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For this thread, let's leave out the last 100 years since being a "player" becomes more common in recent years. So let's talk about prior to 1914, preferably in the 18th or 19th centuries.
By a "player," I mean that as a polite was of saying the man or woman slept around with multiple partners, with or without marrying (usually without), and had children with multiple partners.
I just discovered my great-great-grandfather was quite a player back in Sweden. Gustav was born in 1838. At age 20, he and his live-in girlfriend Anna had an illegitimate son. Then a year later, Gustav had a son with another woman Christina. Then a year after that, Gustav and Anna have a daughter. So far that's three illegitimate children in a small town in Sweden between 1858 and 1860.
Then 2 years later, Anna and Christina and their kids are in their same town, but Gustav is in another town living with Carolina, and they have a son in 1862. After Gustav, Carolina and their son move residences a few times, Gustav apparently leaves them, and in 1871 he's living with Annastina (short for Anna Christina), a 4th woman, and they have an illegitimate daughter 1871. Finally, he marries Annastina, and they have a son in 1873, Gustav's first legitimate child, and then they have my great-grandfather in 1876. They went on to have another son in 1878 and another daughter in 1882.
So this guy, in the course of 24 years, has 9 children with 4 different women. Only the last 4 were legitimate. There are no records of any of the women dying, and only two of the children died young (the last child died in 1882 only a few months old, and the 3rd child--Gustav and Anna's daughter born in 1860-- dies 1869, but Gustav is long gone by then. )
On the bright side, he recognized all the children as his own in public records, but he didn't marry the women, and he disappeared from their lives. Sweden fortunately has very detailed records.
So needless to say, I now have many cousins (some of whom I've met online) who are all descended from Gustav, who spread his DNA around like some sort of Johnny Appleseed around Sweden.
Have you found any of these "players" back in your tree?
I haven't found any players of that caliber in my family tree...yet. My great grandfather had 16 kids by three different women but was married to two of them. The first woman he had a son with but never married and never denied he was his child. When the little boy was three his mother died and the boy went to live with his father. Actually, according to court records, he was 'indentured' to his father and the papers read like any other indenture document in that he would live there till such and such an age, be fed, clothed and educated and at a certain age would be 'released' from indenture, given money and "a suit of clothes". I don't think that ever actually happened though because he was simply raised in the family like all the rest of the kids but he was the oldest. In the Civil War this oldest son was Captain of the company he, his father, brothers and most of his cousins and in laws were in.
My great great grandfather 'might' have been a "player". He is the father of my great grandfather above but we don't know anything about him. There was a family with his last name in the area but several sons so nobody is sure which one is the correct one. Corresponding with a family of that name, from that area, I found out that there was one man of that family who was known as something of a "player" and his exploits were in both W VA and East. KY.. No marriage record has ever surfaced. The story is that this man was killed in a horse race when his horse went under a tree limb, breaking his neck. My granddad always used to say he was probably in a "race" with the posse and the "limb" had a rope attached! lol As much oral history as I've read about my family, and all the families of that area, it's strange that nobody would know this man's first name, etc.. My great granddad was born a couple of months after his father's death and was raised with the same name as his half siblings and mother's first husband's name. DNA has proven the connection with 'real' family.
My grand uncle's wife was a "player," and though she pledged several times to knock it off, she always made a return to back alley loving. The fact she had two young children did not seem to bother her. Finally, her husband just walked into the drug store where her latest (and very mouthy) young boyfriend worked and blasted a very large hole through his heart in front of four witnesses.
Wifey took to her bed from which she gave a press interview claiming to have no idea why her husband would have done such a thing....and it was certainly nothing she had done. Her father, standing beside her, added that her SOB husband would undoubtedly try to tell all sorts of stories to save his skin.
Unfortunately for the wife and her father, after a year a half of legal proceedings, in the last hour of testimony on the final day the husband's attorney casually asked the coroner what was on the body of the victim. When letters were mentioned, he asked to have them produced. He asked his client whose writing was on the envelope.
"My wife's."
The attorney read the letter aloud to the court...it was a steamy, salacious scorcher. He read a second one, and then requested the jury to take the several letters in with them for their discussions. The letters confirmed every thus far unsupported allegation her husband had made about her conduct.
The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter instead of that of murder as charged.
I have not been able to trace her whereabouts after the trial. I do know that my grand uncle went to live with his daughter after serving about twenty years in prison.
We had one of those incidents in our family too. My granddads brother was divorced at the time but evidently having a 'steamy' affair with some married woman. This was back in the late 1920s. At the time he owned a diner on Main Street in this small town in CO so everyone knew where to find him if they wanted. The woman's husband wanted to find him and did. Great uncle shot the guy when he came after him, right in the middle of his diner at lunch time! Lots of witnesses but he still didn't get away with "self defense". He ended up spending time in prison. I found his name, prisoner number and place of incarceration online. I had heard that story since I was a kid though so it was no surprise. He married again after prison and we saw him often growing up.
The rate of illegitimacy in Norway in the mid 19th century was as high as 50% in some areas. It wasn't a matter of people being "players" so much as it was a cultural norm among non land owning families.
And guess who immigrated to the U.S.? Mostly it was landless people. So, most Norwegian Americans have a fair amount of illegitimacy in their family trees. I would extrapolate this to be true for other Northern Europeans who shared similar cultural traditions about land ownership and inheritance. (Since landless people could not inherit land there was not much point in marriage to produce heirs to the property.)
I mentioned this once in a lecture I gave about Norwegian genealogy to a roomful of Sons of Norway members. It was met with total silence and hostile stares. But it was reality, and has been very well documented.
I suppose that the children of my gggrandfather/ggggrandfather (he is both) by my gggrandmother could be said to not be legiitamte. He was born in Ulster and was an 'Orangeman'. My guess is his politics were active since he took off very suddenly (the way it is put in the family history I found is he 'had good reason to leave immediately') and got on a boat going to America. He left behind a wife and two children. Apparently they stayed. I'm guessing it was a surprise/and then wasn't for her when he vanished.
But he met another immigrant, my gggrandma, who was also from Ulster and they married. Since he was already married and they didn't do divorces then technically it wasn't legal. He had seven or eight kids with her. The oldest was the aunt of my ggrandfather's second wife. The first was a sister to the aunt. Took a lot of figuring to figure that one out. But then by legal codes of the time, all but the first of his kids were born out of wedlock, something left out of the family history.
Something I never thought of until I took 23 and Me:
I started a private email convo and genealogy photo album on FB between family members, telling them about the DNA test and how cool it was and how it matches you with genetic relatives from all over. I suggested it to all of my family hoping they would take the test and we could link up on there to make our info more informative.
A few older male family members who are normally active users of FB completely ignored the entire topic and to this day have not said one word or hit "like" on a single family photo that I have dug up on there, even ancient pics of gr. gr. grandparents they have never seen. They have been reading the topics posted, as their names are flagged as having viewed the messages. I have a feeling they are afraid to touch the topic because they might have a few kids lurking around out there in the gene pool and they are terrified that they will show up via these dna sites.
It used to be fairly easy to keep a secret of that nature before the prevalence of DNA testing. It's one thing to discover long-forgotten family secrets and quite another to perhaps discover current ones of living family members. It's a fine line to walk. I'm sure those players of 40 and 50 years ago never saw DNA testing coming!
Quote:
Originally Posted by 601halfdozen0theother
The rate of illegitimacy in Norway in the mid 19th century was as high as 50% in some areas. It wasn't a matter of people being "players" so much as it was a cultural norm among non land owning families.
And guess who immigrated to the U.S.? Mostly it was landless people. So, most Norwegian Americans have a fair amount of illegitimacy in their family trees. I would extrapolate this to be true for other Northern Europeans who shared similar cultural traditions about land ownership and inheritance. (Since landless people could not inherit land there was not much point in marriage to produce heirs to the property.)
I mentioned this once in a lecture I gave about Norwegian genealogy to a roomful of Sons of Norway members. It was met with total silence and hostile stares. But it was reality, and has been very well documented.
Ohmigosh, you gave this talk to Sons of Norway?? LOL! Talk about not seeing something coming!
Not a player -- but g-grandfather married 3 times: once in his 20s; she had 1 daughter (wife died of pneumonia). Once in his early 40s, she had a son (don't know wife's cause of death, but she is buried next to him and died before he married wife #3). Once in his mid 60s; she had my grandmother ( wife died in childbirth with my grandmother), so 3 half-siblings, all of whom grew up with their father until he died when my grandmother was about 8 or 9.
Sure. My father's stepfather was the Yiddish/American actor Ivan Busatt. He was a notorious player who kept a mistress in Montreal while he was married to my grandmother in New York. He also had dalliances in England and France.
Sad to say, he was not my real grandpa. He would have been delightful. My father's biological father was a horrible SOB whom my grandmother divorced at the earliest opportunity.
This just meets the 100 year criterion because he was born in 1887 and was an adult (and player) by 1914.
Well, I was told my great-grandfather used to like to drive 2 hours to the nearest big city just for a cup of coffee. Just a cup of coffee? SUUURREEEE, sure it was just a cup of coffee, sure. Great-gramps was doing something, or someone.
I know of no "players" in my family tree but I have heard stories of one "bad *****". According to a cousin who has been working on the family tree for over 30 years, he was known as "The Boss" and was inspiration for what today is the Irish Republican Army. My cousin thinks the roots of the IRA started with him and that there's a book about him titled. "The Boss" but she's been unable to find it.
Searching the family tree in Irish families is very difficult because the British were working hard to erase the Irish lineage and history. So in order to establish the family tree, she went to cemeteries and read the headstones. Irish at that time had a naming system in place that allowed anyone who knew it to determine the first born, second born and so on, based on how the parents named their sons. They were forbidden from keeping family records.
Another interesting thing she learned was the origin of the Irish dance. The reason Irish dancers don't move their arms is because the British forbade the Irish from celebrating. As the British soldiers walked the streets, they would look into the windows of Irish homes. But for the most part, they could only see the upper bodies of the residents. So the Irish learned to keep their hands tight to their sides and not smile while dancing.
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