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Old 11-12-2017, 08:35 AM
 
4 posts, read 3,070 times
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And why

I would say finding out my great great grandfather leaving my great great grandmother when she was 6 months pregnant is up there
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Old 11-12-2017, 07:04 PM
 
Location: Chicago area
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Finding out that in the 1890's one of my ancestors flipped out and shot her mother, killing her. She waited for her husband to come home and shot him through the door. He lived. She then committed suicide. There were two infants in the house, They were untouched. So sad.
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Old 11-13-2017, 08:49 AM
 
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I found out that a son of one of my 2nd great uncles (I knew this uncle until he passed) died from burns suffered from a fire. He died a very painful and tragic death. He was my uncle's namesake and died before I was born when he was only a teenager. It was very sad finding this out for me.

Also, I found out via interviewing my great grandmother that her father left/abandoned her mother and her brothers/sisters when she was a preteen. The lived a very hard, poverty stricken life after he left. His story, according to her was like those odd things you see/hear about on TV/movies whereas he said he was going out for a drink at the neighborhood bar and he never came back. He left the family in the 1920s and grandma said he died in the mid 1960s and he'd been using a different name but listed her as his "next of kin" so she had to pay for his final expenses. She was still POd about it in the 1990s when she told me about this. I didn't like this story primarily because I adored my great grandmother. She was a wonderful, and wonderfully strong, creative, responsible woman and she told me how hurt she was over his abandonment. Her mother was kind of an eccentric and grandmother didn't like the, what I call, the "uniqueness" of her own mother. She was the oldest daughter and was very close to her father and thought he had come to harm when he never came home. They heard through the grapevine in their neighborhood that he was alive but had left town. He never contacted the family again.

I also get upset because she never told me what pseudonym he was using so I've never found a death record for him. But she said he was living in Indiana.
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Old 11-13-2017, 09:44 AM
 
Location: North Carolina
10,199 posts, read 17,776,123 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeySam View Post
And why

I would say finding out my great great grandfather leaving my great great grandmother when she was 6 months pregnant is up there
I've learned not to be too judgmental about stuff like this - you don't know what happened between them. My great grandfather was always painted by our family as the man who abandoned his wife and 2 young children for another woman. And my poor great grandmother was left to raise two children alone on a waitress's income. I have come to find out it was actually my great grandmother who left him, and for the first few months after she left, the kids stayed with him. Additionally, through DNA, I found out my so-called great grandfather wasn't even the father of the children, so my great grandmother had an affair while they were married, which produced the children. So yeah, the rosy picture that was painted of my great grandmother being the wronged saint was kind of a lie and I suspect the reason why great grandfather wasn't a part of the children's lives after the divorce was because he knew, or at least suspected, that they weren't even his biological children to begin with.

Things aren't always what they seem.
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Old 11-13-2017, 05:29 PM
 
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thats about two hundred years ago, somebody in my tree was the bastard child, and took the madian name. My dna matches no one
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Old 11-13-2017, 07:54 PM
 
Location: United State
663 posts, read 494,800 times
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Originally Posted by PA2UK View Post
I've learned not to be too judgmental about stuff like this - you don't know what happened between them. My great grandfather was always painted by our family as the man who abandoned his wife and 2 young children for another woman. And my poor great grandmother was left to raise two children alone on a waitress's income. I have come to find out it was actually my great grandmother who left him, and for the first few months after she left, the kids stayed with him. Additionally, through DNA, I found out my so-called great grandfather wasn't even the father of the children, so my great grandmother had an affair while they were married, which produced the children. So yeah, the rosy picture that was painted of my great grandmother being the wronged saint was kind of a lie and I suspect the reason why great grandfather wasn't a part of the children's lives after the divorce was because he knew, or at least suspected, that they weren't even his biological children to begin with.

Things aren't always what they seem.
Very True. I agree with your post. It sounds like maybe his great-grandmother was having an affair got pregnant with another man's child and the great-grandfather found out and left her.

We really shouldn't judge our Ancestors Actions and Wrongdoings we don't agree with. We may think we know all the facts of a Story but in reality, we probably don't and their two sides to every Story.

My great-great-grandmother had an Affair but I don't judge whatsoever because I don't know what was going on in the Marriage at the time or what their Relationship was like at the time and all the circumstances. My great-great grandparents had a healthy happy marriage that produced Nine Children but obviously, at the time there was some sort of Marital Issues. I was not there so I don't know what was going on for which reason I can not and should judge.

One of my great-grandmother (who Daughter gg-grandmother) also had an Affair and got Pregnant from another man. again I don't judge her at all!. My great-grandfather was very abusive, drunker, and a womanizer who cheated repeatedly during 16-year Marriage. My great-grandmother only cheated once near the end of their Marriage.

We all humans and make mistakes. Our Ancestors were Humans and di things we may or may not have agreed with. Neither my great-great grandmother or my great-great-grandmother were the type of Women's who would just 'mess' around' on their marriage for the heck of it. They didn't go out looking for it


Also, stories about families that come down through generations can get change a little bit which we should be careful of. Just because a story is told about an Ancestor does not mean all the facts or the whole story is true. There is half false and half-truths to every story and always two sides. In these types of stories, we don't always know the whole story or the actual truth.

Last edited by NorthwestResident; 11-13-2017 at 08:08 PM..
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Old 11-13-2017, 10:07 PM
 
Location: Columbus, Indiana
993 posts, read 2,283,596 times
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I discovered a distant cousin committed suicide when her newborn daughter was a few months old, it was attributed to "post-partum psychosis"

I also found that a 2nd great-uncle was beaten to death by a gang of men several months after the Civil War ended. The men were acquitted, despite several witnesses testimonies that the beating was unprovoked. The murder was declared to be "an affront between soldiers."
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Old 11-13-2017, 11:22 PM
 
Location: The High Desert
16,037 posts, read 10,600,825 times
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Two of my ancestors (brothers but not direct ancestors...but nephews/cousins) were dragged out of their house by a mob, lynched on lamp posts, eviscerated, and partially eaten by the mob in 1672 in the Hague...a little disconcerting. Otherwise, there have been a few suicides or questionable deaths in more recent years. Only one murder and he had it coming...she was acquitted.
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Old 11-14-2017, 01:34 PM
 
16,212 posts, read 10,763,907 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PA2UK View Post
I've learned not to be too judgmental about stuff like this - you don't know what happened between them. My great grandfather was always painted by our family as the man who abandoned his wife and 2 young children for another woman. And my poor great grandmother was left to raise two children alone on a waitress's income. I have come to find out it was actually my great grandmother who left him, and for the first few months after she left, the kids stayed with him. Additionally, through DNA, I found out my so-called great grandfather wasn't even the father of the children, so my great grandmother had an affair while they were married, which produced the children. So yeah, the rosy picture that was painted of my great grandmother being the wronged saint was kind of a lie and I suspect the reason why great grandfather wasn't a part of the children's lives after the divorce was because he knew, or at least suspected, that they weren't even his biological children to begin with.

Things aren't always what they seem.

I agree with the bold. I mostly get sad about my 2nd great grandfather leaving because of how it hurt my great grandmother who I adored.

However, as I noted her mom - my 2nd great grandmother was "unique" she was rather strange/weird and honestly many people in the family believe she may have had a mental illness. So I wonder if she was the reason why he left, if she did something/said something that was just a last stray for him. I also wonder if he wrote and 2nd great grandmother never shared that information with my great grandmother when she was a girl. They had to move to a rougher part of town after he left and moved often within the same neighborhood due to financial difficulties so he may not have been able to keep up with their moves/new addresses.

I never told her my wonderings though as it was a tough thing for great grandma to talk about.
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Old 11-14-2017, 06:05 PM
 
510 posts, read 897,279 times
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Not my least favorite, actually a pleasant surprise, but certainly the most shocking--I matched DNA as first cousins with 2 women who are sisters. We didn't know each other, lived in different states. It turns out my grandfather and their grandmother met in a bar one night, and nine months later their mother was born.
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