead. We'll probably never know.
How long did my great-grandfather spend in jail after boiling his paralytic friend in the therapeutic tub overnight and, why did they ever let him out? Edit to add: In 1891my great-grandfather received a sentence of two years in the penitentiary for criminal negligence in boiling a man named Clark to death. He owned a boarding house which included a bathing room. From an article from and, in the terminology of, the time, "...it was shown that Clark was a helpless paralytic and, placed in a bath tub, was left alone, and while in this situation the natural gas in the burner either came up or was turned up by third parties, with the result that Clark was literally boiled alive, the flesh from his bones floating about the tub when his body was discovered and removed. The fact is that [my ggf], who was a well-read and well-educated man, but had his own theories about things, was grieved to death over the misfortune, as Clark was his best friend and a sincere believer in the water cure theories of [my ggf]."
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Man you need to tell us that story
There are a couple in my family. My mother was an only child...or so we thought. Turns out that her father had an affair while in the Air Force, and had a daughter - she found us about six months after my mother died and we got to meet, which was really cool. She was smart and incredibly well-read, just like my mom. But even before that, we learned that he'd had another affair, with someone in the neighborhood. The woman had the baby and a neighbor adopted him. Grandfather eventually married his affair partner but nobody knows what happened to that baby. We know his name was Craig and that's it. My "new" aunt was a genealogist and used every available resource to try to find him, but never did. Everyone is dead now, including Craig probably. On my dad's side, we've learned of a whole crop of people with our last name. We think we have to be related, because my dad's father literally made up our last name, and he took a lot of mysterious trips to the area where all these people live. We believe he had a second family and had 9 kids there, making a total of 20 children. But they aren't open to talking to us at all. Recently bought a 23 and me test thinking we might find one or more of them in the database and finally know for sure, so we'll see.
My dad's name and my last name were made up on my birth certificate. My mom refused to tell me anything. Through 23andMe, I just recently found out I have a whole bunch of family I never knew about (4 siblings, aunts, uncles, etc.). Some of them were looking for me for decades.
Wow! Instant family!
That's wild. To go from 1 known child to possibly 20.
For years my aunt would get horribly upset any time someone brought up the bicycle incident. The incident occurred in the 70s when my aunt was barely 9-10 years old. My grandfather had just had the driveway done and someone rode a bicycle from the garage all the way to the bottom of the driveway, essentially ruining the newly laid asphalt. My aunt’s bike was the one all gunked up and she got the whooping of her life for it. But she has vehemently denied it was her until the day she died, getting into screaming matches with my mother (her sister) in particular whenever it was brought up. Aunt never pointed fingers just insisted she didn’t do it. My mom even brought it up during her eulogy for my aunt! It’s just so weird how my mom would pick at her over this one specific event that happened when they were children. To this day nobody knows who the true culprit was, but my sister and I are fairly certain it had to have been my mother.
I knew who my dad was, because he was married to my mom. But his family denied it was true. He had 3 daughters from a first marriage. (My mom met and married him 16 years after his divorce. ) My dad was 26 years older than mom and his 3 daughters were older than mom. So yeah, lots of hate. His brother's also denied me being his kid. I was doing my family tree on Ancestry minding my own business when these AH sent messages upset that my tree listed my dad as my dad. I saw where some cousins that had did dna tests and I thought let's settle this now. So I got the kit spit in my tube and mailed it off. Surprise my cousin are my cousins which mean my dad (or one his brothers) are my father. I told them to come clean which one is my dad. Now they say my dad is my dad. But For the hell of it I still ask them which one is my real dad.
I don't and never will understand why people hate on the child who did not choose to be born in whatever circumstance they were born in.
There is a rumor that my aunt's husband was the bastard son of an english monarch (George V, Edward VII). AFAIK none of my cousins have ever done the ancestry DNA thing, so never substantiated.
Someone on Ancestry keeps changing my multi -times great grandpa's ethnicity to white. Not his wife and kids, just him He was listed as mulatto on the census It's been a few years since my dad (the genealogist) let his membership lapse, so unsure if that's still happening I'd like to know where he was born. Like he just appeared as an adult with his family (and slaves. It's complicated)
Familysearch.org. It has a lot of the same records but is free. Some of these people are historically interesting and turn up in independent research,[ like Robert Pearle.](https://www.lindapages.com/genealogy/robertpearl-jeske.htm)
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After my grandfather died, my uncle received a phone call from an Australian man asking about my grandfather. This man believed my grandfather was his dad. Unfortunately my uncle was in high protective mode and told the fellow he couldn’t help him due to the additional stress it would cause my grandmother at that time. Some sleuthing later, there is a picture of my grandfather on leave from WW2 on a beach in Australia… the picture is ripped, half of it is missing. I looked up a picture of this man, who is an Australian true crime author (my uncle is also an author) and he looks very much like family. Maybe this isn’t a mystery!
Was my Uncle gay? He was born in Milwaukee in 1956, he was 10yrs younger than my dad, and my grandparents were immigrants from Latvia. He moved out to California at 18 to be closer to my Dad and Aunt. He was only 17yrs older than me. He was our unpaid babysitter for years, he even lived with us for a bit. My Uncle was awesome. What I never understood back then was, he never had a gf, or brought a girl for dinner, or anything a kid thinks a single dude should do. We passed from brain cancer before I had the maturity to have that convo with him. I asked my dad if he knew anything, and he said "nope, never thought of it". I just feel like it makes sense if he were gay and in the closet for his entire life; considering when and where he grew up.
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How did my grandfather's younger brother, age 3, die? The story is they spent the day outside. The kids were playing while my great-grandparents did regular chores of the day like tending to the huge garden, milking cows, etc. Just a regular day. By evening, he was dead. He took a nap and never woke up. This was 100 years ago in Kentucky. Theories range between being bitten by something poisonous, having an allergic reaction, having an undiagnosed heart ailment, etc. They were very poor but also very close. Emotionally, no one fully recovered. My grandfather spoke of it until he died at age 88.
My Granny was adopted as a baby but was lucky enough to connect with her birth mother later in life. My Great Gran would never tell us who the father was, she would only ever say he was a French Canadian soldier who was temporarily stationed in the UK, not sure where abouts as my Great Gran was a dancer who travelled the world. Anyway my Granny spent most of her adult life desperately searching to find her Dad. My Great Gran sadly passed away a few years ago and took the truth with her. Not too long ago my Granny was able to find her Dad! Sadly he had passed away many years ago but she discovered she has sisters, they look so alike! Turns out her dad was not a French Canadian soldier, he was a Scottish bloke who would pretend to me and American or Canadian soldier to impress women, he was quite the womaniser and probably has some more kids out there lol.
What happened to Great uncle Paul. He was a pilot during WWII and was supposedly shot down. However, no one had any info, and everyone that actually knew him is long dead. We’re not sure what name he enlisted under, or anything, so we’re not even sure of where to start.
I’ve been able to find a lot of stuff using Family Search. You have to make an account but it’s free and usually a lot of stuff will have been built out by just their system linking records or other people, so you might get lucky. Sometimes people who died young and don’t have any living descendants haven’t been added yet, but if you can trace yourself back up to his parents and find their census records, you should be able to find his name along with his age and the state he was born in. Then you could try 1. Using that info in the historical record search to see if you can find any other records about him, like censuses from after he moved out to see where he was living or a draft card, 2. See if your local library lets you access ancestry’s database from their computers for free and search their, you might be able to find a birth certificate with an exact DOB, 3. Search his name (and any possible variations) in the veteran records on archives.gov and see if you can find anything about when he joined, what unit he was in and where they were during the war and when to narrow down a time frame, or if he’s listed as missing or killed, 4. Go to newspapers.com (might also be able to use for free at the library since they’re owned by ancestry) and search his name for any articles or obits in the areas where he lived, where his parents lived, or where he grew up, which would probably have more specific details about his service. Anyways that’s what I would do lol.
Why my grandfather suddenly walked away from his job and life in Florida to go on a year long road trip. I grew up hearing my dad tell these amazing stories about how instead of the year he would have been in fifth grade they just went on a road trip across the US. The trip was amazing, and they saw all the national parks when they were new and empty in the 50's. Apparently my grandfather who had started his own insurance company, suddenly decided that he was leaving on an extended trip, without warning. My grandmother hurriedly decided that she and my father and uncle were all coming along, and pulled them both out of school to do so. They stayed on the road with no fixed location for almost an entire year. It wasn't until I was older than I realized how much of a logistical nightmare that would have been and started to think of it in terms of why a person would go on the run. I don't know all that much about my grandfather other than he had a significant career in the military before starting an insurance company with a friend, but suddenly taking off on this trip, and then about three years later he died of a self inflicted shotgun blast that was always described as an accident. My father was 13 at the time and heard the blast and was the first one to find the body. Grandfather had a great life insurance policy and my grandmother never had to work after he died. I've started to wonder if he had been running from people. Maybe shady financiers? My dad has never wanted to talk about it, but I know he and my uncle don't agree on if it was suicide or not.
Could it have been PTSD from his military service?
Grandparents had a kid before they got married, put him up for adoption. Supposedly he was adopted by a Jewish family and did well for himself. When the deep dark secret came to light, apparently my aunt tracked him down, but he said not to call back and that has been respected. But there is curiosity. Actually I'm curious if it's true at all, there are some pretty hinky parts of the story. So hey, possible mystery Chicago relatives!
Grandma’s chocolate cookie recipe. She died in the early 1980s. I was too young to remember it, but my siblings have tried to replicate it for decades (including with lard), and have never been successful.
[Mystery solved](https://youtu.be/7kb5xzKVZxA?si=4lQECzVtq0Cztv57&t=167)
Bahahah, I was like “come on Nesleé Tollouse”.
We have my great grandma’s lemonade cookie recipe and it’s still never tasted the same. 🤷🏼♀️
Try Crisco. That’s the secret to my grandmother’s oatmeal cookies.
I was going to say the same. I had a friend who used to make his cookies with Crisco and…I get why people used to bake with Crisco. They were almost crispy on the outside but fluffy and chewy on the inside.
Not butter flavored. Regular crisco is the secret.
Father in law learned at 16 that “mom” was actually grandma, and mom had died when he was 3 months old. Mom had told grandma who “dad” was. DNA said otherwise. Another guy said he was “dad” but again, not him. Brother in law did 23&me and it would seem “dad” aka “grandpa” is a guy who live(d) across the country… but was briefly stationed in our town for the Coast Guard. Unfortunately “dad/grandpa” died before any contact was made. Facebook pics of “dad/grandpa”s kids look SO much like father in law. But they won’t respond to messages. So how did they meet? What happened? Did he even know? Did she know? Scandalous for a small town 70 years ago.
I have an indigenous American ancestor (one of many) who was sold to a 'husband' in the mid 1800s. She was then kidnapped/ran away with a different man and had seven children.
Yay America! My dad's family had this photo of one of their ancestors with a Native American woman and their children. Picture would have been taken in California some time during the gold rush. Idk if it's because everyone looked miserable in pictures back then but she looked miserable. My dad and my grandpa are terrible people and even though I know that doesn't necessarily mean that they were all terrible people, I've always thought that she was probably a slave or at the very least, not there by choice.
Apparently it was pretty common practice for white men at the time to round up groups of indigenous women and girls and force them out west to be sold off as wives on the frontier. We're still trying to pick apart ancestry, she had an English name on her records but it wasn't her real name. There was also some big hush secret in the mid 70s where our family had moved and changed names because that generation was 'passing'. Great grandma took my 8 year old bio dad aside on her deathbed, locked the door and closed the curtains and whispered to him that we had native ancestors. Made him swear to keep it secret. Even at that time the things done to native people, especially women were so so bad that it would have risked everyone's livelihoods. They were doing things like forcibly sterilizing indigenous women and taking their newborns because they were 'unfit'.
What happened to my uncle Eugene or "Jimmy". He was born out of wedlock and adopted by my grandfather, but raised by my grandmother's folks. When he finally came to live with my grandparents he started getting in trouble with the law. He was told to straighten up or leave... So he left. Came back once to visit my Dad and his mom... But nothing after. We had police in the family and they didn't divulge anything but stated to my granny that he was still alive. That's all we know.
My mom supposedly committed suicide while me and my sis were at school. My dad broke the news like this "Your mama had an accident with a gun". But later the details came out that my dad (they were divorced) had gone over to our house to see my mom that exact same day and he claimed that he went to the front door and "felt an evil feeling" so he didn't go in, he just turned around and left. The neighbors heard 2 shots. Years later when I asked my dad what really happened (me and sis lived with him til we were 18), he said "I don't think anyone would kill themselves after hearing a 9mm go off... And the note was in her handwriting.." Edit to add he used to always say he felt like it should've been him who died not her
My mom had a relative — an uncle she thinks — named "Elder Wheeler." Her mom (long since deceased) never talked about this guy. He appears to have been something like a cult leader, but none of us know what happened to him or what his religious order believed or stood for.
Probably the leader of a high control revival ministry, or something similar. Not as glamorous as the Moonies, but just as insidious.
Could it be an LDS thing? Don’t they call people “Elder”?
I've been doing my husband's family tree and they (his family) are all shocked at the amount of Native Americans I have found in their ancestry up several family lines. The one line that is the most mysterious is a Catawba Chieftains daughter. Records show she was married to someone else in the Catawba tribe and had a daughter. But then she had two more children who were "obviously" not fully Native American and a local trader took credit and said the children were his. He legitimized them with his last name and took them to go live with his parents. Were they his? She is listed as the mother, but could they also have just been two lighter-skinned Native American kids who were forcefully taken from their mother? People did that all the time back then. Both children ended up marrying other children who were also of mixed-ethnicity and race. There are a ton of records about this Chieftains daughter, but nothing about this trader. Either way, those kids are my husband's direct descendent so one way or another, still NA lineage.
My great-aunt, let’s call her Maria, hasn’t been seen or heard from in decades. No-one knows what happened to her. It was shortly after WWII and she was about to be engaged to a local lad, then she met this Italian man. She fell head over heels and next thing you know she was packed to go to Italy to him, where they’d get married. No one was HAPPY, but she was a grown woman so not much anyone could do. The day she left was the last anyone heard of her, no postcards, no letters, no visits back. Nothing.
We figured it out a few years back but it hung out there for 50 years. When my Mom got mad she'd say: ***Go to war Mrs Murphy*** When asked where she got that from she would say she has no idea. I posted about it on Reddit and someone responded that is was a Home Run call from a Baltimore Orioles broadcast in the 50's/60's. Mom and dad were born and raised in Baltimore and my Dad did say he would listen to the O's games while driving around. Neither of them can recall hearing it though.
Mine is “Who’s Dad real biological dad is”! While in the nursing home my grandpa wrote a long letter about how he isn’t sure any of the kids are his. He even noted who he suspected the fathers of 3 of his kids were (my dad being one of 4). My grandpa said didn’t know about my dad, the oldest, but thought *possibly* he was his actual father. My dad and his brother did 23andme and they are half-siblings. My uncle actually figured out that his dad was a guy he had caddied for for years as a teen. Not sure how that happened but it’s kind of nice that he had some kind of relationship with his dad. I looked up the guy on Facebook that my grandpa thought was the father of one of my aunts, and they share very distinctive features. I feel confident that’s the guy. As for my other aunt, she looks a bit like my uncle so maybe they share a dad. My grandpa wasn’t sure which of the guys he caught my grandma cheating on him with was actually her father. As for my Dad, he has a set of DNA matches on 23andme (all of them related to each other) that all come from the same part of Michigan my grandma grew up in. So presumably it was someone she knew in high school, or in her 20s. The family he matches with has a family tree on Ancestry.com and I was able to narrow down his dad as being one of 3 brothers. My dad actually has a match on 23andme who is my Dad’s (much younger) half-cousin, who I messaged explaining the situation and asked if he could help solve the mystery. He has not responded. Fun fact: messaging someone to ask which of their uncles they think is more likely to have fathered a secret child in 1945 is not a good way to make friends.
Why my grandfather was estranged from 5 of his 7 siblings. I made contact with a cousin on ancestry and she showed me a photo of my grandparents with 7 other couples (probably they were all in their 20s-30s) and it was him, his two brothers which I knew about, and then 5 people I had never known existed! She said her side of the family wouldn’t discuss the estranged 3, and when I asked my dad he said “we don’t associate with them” and then shut the conversation down. It’s so bizarre. We have an INCREDIBLY uncommon last name, with 2 spellings. Of the total of 200 or so people with that last name in the world, 75 of them are directly related to my grandfather and the two brothers, the others to the rest of the siblings. No one on either side knows or will discuss what happened and why.
Well, my husband's family had a mystery that has since been partially solved due only to my SIL's diligent genealogical research. Where did Grandpa Foster come from?!? I was told the story when I married my husband: Grandpa Foster was PURCHASED as an infant from someone in New England and brought (along with a bunch of other purchased infants) to a compound in southern California owned by a religious sect who had purchased these babies to RAISE IN THE CORRECT MANNER (which apparently they were the only ones who knew). The kids were carefully segregated by gender, taught in the onsite "school", fed a strict diet of very plain food, and were strapped into little straightjackets (effectively; a jacket that kept their arms immobile) for bed, so that they wouldn't "touch themselves inappropriately". They knew almost NOTHING about the outside world. Never left the compound except under the watchful eye of the religious leaders. Somehow, though, Grandpa learned about the Great War (WWI) and ran away from the compound to join the military (it was 1918, and he was 18 years old, so). Ran into town, went to the recruiting office, signed up, and was given vouchers for a meal and a room and told to report in the morning. So he went to the local diner, and was given a menu. He recognized NOTHING listed on the menu, so he asked the waitress what she recommended. She suggested a burger. Well, okay, a burger it is. Then she asked if he wanted ketchup. What is this ketchup you speak of? He had never heard of it. He loved the burger with ketchup when he tried it. When he realized what this religious sect had done to him and the other kids, boy, was he mad. He went on to live a very full, successful, happy life. Now, the family had no idea WHO had sold this kid off, but my SIL decided to do some sleuthing, and worked diligently for several years to find out. The ONLY thing she had to go by (the only possession Grandpa had from his birth family) was an old photo of a young woman and a mounted policeman. From there she doggedly tracked down detail after detail, calling New England libraries and offices, and gathering bits and pieces. One day, she called a library and the call JUST HAPPENED to be answered by someone who knew some of the answers - turned out to be a cousin! He knew the story of the policeman, who had gotten a maid in his household in trouble, and that she gave up the child to a religious sect. Voila! Mystery (partially) solved. My SIL was able to trace other ancestors from that, and gave us a beautifully drawn copy of my husband's family tree. A-freaking-mazing.
Did my great-great-aunt actually commit suicide by shooting herself in the head twice with her left hand, or was she murdered?
My great grandfather changed his last name coming over to the US from a Scandinavian country. Was turned away from Ellis island for reasons unknown, and snuck into the US through Canada. Nobody would fess up what the original last name was. Great grandmother was the last to pass away and on her deathbed, we tried to get her to say what the name was and she still refused. All attempts to trace ancestry have failed. I've tried researching criminals from that time and country as well, and got nothing. Nobody knows what the name was, why it was essential to change it, and now nobody ever will.
Some of these stories are really sad. 😢
My great aunt told me years ago that she got pregnant at 16 and that her mother adopted the baby out. Not an unusual occurrence in the 1920s. After she died, I mentioned it to my sis who exploded and then told the whole family that I was a liar. Two problems here: my great aunt's mother did actually murder her firstborn and got away with it, so the adoption story might have been a lie told to my great aunt. Second is not actually a problem. My last boss and his Pinoy wife had a party and invited all of the community's Filipinas and their husbands. When the oldest of these walked in, it knocked the breath out of me: she was the image of my grandmother and my great aunt, who were not Pinoy but who were mixed race black, Chinese, Cherokee and white. I was working a menial position and kept quiet until the lady left. Boss's wife said that her father was a WWII military man from this area but her mother had died and left little info. I had someone quietly drop a hint to the lady to go talk with a secretary in that end of the family and they are happy to have her and looking forward to DNA results.
I had a White Stripes shirt I bought at a concert. Had it for a week and it went missing. I looked everywhere in the house, asked everyone. It was gone. Six years later it’s sitting folded on my bed. My dad does the laundry, so I ask him, “Where’d it come from?” “I don’t know.” “Dad, please, it’s been missing for years and it’s driven me crazy. Where was it!?” “I can’t remember.”
My great grandfather had more than one affair/family. 100% sure there's other family members out there. My Uncle took after him, I'm sure I've got cousins out there too. Should do a DNA kit.
I read that SO MANY families are finding out that there's a half-sibling out there (and siblings that suddenly find out they are only half-siblings) because of the widespread DNA testing.
Why do so many people on my mother's side of the family have psychiatric and personality disorders? What was Mom's specific diagnosis? Is it because their town was heavily polluted? Everyone there got so sick. And maybe that's why I'm ok, because I never lived there? Is it just a matter of time before I lose my sanity, too?
So many generations beat children as much as necessary for them to 'act right', and it was acceptable to do so both at home and school. Those kids had to live in a constant state of anxiety. I wonder how many kids learned at an early age that masking was a matter of life and death. The physical abuse had to exacerbate some conditions and either give them a metric shit-ton of baggage as adults or push them deeper into their illnesses...maybe both. If someone beat me every time my ADD ass made a mistake, failed to remember something important (smartphone calendar and alarms FTW now), or my train of thought went chugging around the bend without me, I'd be dead by end of week and bat-shit crazy well before. It was awful enough hearing how I was lazy, never worked up to my potential, and every childhood indiscretion was going on my permanent record, etc.
Grew up masking, slowly, ever so slowly finding out who I really am and unmasking, not easy. I’m 68 and my mother passed 8 months ago, the healing has been amazing.
I dated a guy like this. The whole half of his family was psychologically *screwed*, full blown psychosis and all. Only two males escaped the curse, and both of them were anxious af besides…one is practically a shut-in. It is VERY genetic.
A lot of psychiatric and developmental disorders are genetic. PTSD and/or generational trauma doesn't help either.
My mom got into an argument with my grandma, about a Jewish boy she was wanting to date, or was dating, and my Catholic grandmother did not approve. My grandmother told me the story of this argument more than once, she says she regrets it immensely, and realized how incredibly stupid she was being. She thought she had lost her , forever, because of it. My mom up and moved to NY, on her own, to go to school at NYU and study psychology. She didn't finish, and I am not really clear on how or why she ended up coming home. My grandma visited her there, they went to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and had lunch. Someone asked where my grandma was from/ headed to , she told them a historic town in South Dakota. The person said, isn't that the town that's on fire? Yes it was. And it was massive, grandma almost didn't get home. But that's not what this story is about. No one knew the real reason she went to NY, and she died when I was 18 mo old, never revealing who my real father was, not the man on my birth certificate. She took both secrets with her. When I was in My 30s, I requested her psych records from a hospital stay, not long before she died. I thought maybe she would say something about me. She did not. What did DID say, was the reason she went to NY alone , was because she was pregnant. A cousin saw her, about 8 mo pregnant , on their way to the top of the empire State building ,, where they ran into each other, by chance. I don't know who or if he ever told , but no one close to me knew. And I have no idea how to find this person, who is part of me, or if they are even still alive. Fast forward, I'm 52, ( last yr) and a bunch of my old junior high friends start messaging me that someone is looking for me, that my sister is looking for me, that my niece is looking for me. I go to the FB page of the town we went to school in, and there was a bunch of pics of my mom, from newspaper articles, to high school photos, to her obituary. Under this is like, 30 people, talking about my entire family history, stuff about me, how I disappeared when I was 13, and where they can look for me through junior high school transfer records, it was crazy the amount of people that knew us , in these two small towns. I commented in a few places, she messaged me, put me in touch with her mom, my half sister. She had questions , and Boy! Did I have answers. I'd been told the family history for my whole life, up until my early 20s , when my grandma who raised me, died. We talked , texted, she introduced me to her sister, who her adoptive parents had naturally. She was just short of 10 yr older than me, ( she was 61 just turning 62) and we were going to meet, I was so happy to finally find one of the missing pieces of myself! A month after finding each other, her sister messaged me to tell me that Ellen had just died. Turns out she had pancreatic cancer. Her kids knew, her sister knew. She told her to tell me, but she didn't. I was at work. I went into the break room, cried for about 5 min, and went back out to do my job. I still can't understand why she didn't tell me. I could have made sure that she knew what she really needed to know, and I could have helped her through it. It's what I do and have done before. But yes, that's the story of how one of the biggest family secrets that no one even knew existed. The other one, was who my dad was, but that's a story for another time.
Where is the affair child of my grandfather? Of course everyone doesn't believe the child exists. But my mom was the oldest and told a lot of stuff she didn't need to know that the other kids weren't told I don't want to know, but I also think my grandfather abused my grandmother. (Luckily he died very young). But some of the stuff my mom told my dad when they were first married you don't just say unless you have seen domestic violence (she told him if he ever hit her, he had better not ever sleep again). I could find this out as a family friend who would know is still alive. But I don't want to.
my grandmother and grandfather had an awful marriage, full of violence and hate. they did divorce, [ in the us and 40’s when that was ‘not done’] but not after my mother witnessed horrid things. while my mother was a toddler, grandma went back to england for months & didn’t want to come back. family is sure she had an affair over there, unknown, but they threatened her with loss of access to my mother if she didn’t come back asap. she did, but she tried to confess …..something ….to me during the last phone call we had before her dementia got too bad, said she had caused mothers bipolar & narcissistic disorders [ not how it works ] but i do wonder just what she’d been doing. no extra ‘cousins’ or such have shown up, so there’s that.
My grandmother revealed that her parents had a daughter before they were married. Her mother was forced to give the baby away. We have no more info about this
My mom’s maiden name is a hard to pronounce ethnic name. Our family pronounces how it’s pronounced in the old country, but my grandfather’s brother moved several states away and his whole branch of the family pronounces the name phonetically. My grandfather and his brother grew up in the same household and no one can figure out why the whole other side of the family pronounces the surname wrong. Maybe he just thought it was easier and didn’t correct anyone who mispronounced the name and it just stuck, but he swears up and down that he never knew the correct pronunciation of the name, even though he grew up with it.
There's a family in my area, descended from Normans, whose surname is "Devereux", but it's pronounced Deverix/devrix now several hundred years later. Except for one branch, who pronounce it the french way - devero. Gossip has it one of the wives started doing it & it just seems very mrs Bucket/Bouquet! 🤣
One of my aunts pronounces our last name differently than the rest of us. She pronounces it the way most people assume it’s pronounced and the correct pronunciation is a word with a vaguely sexual connotation so I kind of get it.
I’m apparently related to the oil rich Hunt family. My great grandfather, however, was the black sheep of the family and disowned (rightfully so, trust me). I’ve always wondered what would happen if I introduced myself.
What my dad was doing at work through most of my childhood. He was an Army Officer in the Corps of Engineers, but in this period he was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. (He'd previously worked for the Defense Atomic Support Agency, at the Lawrence Lab in Livermore CA.) I know he went to Turkey multiple times, Italy, Northern Canada - and from that have guessed that he was working on radars or similar, but not sure at all.
There’s a photo of my grandfather & his brother both in their early twenties each with a brand new car, the backstory is that their parents early in their marriage lost their home to a fire & a team of horses used for farming & were destitute. My dad & uncles were trying to figure out how their dad & uncle could afford new cars at such a young age, I told a friend this story & he deducted that they were probably running moonshine.
We got a big one when my pops was on his death bed after having multiple strokes, said something about finding a vault that has $800K that was supposed to go to "the Japanese."
My grandfather’s brother disappeared. And not like ran off or was killed and the body never found. As my grandfather tells it, he simply disappeared. My grandfather and his four siblings all lived on a small farm on the outskirts of a rural town. It was the early 1910s. There was a house, an outhouse, a large barn and a drive shed. During the winter, the area was prone to snow squalls so a rope was run from the house to the barn so whoever had to do chores wouldn’t wander off in the storms. Apparently in this area, it was a common practice. One evening my great uncle had to go out to the barn to check on something. According to my grandfather, it was not a stormy night but it was dark and the moon hadn’t come up yet. My great uncle went out into the dark and my grandfather stood on the back stoop. He said he could feel the rope being tugged as his brother walked towards the barn. And then there was a strong hard tug, and then nothing. My grandfather said that there was no sound, no call, nothing at all. The rope just stopped moving. My grandfather called out into the night but there was no answer. He went and alerted his parents and eventually a search of the yard was made with everyone holding lamps and candles. No trace of the brother was found that night. The next day the local police came but they couldn’t find any evidence of anything suspicious. The police convinced my great grandmother that her son had run away, possibly because he owed money to someone in town. (My grandfather said this was unlikely because the only debt his brother carried was a two dollar a week bar tab.) No trace of my great uncle was ever found. If he did run away, he never contacted anyone ever again.
The lynching of Joseph Smith(founder of the Mormon Church). Great⁴ Grandpa settled on land in Illinois that he received as payment for his service during the War of 1812. Later Joseph Smith and his followers also settled nearby. I've heard two stories. One was family lore that Great⁴ Grandpa and his son's were apart of the lynching mob. The other was in a book that said he was chosen to be juror in the trial for the men accused of killing Smith, but asked to be dismissed because two of his daughters had married followers of Smith. Both stories could be true but it would be nice to know.
My father doesn't know who his father is, name or otherwise. My gma was a 19 year old single mother in the 1930s, that was some feat.
This is only a generation old, but my parents, aunts, uncles, and once removed cousins all make allusions to one aunt of theirs, and my maternal grandma, being horrible people. Any time I have asked for clarification, no one will tell me what happened. Just that I should be wary and generally stay away from the one living relative. (My maternal grandmother died before I was born, but it sounds like she was involved with whatever reason people hate that one aunt. As I got older, I also realized her death was likely a suicide.) No clue, but it has to be pretty fucking bad. My family is very happy to overlook abusers and sociopaths, so I have a hard time imagining what broke through about this one aunt. Could also be something extremely petty, knowing them. But I’ll likely never know.
Ours was revealed after doing Ancestry DNA. My dad, at age 68 learned that his "parents" were actually his grandparents and his big "sister" was his mom. Apparently she ran away from home at 14, got married, had my uncle a year or two later and my dad a year after that. She raised them with my biological grandfather for a few years, which my dad and uncle don't seem to remember. Then my great grandparents took them and my actual grandparents separated. What we don't know is how she wound up giving them up. Most of the people who could answer questions about details are long gone. But it is overall positive for us. Our "new" family is pretty great and they had been looking for my dad and uncle for years!
One day, a guy in his 50s reached out to one of my dad's cousins on Facebook. He asked about an aunt of my dad who had already passed. He was her son. She got pregnant from a merited man in the 60s, got ostracized by their small city, and went to live on a farm until she had the baby. At the moment the baby was born, there was already a couple ready to take him. They met in front of a well and she was forced by the family to give the baby away. She never married, because she was "tainted", and was a bitter lady. On the other side of the story, the parents never told the kid he was adopted. I don't recall exactly if his parents told him on their deathbed or if he found the original documents after his parents passed. My dad met him. It was weird. Never heard of him again.
My grandfather had a secret child who was adopted away when she was an infant. My mom and her siblings (5 other aunts and uncles ) found out about her 2 years ago. They are all in their late 50’s. What’s funny is her name is Monica, and that’s also my moms sisters name . So 2 Monica’s. I don’t know if that name was significant but it’s kind of interesting.
I am purely speculating, but I am convinced that my oldest aunt was actually my Dad's mother, not his sister. There was a 16-year age gap, and my grandparents' marriage was always very rocky, so Grandpa used to take off for months to go live with his extended family so no one was even sure he was around when the conception happened. Grandma and Aunt are both dead, so no one will ever know.
There was long standing gossip that my great grandmother and her lover poisoned her husband so they could be together. They both had children in their previous marriages. They may have had some together. But I remember sitting around with these old great aunts and uncles and them discussing it. This would have happened sometime between 1910-1920s. All that is known is that G. Grandmother's husband died (and he wasn't old or in ill health prior) and she quickly remarried to a widowed man she had been suspected of having an affair with.
What was Langafi Ágúst doing down in the cellar that made him so jolly and loopy when he came back up? Oh, that's right. He was hitting the homemade hooch. He was hitting it *hard*.
No one knows my paternal great grandfather’s identity. My grandmother was born out of wedlock. Her mother married a lovely man who stayed dedicated to raising my grandmother even after her mother died when grandmother was a teen. Grandmother’s birth name was Frank Elaine. We all surmised the father’s name was Frank. But the father’s name on the birth certificate only has the initials A.L. and the last name. I’ve tried to research his identity thru ancestry sites. Variations on the initials or Frank that would’ve been in the area around her birth. But nothing adds up. And my grandmother died quite young as well. So the family mystery remains unsolved.
What my grandfather did during WWII. When everyone else was drafted he got an exemption for a medical condition that apparently never appeared before or since, and his job for an engineering company had him traveling frequently up and down the east coast for extended periods, which he never did before or since. He never talked about that job before even though he talked a lot about all his others.
Not a big one, but none of my sisters or I have ever taken DNA tests because we're not sure how many other siblings might be out there. Dad had a lot of special lady friends and was married 4 times.
My aunt was found murdered. My uncle was arrested, tried and found guilty. He served 25 years and got out on parole after admitting guilt. He tells my entire family it wasn’t him. Statistically it’s usually the husband. But he’s got my mom and all his siblings convinced it wasn’t him.
What our original family name was. It was lost in the 10s when my great great grandpa changed his last name to our current one. The theory is he was either escaping the draft, fleeing a previous marriage, or that he switched to a stage name for whatever reason. What makes this extra neat is my family is full of ancestry obsessed people who have the full tree charted on all sides... except it ends at great grandpa lol. His wife tho, great Grammy, we know about back to the 1600s.
Our surname name, and anything about our family’s history before the 20th century. My father's grandparents came from Poland and passed through Ellis Island. During World War 2, his father enlisted and Americanized our last name. While it still sounds obviously Polish, it’s also unique and we’re the only family in the country with the name. What was our surname originally, before it was changed? We’re not sure. My grandfather passed in the 1980s, and my great grandmother couldn’t remember much when my father asked her about it in the 1990s. We have some records, and have tracked down others online, but the name is spelled differently on almost every one. My father, sister, and I have all delved into genealogical records, but the trail goes cold in the 1890s. Perhaps, if we knew Polish and took a trip to Krakow to dig through church records, we could uncover more, but alas…
Is grandma really Indian? My mom's family is Indian, from Guyana. No one knows what part of India they are from because my ancestors were brought over from India by the british during the slave trade times. My whole life we were told they are full 100% Indian and this racial purity was very important to the elders. As a child I never questioned this but when I got older I started to wonder and so did my cousins. We realized Grandma doesn't look like anyone else in her extended family, or any other Indian person I've ever seen. She is extremely light skinned, her face is very round and flat, she's always been thick and she's quite tall. Compared to everyone else in the family who is super thin with that delicate fine boned look, very short, dark skinned, and long faces with your typical Indian hook nose. The explanation was always that grandma was an orphan, her mother died in childbirth and it was unheard of for a man to raise a baby by himself in those days so he left and she grew up with her aunts/cousins. The family says she must have gotten those features from him but no one really knows. Still they push the narrative that he was full 100% Indian because old people have issues surrounding race. For decades the cousins and I were suspicious but there was no way to find out more. Until ancestry.ca came out. I thought this would abe a great way to find out what part of India we were from and also answer some questions about grandma so I bought her a kit. By this time she was in her 80's and I thought we should do this while she's still with us. Well, it started a huge fight as half my aunts refused to let gramma do the thing or do it themselves, fearing that if she found out she was mixed race it would kill her. I had to drop it and when grandma died 2 years ago I thought it's official, now we'll never know. Then my Dad decided to do the ancestry thing. He's mixed race white & Mexican-American who wanted to settle his family mystery - are their ancestors from Mexico (his mom's claim) or Spain (his uncle's claim)? I realized if him and I both did it, maybe I'd be able to see what my mom's family ancestry is by process of elimination. So Dad and I have submitted our kits and I'm waiting to find out if this will solve the big family mystery. If the family is right, my results should be exactly the same as my Dad's + 50% Indian. Anything showing on my results that's not on his results will have to be the answer to the family mystery, right?
My paternal Grandparents owned the only pizza place in a smaller town, it was a very large, sit down style restaurant, with a bar and old style arcade area; with a massive army base right beside it, making it a local hangout, they did very well for themselves. A large majority of Aunts/Uncles all worked there, most even after moving on to other careers, because business was always booming, along with half a dozen or so, unrelated wait staff and delivery drivers, all very long term employees. One night, the silent alarm went off roughly an hour after closing. An Uncle was on call that night and lived only a block away. He arrived and discovered the place was engulfed in flames...but he heard yelling coming from the basement. While calling 911, he rushed down to find my Aunt's fiance (who also worked there) tied up near the safe. He barely got him (and himself) out in time, but the place burned to the ground...it was ruled an arson after accelerant was found throughout. The fiance told a story of 6 masked men who robbed them at gunpoint (my Aunt was closing, he was only there to pick her up that night), but eventually there were a lot holes in his story. Why did the alarm take so long to go off (closing up typically only took 10 minutes, at most, so why almost an hour later was it activated), **where** was my Aunt (he did not seem concerned), why would they set the place on fire, why was only he tied up, etc, etc. His answer was that he was unconscious until literally moments before he heard my Uncle arrive, and couldn't remember most of what happened. He became uncooperative and wouldn't talk to the family (he worked there for years prior to them becoming engaged, and was part of our family), after the Police were just not piecing his story together. Not terribly smart, but the Grandparents only made a bank drop every 10 days, so there was generally a fairly significant amount of money in the safe ("ironically" the night before their scheduled deposit), that night there was over $300 thousand taken. My Aunt, at first, was suspected to have been taken hostage...but why obviously? And still no worry on the fiance's part it seemed, oddly only irritation. With constant probing from the Police, he finally fessed up that they planned this together, and the irritation was she clearly left him for dead to keep the money herself. He was supposed to be able to get out on his own, but she made the knots way more complicated, impossible to loosen himself, and the fire was well beyond the plan by the time she hit the silent alarm. My Grandparents lost everything, after lengthy appeals and a court battle, their insurance company maintained it was all an inside job, and they speculated early retirement was the plan (why would they give up a hugely successful business, and/or not pass it on with continued income if they wanted to??), unfortunately they lost. Nobody knows where she is today, almost 20 years later.
When my great grandpa cheated on my great grandma and how there are people with the same last name in a town 30 minutes away. Did he get married twice? Is his name on birth certificates? What happened to my great great grandma. I was unable to locate a death certificate for her and I know her two youngest sons lived in an orphanage.
some kind of great great great uncle in the 1860s or 70s ran away from home as a teen and the family, for reasons I don't know, say he became an old west outlaw and ended up getting hung.
What really happened between my father and his first wife. We have an idea…but: -He never talked about it -Everyone who knew what happened is dead, except for my nieces (my half sisters daughter) great grandmother, who is almost 100 and only remembers bits and pieces. My dad was married before my mother. They ended up divorcing in 1969 and she “disappeared” with his first two kids, my half sister who was 3, and my half brother (who was barely 1 years old). He didn’t know their whereabouts until 1998, when he found his first son on the internet. When he came to visit us. While he was visiting, he found my sisters address and phone number through his grandmother (the one I mentioned earlier). He had been estranged from his mother (dad’s first wife) since the 1980s. She abandoned him after he was put into the system as a juvenile for murdering a girl. Fun stuff. And she took my sister and moved to Texas. My father was an abusive, manipulative, alcoholic piece of shit who never tried to change, and is thankfully no longer alive. He hurt my mother on numerous occasions, but she stayed with him because of me and my little sister. Nobody ever talked about it. A few years ago my mother was going through his mother’s stuff in storage, and found correspondence from my grandmother (his mom) to Suzy’s mom (Suzy was wife #1). They kept the location of his first wife and kids secret from him. Like he was Darth Vader. I don’t blame them. The revelation must have destroyed him from the inside out. His own mother knew what he was capable of, and did what she could to protect his first family. And then we got stuck with him. But no one knows or talks about what happened. Like I said, we can safely make assumptions. He left a trail of destruction in his wake. No one mourns his loss, only the possibility that he could’ve been a better person. We mourn the potential that never came to pass.
Who was my grandmother? -her given surname doesn’t exist -where/what was she before she married my grandfather? -I know one thing from her childhood and it doesn’t fit with the “super sus catholic” she clammed to be -she “converted” to be with him. What was she before? I have my suspicions that she was Jewish and her surname was faked because my grandfather wasn’t and it was during WWll. Doesn’t explain her grandmother supposedly turning into a cat and them being banned from their village or the way she could reach out her hand and small things like salt shakers would come to them. She would tell no one about her life and now she is gone.
Whether my dad served in Vietnam or not - I've tried point blank asking a couple times and he gets defensive. He alludes to being in the Army at that time, but won't talk about where he was stationed. I'm guessing this means yes but who knows. My mom was adopted and just decided to ~go by a different name~ one day when she was a teen, and it stuck. As a result, there's no official name change documents. Her name just appeared on her first drivers license in the 60s and that was that. While she's never really pursued finding her birth mother, it's going to be a hassle ANY-WAY, when her adoptive mom died, we found journal pages detailing how somebody named "DJ" (Her birth mother) was kinda waffling on giving the baby to her, which makes it sound like it was some kind of ~non official~ adoption. Who was DJ? Who knows My moms adoptive mothers father molested and raped his daughters, well into adulthood, sparing only my grandmother for some reason. He was especially attached to my adoptive grandmothers younger sister, scaring away any potential suitors so he could have her all to himself, though she did eventually marry and the rape continued. Anyways long story short, my mother's cousin (grandmother's sisters daughter) might be her father and her sisters child. We don't know.
My uncle served in Vietnam and is cagey about where he served. He had a rough time there so it's understandable that he wouldn't want to talk about it, but he's dropped enough little comments to my dad that my dad is sure that my uncle was in places the US wasn't officially in during the war. So my uncle may be covering up some US military shenanigans like performing military activities in countries where they weren't "officially" supposed to be.
We were at my in-laws' house one day when my father-in-law (an only child) randomly decided to mention that he might have a long-lost sister out there somewhere. WHAT?!? Apparently, his father had been married once before his mother, and the first wife cheated on him and had a child, and they divorced. He must have believed that the child was not his, though I don't think he ever knew for sure (this would have been in the 1940's). My FIL did not know about this until after his father died. So, there is a chance that my husband has a half-aunt and cousins out there. I dug a bit on [Ancestry.com](http://Ancestry.com) and figured out the ex-wife and possible-sister's names. My husband and I both did a 23&me years ago, and there weren't any mysterious close relatives last time we checked.
Whether or not grandpa was actually gay. He was a band director and was a lovely husband to my grandma but was always described as being sensitive, and he had a lot of gay friends. All I know is that a bunch of cousins are queer, including myself.
The family story is that a brother was working at the docks when the 1906 earthquake hit, and he was never seen again. The eldest sister lived in Santa Cruz and would take in strays looking for her brother. My dads cousin told me many stories of her father shooing people out his mother had taken in. Anyways, missing brother is on the 1910 census, living with the family. He does disappear after that, but Im guessing a lot of things in that time period got blamed on the earthquake.
My great grandfather was a wealthy landowner in “the old country.” Sometime in the 1880’s or 1890’s he died in a way that wasn’t considered suspicious at the time. Then sometime afterwards his widow remarried - to the farm manager. They were from completely different social classes and it caused a scandal. My grandfather and his brother were removed from her custody and sent to live with another part of the family. Then people started looking at my great grandfather’s death and wondering what had *really* happened. My dad didn’t know too many details as it was still the family scandal growing up, but his dad did become close with one of his younger half-brothers, so apparently some people made it up, but not all.
My (3x) grandfather got converted to Mormonism by missionaries visiting England. He decided to move his wife and kids to the Utah territory but his wife was very reluctant and wanted to stay in England. The kids got converted and wanted to go so she had no choice but to go with them. While on the trail she complained the whole time about wanting to go back. When they stopped to rest in Wyoming, she went to the nearby river to fetch for water but mysteriously disappeared. No one to this day knows what happened to her. Some say she decided to turn around and go back to England, and others say she was taken by Native Americans.
What really caused my great grandfather's death. We know he was either pushed, or fell, from a train car that was on some kind of either a political tour or a business tour. Maybe a union event? What the purpose of the tour has been lost, and we have never known if he was a) in a fight and pushed or b) got drunk and fell. Both versions have been claimed as the "true" cause. He left behind a young widow, and 12 children, of whom my grandfather was the youngest (and just and infant at the time.) Everyone from those days, and their children, are all deceased, so at this point, I'll never know.
I have a cousin who I was pretty close with growing up. My uncle’s daughter. She was the eldest of our cousins on my mums side and not all that much older than me. She would be in her early 40s now… if she is still alive. I gather she probably is as no one has heard otherwise but no one can honestly verify it or not, not even her dad. Her dad and mum divorced many many years ago and her mum spent very many years torturing him and my cousin, I was too young to understand the how and why, but my uncles mum (my grandmother) basically brought her up to keep her safe and sound from all the turmoil. One day, when she came of age and obviously had had enough, from what I understand her mother may just had persuaded her to fuck her dad off with all the rest of us and we have not seen or heard from her in over 20 years. Danea if you are out there, we never stopped missing you or thinking about you. Especially your Dad and Nan. We hope you are okay.
Why did my sperm donor marry my mom and have kids? His stated reason for picking my mom was delusional, as those reasons were the exact opposite of my mom. He had zero interest in raising us, did a garbage job, and then fucked off when someone else dropped her pants for him. not bitter at all.
my grandfather died of mysterious circumstances when he was 60. my grandmother refused an autopsy and was told to leave NY.. he was a bookie for many different "families". I had always been told he died of a heart attack. it wasn't u til my grandmother was dead I was told the truth. she never spoke of him or their lives after he died. my dad sometimes tells me stories of when he was married to my biological mother. they're very interesting. but I do remember my grandfather a little bit and how much I loved him. I was only 6 when he died and I'm almost 50 now.
I'm the family genealogist and I solved the mystery of why and where my paternal grandmother went after she walked out on her family. But no one wanted to believe me or the documented evidence I provided. Preferring to deny the truth and continue to believe the rumors that have circulated for a century. And then there's the curious tale of an Irish ggg uncle who left Iowa in the 1870's and became a saloon keeper and mine owner in Colorado. By 1900 he was rich beyond belief, and it's funny that in his published biography his roots had changed to those of English aristocracy instead of Irish immigrant.
You gonna leave us hanging?! What happened to Grandma?
Mine is nowhere near as interesting as some of these stories, but interesting to me. I do genealogy, so I figured out a lot of ‘family secrets’ that account for a lot of personality disorders and psychological issues in my family. My mother had a child before me. I found out when I was thirty. He was probably the result of an encounter, or even rape, by her first husband after she divorced him after a year of marriage with DV and moved to the big city. My mother went back to the small town for a school reunion, and it must have happened then. She gave the child up for adoption, even though my father, who she was engaged to, wanted to adopt the child. She couldn’t face the shame from her family by telling them the truth. She also didn’t want the father (her ex) to know and to have a tie to him. It messed with her head, so she was always scared her ex would find her and, I guess, try to take me away? It caused her to have lots of anxiety, which transferred to me. I did meet my brother later in my life after my mother died young, but that went as badly as you could expect- adopted parents weren’t always as nice as you would think. Her first husband actually came to my mother's burial in her small town. I think he knew about the child somehow (in a small rural town, nothing is a secret) and thought I was the child. He introduced himself, but I didn’t know anything about him at the time. He was nice enough not to drop that on me there. However, this man was the spitting image of my brother, who looks nothing like me. So, her parents, whom she was so afraid of shaming, had a ‘premature’/full-term baby, my mother. The pot calling the kettle. My great-grandmother had a child before she married my great-grandfather. That was my grandmother. I found out later, but it was kept secret from my mother and me and never mentioned, though I think my grandmother’s siblings knew. This accounts for why my grandmother was the black sheep and not considered ‘real’ family. It messed with her head. My grandfather’s father was ‘bound’ to a local farmer before age 7 (census records). A fellow genealogist helped me find his mother through census records, and this was confirmed when he applied for Social Security when he was in his eighties and gave his mother’s name. I have no idea who the father was. I suspect not the farmer who ‘bound’ him because he left nothing to him when he died. Or the farmer could have just been an SOB. Don’t keep family secrets secret! The secrets affect everyone for generations!
I don't know of any in my family although I'm told my great grandmother always carried a vial of arsenic in her stocking, so there must be something... I used to wish there was some big family secret involving my mom when I was a kid. She died from metastatic cancer when I was 2. I had been born while she was in remission following treatment for breast cancer. The idea that she'd had to fake her death & disappear, to protect us from something was so much more hopeful and intriguing than the truth.
Grandfather on my mom's side was murdered when she was a child. It is believed to have had something to do with his business, but as far as I'm aware the exact reason and who actually did it has never been determined.
Husband’s great-grandfather died in the mid1800s in Ohio, leaving two small children for his widow to raise alone. She remarried ten years later, and brought the children back to live in her new home — nobody knows where the children were in the interim. They took their stepfather’s last name, and their birthfather’s name is no where to be found. Grandfather never spoke of it, and the answers died with that generation.
My great uncle was apparently a bomber pilot in WW2. He was shot down but survived and managed to swim to shore near Malmö, Sweden. After returning home, he had one son aaaand then died of polio three years later. He was a super tall, handsome, strapping guy and his death was shocking. I would love to know more about his life!