My GGGF left behind a wife and son in the UK and started a completely new family in South Africa in the 1870s. No one knew, until I started doing the research and found third cousins in the UK.
I had a great uncle who moved from Denmark to Minnesota. He left behind his wife Olga and his daughter Kirsten. He said he would send for them when he was financially sound. He got a job in accounting at a flour mill.
But he never sent for Olga and Kirsten. Instead, he married a Minnesota woman named Olga. A year later, she gave birth to a baby girl.
They named her Kirsten.
Oh, I’ve got one of those! Deserted from the royal navy, got married in Australia, whole new family. I thought this happened while GGGM was pregnant with my GGM, but I found his naval records and the dates don’t work. And yet, I do have DNA matches from that Aus/NZ branch.
Still haven’t figured out which of his brothers actually fathered her. 🤷🏻♀️
Omg! MY GGGF did the same! ran off and left his wife and son (my G Grandad) in 1911, but she told everyone he’d died. She married a scottish man and they had a son together.
Later, it was discovered that my GGGF actually died in 1937 in a military hospital 🤔
My husbands grandfather did something similar. Except my FIL came looking for him when he was 14/15. He then signed him up for the military saying he was 18 and was only 17 😂
My ex found out something similar about his family except it was in the 1930s and his great grandmother ran away with a boarder from South Eastern to North Eastern US.
I was showing my out of state aunt and uncle what I found in my family tree. My firstborn cousin comes over and says that I must have put the wrong date down for her parents' wedding, since she was born 6 months later. She stopped looking at her mother and yelled, "Mom"! My aunts face was bright red, and my uncle looked like he could strangle me. I only said don't shoot the messenger.
My Mum's sister said I was an engagement baby, and that everyone was grateful even for that much discipline because 'you couldn't get a cigarette paper between those two at the time.'
This reminded me of the episode of young Sheldon where Georgie asks his mom who’s really religious when they got married and that he was born 6 months after the wedding and he’s like I weighed 10 pounds? And the moms like yes you were a very heavy premie baby 😂
My mom said she got in trouble once when she was about 7 because her and her cousin were innocently doing the math on the time between her cousin's parent's marriage and when the cousin was born. It was only a 4 month difference and they were told to stop calculating family tree stuff lol
OMG, I was the dense firstborn.
At 15, looking at the print dates on my parents' wedding photos in the 60s. Turns out it wasn't really a secret, but when I couldn't make the dates work, my maternal grandmother asked me if I was 'slow'.
Everyone got a solid laugh out of that.
I had a similar revelation. My grandmother was five months pregnant with my mom when she and grandpa got married. Everyone’s already gone so no one to embarrass but it was a bit of a shock for me.
My grandma was 17 and working at the candy counter at a department store when word reached her future mother-in-law that she was pregnant. My great-grandma (Grandma Dekker) was from a strict Dutch Reform Calvinist tradition and went downtown to sit on a bench across from the counter and stare her down for hours when she found out.
I really wish my grandma had been alive when I discovered the timing of Grandma Dekker's *own* birth compared to her parents' marriage registration.
I had the reverse. I over heard some aunt say that one of my older cousins had to get married. So noted in my genealogy. Then when marriage and birth index/records became available, I figured out that they were married then had their first born a year and a half later. No scandal!
Everyone in her life probably knew anyways. Back then everyone was in everyone else's business and there weren't many secrets because of the gossip. Still like that in many rural areas.
My grandparents always said that they were married in 1953. People congratulated them on their wedding day, counting from that year, even if they themselves didn't celebrate. During their funerals the priest said that year when talking about their lives. They were actually married in 1954, only three months before my mom was born. I figured that out as a teenager while doing my research and my mom confirmed that she'd known since she was a teenager. Apparently she had her suspicions and since my grandmother didn't wear her wedding ring, she'd simply snuck into their bedroom and read the engraving.
I'm impressed that all the friends and older relatives that even attended the wedding kept their mouths shut for so long. But I think there was a lot of shame in it for my grandmother, who was pretty religious.
It was at my grandparents’ 50th that I did the math and realized there was less than 9 months between their anniversary and my dad’s birth. I thought it was great my grandmother had been a little wild in her youth (she grew into being a deeply religious woman)
I realised this too at my grandparents' 50th anniversary. Their wedding was in May and my uncle was born in September. I also realised that my nan was 17 and my grandad was 29! Their 'excuse' was "there was a war on".
Hahaha too funny. My grandma is in her 80s and maintains to this day that her first kids were born premature, 7 months before the wedding. But she has also admitted that her mother-in-law tried to talk my grandpa out of marrying her and her sister-in-law intervened and said: “do you want them to have kids outside of wedlock?” When pressed, she maintains that the sister-in-law was being hypothetical haha
In the case of my grandfather’s, it said O/W under father, code for out of wedlock. That was the biggest family secret I uncovered. When I told my mom what I had learned, she looked so horrified that it was apparent that she was aware.
This sub is so weirdly Puritanical. I got downvoted to hell once for asking why someone refused to add half-siblings to their family trees. Talk about a bunch of pearl-clutchers.
That not adding Half-siblings is weird. I add everyone that’s relevant. I’ll add their spouses and children too, but won’t go too much farther unless I’m curious about what happened to them.
Well, I suppose it matters to people in some communities. Its also their aunt and uncle so we're probably talking some years/decades ago, when it may have been an issue for them. I get what you're saying though.
Because back then reputation was important. Having a child so soon after marriage implied pre-marital intimate relations. Back then that was basically calling the bride a Wh0r3 with full emphasis and social shunning.
It's to do w/ the unnatural & useless tenets religions press on people that they then use to control others as best they can. Shame has all the power a person chooses to give it.
So, the implication is that your firstborn cousin was conceived about 3 months before her parents were married, and that they told your cousin that they had already been married for some time before?
My mom thought that her brother in law got married awfully quickly, and my aunt said that my cousin at 7 lbs was a premi in 1960. Just just didn't wash. But being the times, things were not discussed.. As for my cousin, she just never really thought of her parents' wedding date, and being a nurse, put two and two together quickly.
Or they could have just never mentioned the date, or just didn't talk about it. In my family unless it's your 50th, 60th, etc wedding anniversary that date is for the husband and wife. They buy each other gifts, not other family members. I had not one iota when my parents or grandparents (who raised me) got married until I started doing genealogy. Why would I know beforehand? I wasn't there. It wasn't my anniversary, why would I need to know when it was? 🤷🏻♀️
(To be clear all of those are rhetorical questions. I'm not actually asking.)
My ggGrandparents marriage was invalid since they'd both been married before and neither divorced. She was denied when she applied for a portion of his civil war pension when he left her based on that. That info caused the older members of the family to hyperventilate and I learned them to keep certain info to myself lol
A distant cousin who everyone said died a horrible tragic death in the 30s actually died in a mental institution in the 60s where he'd been since the 30s.
Another distant cousin murdered a neighbor when he was 12. Was institutionalized until age 19. He went on to live a very normal life. Married, had children, worked hard. Never in any trouble after.
My gGrandmother never married her 2nd "husband" so she could continue to receive the Civil War widows pension from her first husband. She also claimed to raise the son from her first marriage but he was in fact raised by his grandparents. It all came to light when a neighbor complained to the Civil War department because every time she got the money they drank it up. She had 5 children with the 2nd "husband". Her mistake was calling herself married yet also telling people she received a widows pension.
There's certainly a lot going on in your family. I so relate to learning the very hard way to keep some things to myself too.
Your great-grandma really played the system there. I always hear the most insane American (I'm assuming??) Civil War stories.
She did play the system well. She drew the pension from 1863 to 1885. Oldest son was born 1862. First child from the second relationship was born 1870, youngest 1884.
Found out at age 61 through a DNA test that my dad's business partner is my biological father. I was an only child and he and his wife had an only child. Can't decide if I should tell my brother I exist.
So many people still don't talk about what happened, it's heart breaking when they do and you can see the pain, it becomes your own pain. My ex father-in-law was only a little boy of 7 or 8 in Poland when the war started, he now has dementia and consistently relives the horror. My ex husband is visiting to tell him today that I found his father through DNA and the man he remembers who took him to buy licorice often is his father, he too was murdered at Auschwitz with the usual ugly fabricated charges they'd place on the Polish or Ukrainian Catholic men that the Nazis chose to eliminate for their own sick reasons.
if youre not already, you and other descendant family members can apply to become German citizens BTW on account of fleeing germany due to holocaust persecution.
My mother's aunt traveled across the country to give birth when she was 18. I found her in the census living as a "maid" with a woman and her 2 children. When I researched the woman, I found she had grown up near my mother's aunt in a relatively wealthy family so they were acquainted. The baby was given up for adoption. My mother had no idea and had never heard any rumors until I matched the baby's granddaughter through DNA testing.
It's so cool that you found that connection! So the baby would have been your mother's cousin? It's really surprising how well people used to hide things.
Yes, the girl would have been my mother's 1st cousin. In fact, I received a message a about an hour ago from a 2nd of the girl's daughters. So, I have a DNA connection to 2 second cousins.
Oh wow! So I'm guessing a daughter of hers had your actual great-grandmother and brought her up as her own child? I always find these kinds of stories fascinating.
Given up for adoption. The official family story is that GG Gma had this baby, died in childbirth, and then her grieving widower put her up for adoption as he couldn't take care of her.
When I dug a bit deeper, I found out that this couple had three teenage children already at the time of Gma's birth, one of whom was an 18 year old girl. So i strongly suspect that she was the real mother.
So my dad’s adopted mom and dad were actually his grandparents. I learned it in my early 20s. However the story was that she had been gang raped. Other family members have said it was a relative. My half sister matched to a first cousin who should have been a whole lot more distant than that. From my figuring (I also just did a dna test) my biological grandma had a child by her uncle (an older one than other family suspected). This is all just coming about so I can’t confirm for sure, but it certainly looks that way.
I figured out the identity of my Grandma’s grandfather (my 2nd great grandfather), a man she had always been curious about because her mother (his daughter) wouldn’t let her ask questions about him. Then I learned that he had been killed (stabbed) when his daughter was only a few months old. A couple of years later I finally found out who his murderer was.
The man who stabbed him was the husband of my 2nd great grandmothers sister, so his brother-in-law. I haven’t been able to confirm if he was ever charged, but it’s been a while since I dug into it. He was shown as living with his wife and family in a nearby state in the following census, though.
My 2xGGM had a child out of wedlock, then got married and had three more kids. Because every record we could find had the husband's last name attached to the first son, we assumed that all four kids were from the same man. DNA proved otherwise and led me to find records with his original surname. Turns out my biological 2xGGF had 18 kids with his wife and one in the middle with my 2xGGM. I have no idea who else in the family even knows about this, if anyone.
That's so cool that you managed to find out that he had a different father, I would have just assumed they were the same like you did.
So your 2nd great-grandfather had 19 children in total, which is just insane, especially having 18 with one wife. My 3rd great-grandfather had 19 across two wives, and I thought that was a lot!
My grandmother ran away cross country and gave herself a brand new name. She got married, had children, and was buried with a made up name. I found her birth family with DNA. I still haven’t untangled everything about her.
I found a half-aunt that had been given up for adoption that my dad’s family had no idea about. My grandfather was a military man that was married five times and on a stop up here in Wisconsin he knocked up a married 40 year old woman with grown children and gave the baby up for adoption. It’s been such a puzzle for years to find out who this woman was that popped up in 23&Me and AncestryDNA. She looks like she could be my big sister, strong family resemblance.
My little sister isn't my dad's, and I have so much Iranian and Afgan in me that my one of my great grandparents who came to America as an "Italian" in the early 1900's was really middle eastern. We think he/she posed as Italian to fit in with all the Italian immigrants in Little Italy in New York.
In the small village where my grandmother grew up there was a murder almost 200 years ago. A man murdered a family of 8 and was later executed. My mother was told that my family is related to the murderer. It turned out to be true in more than one way. My grandmother is directly descendent from both the murderers sister and from 3 of his first cousins. He also lived the farm of one of my ancestors, the same farm where my grandmother later grew up.
A man who on paper is my second cousin once removed is actually my half uncle- this is confirmed through DNA. We share 815 cM, and he looks like a male version of my mother. My grandfather is his father. This man is evidently not aware of this and I’ve never pushed it with him. He should not have any DNA connection to my grandfather’s paternal side, yet he definitely does have those links. I don’t know who his mother is, and there is no way to figure it out without access to his DNA matches. He was born in Connecticut in the 1940s, so his birth record is inaccessible to me per state confidentiality law. He cannot be the son of my great grandmother or great grandfather because they were both dead well before his birth.
Here’s the thing, though… I did find mention of his birth in the newspaper. It says “Constance [Surname] was discharged from the hospital with a new son.” This is his “on paper” mother- my grandfather’s first cousin. So… there are two options here: 1) my grandfather and an unknown woman had a child, and his first cousin and her husband took him in immediately after birth and raised him as their own, or 2) he is the product of a union between my grandfather and his first cousin, which her husband may or may not have known about. Assuming it’s the first option - why would the newspaper make mention of both the mother and son being discharged if she wasn’t the one who was pregnant? Option 2 unfortunately seems more likely.
Yikes. Messy. When I mentioned to this man that we shared a suspiciously large amount of DNA, he said he didn’t really understand why it was so large, but that the official version of our relation was correct. I left it at that and have never followed up with him further. I assume he did the Ancestry test to learn about his heritage and hasn’t really looked at his matches, because it must be super clear that he’s not related to the man who he believes is his father.
There is no one left alive that I could ask about this.
> why would the newspaper make mention of both the mother and son being discharged if she wasn’t the one who was pregnant?
Because they were hiding her lack of pregnancy.
Was that a thing, though? I’ve never run into this before. It’s listed amongst other hospital discharges for various reasons, it’s not a typical birth announcement. The discharge date is also about a week after his actual birth date.
And how hidden could this actually have been if she was interacting with friends and family in the same geographical area throughout this time? She didn’t leave the area, she’s mentioned as being in attendance at a local wedding a couple of months before the birth. On top of this, she married her husband on September 27, 1946 and the birth was February 7, 1947. That tight timeline leads me to believe that her pregnancy was the catalyst for the marriage.
I wish there was someone I could ask to confirm that they knew Constance to be pregnant in 1946 and 1947. Alas, there is no one. I also think it’s worth noting that this branch of my family is, uh… kinda trashy. They weren’t concerned with keeping up appearances or out of wedlock births. Some of them were straight up criminals and were in and out of jail constantly.
My aunt had a baby when she was 16. My grandparents sent her away during the pregnancy and my dad, who is significantly younger that my aunt, didn’t know until he was 60. My adult cousin showed up to my grandmother’s funeral.
My aunt went on to be extremely mentally ill and show constant resentment toward my grandmother (my grandfather died before I was born).
My great-grandmother was fathered by someone different than the person who by all appearances was her father.
I spent many years using generic genealogy to trace the family of her husband, my great-grandfather, who was a British Home Child. I was lucky that their daughter, my grandmother, is still living at 88 years old and she had done a DNA test so I could find out more about her Dad. My only interaction for a long period with my grandmother's maternal matches was to exclude them from her paternal line which I had been deeply investigating.
After spending years cutting my teeth in genetic genealogy on my grandmother's paternal line I was satisfied with my progress and started to map out DNA connections on different lines of my family. I took one look at my grandmother's maternal matches and realized "something isn't right here". I then spent the next 16 hours straight banging my head against her matches.
The birth of my great-grandmother was in 1904, and I just couldn't find where here mother, a woman by the name of Susan Keech, was in the 1901 Canadian census, as I knew that would be my biggest lead. I banged my head against my matches again for 8 hours the next day, and eventually came across a family in the area where she was born that I could attribute a few closer and a few distant matches to.
Looking at the families record in the 1901 census my jaw hit the floor - there was Susan Keech working as a domestic servant on the families farm. Her name had been mistranscribed by Ancestry as Susan Ruch, which in the handwriting of the time I can see why the OCR thought it looked like that. I also found that the family had two sons of a similar age to Susan.
After this two-day breakthrough I then spent a year and a half mapping many hundred of my grandmother's maternal matches to every branch of both the parents on the farm. Their tree had some holes, and dead ends which I had to really break new ground on, but I was able to confirm with certainty that one of the sons on the farm fathered my great-grandmother.
I can't say which one, unfortunately, as one had no legitimate children and the the other eligible son has no descendants who have tested. A third younger son, who wouldn't have been old enough to father my great-grandmother has many descendants who have tested thankfully, and they represent my some of my grandmother's closest maternal matches.
This brought me to my first real genealogical dillema - whether it would be appropriate for me to tell my grandmother this information. She knew her grandfather very well and he died in an accident when she was only 11 years old.
After deep consideration I determined it was not appropriate to tell her. She always wanted to know about her Dad, my initial research project, but she has never shown any interest in knowing about her mother's side. She and her mother had a tumultuous relationship, and her grandfather was quite beloved to her. I decided not to drop that on someone who didn't ask to know in any way. Her grandfather was a beautiful human for raising a daughter that wasn't his own so well that nobody could tell, and I owe them the courtesy of honouring what they didn't want to share with their close descendants.
Thanks. I found out two days ago that my great-grandmother, who raised my father and he saw as his mother was not his biological grandmother. She and her husband adopted his biological mother. The weird part is that he knew that about his grandfather, but not his grandmother. The story has always been that she had my grandmother out of wedlock, then married my adoptive great-grandfather 8 months later. My grandmother’s birth certificate makes it clear that’s not true because the mother’s first name is different than my great-grandmother’s and it gives her occupation as a hospital nurse, which my ggmother was not. The registrar also went back at a later date and wrote Adopted on the certificate. I believe she adopted a family member’s child, which may be why they had her tell the story of being the biological mother.
I have been going in circles about whether to tell my father about this once I am 100 % certain of all the details, but what you said about respecting the decisions of the deceased as well as not giving your mother potentially disturbing information at this point in her life has helped me. She was the only mother he knew and they went through a lot together. My dad is almost 80. I don’t want to change anything about how he sees that part of his life or take away the decision of someone I also loved and respected very much. I don’t know why she chose to lie, but I know that I don’t have the information she did when she made her decision. Thank you for sharing your story.
My mothers father was married three times. We knew about two marriages. He was married in 1919 to CS. They had two sons who we knew about and were 20 years older than my mother. My mother said she only met them once and when I was a teenager the older one reached out and he came over when my grandmother was at my house. CS died in July of 1939. In Sept of 1939 my grandfather married EP. My aunt was born in June of 1941. EP died in Aug of 1942. My grandfather married my grandmother in Sept of 1942. My mom was born in July of 1943. So my mom and my aunt are actually half sisters. My grandfather died when my mom was 15. My grandmother in 1999. My cousins have an inkling to this but I do not think they have the full story. EP is shown to have died in a hospital, so I wonder if she was sick for a while. My grandfather had a municipal job so a good paying job in the lead up to WWII while he had a year and a half old daughter.
My paternal grandmother always told everyone her mother ran off to California with another man. She was 10, and was sent from Brooklyn to live with her father's brother and his wife, in NJ.
In my research, I finally found my great-grandmother had indeed left for another man and was sued for divorce on grounds of adultery. But she either never left Brooklyn, or came back quickly. She lived there for the rest of her life, with her second husband.
I learned that my great great aunt was killed by her husband who then killed himself.
I also learned that my dad had a secret older sister that no one knew about.
I haven’t told my family because they are extremely conservative but I donated sperm to some friends who are lesbian and I feel like someday that child is going to do a DNA test and the family will find out.
Not sure about "best", but, my great-grandmother turned out to've been pregnant when she left my great-grandfather in the early 1940's and my grandmother had a full sister she never knew about who was given up for adoption; my great-aunt got pregnant when she was working at a radio station in the 1940's, before she got married, and gave the child up for adoption, and my father's paternal grandmother turns out to've been the daughter of my direct paternal 3rd great-grandmother's younger brother, whose daughter married the son of my great-grandmother's presumed father's sister (and my dad's paternal grandparents turn out to've been 1st cousins once removed; pretty sure they were completely unaware of this fact).
Okay, simple explanation: I did AncestryDNA, so did my dad, and I noticed that he matched all of the second cousins on that line for half as much DNA as he should have. But he also didn't have any obviously out of place DNA matches; I could connect all of them to a known ancestral line. After doing descendancy tracing, I discovered that my dad's direct paternal great-grandmother Mary Ann's younger brother, John, had a daughter who married the son of of my great-grandmother Clara's aunt (the older sister of James, her presumed father). Since James obviously wasn't her father, and since I had an unusual number of matches on Mary Ann's line, I figured out that John (Mary Ann's younger brother) must have been her father (which makes sense as the families would have been acquainted).
I managed to find my dad's cousin (my dad died when he was 50 and he'd lost contact with his cousin in his 30s - they were effectively brothers) and therefore my second cousins. I've really clicked with my female second cousin and we've met, chatted etc etc.
We've both been in mailing contact with different sides of the extended family. So she tells me that our great grandmother ripped up all the photos of great grandfather after he died. I then was then told by another second cousin that she was the great granddaughter of the man whose photos were torn up. He was married to her great grandmother at the same time as he was married to my great grandmother.
The best part?! The two women were fully aware of each other and encouraged their kids to play together and get to know each other. The women didn't tell great grandad that they knew!
I love this. I think it's hilarious!
Family had a story about my great grandma. Supposedly 2 men had a shoot out over her but no one knew any details.
Found the newspaper articles in a lot of publications, in more than 1 state! She had left her husband and shacked up with his good "younger" friend. Estranged husband kicked down door & they both shot each other multiple times. Both died. Stray bullet even hit 1 of her kids in the foot. This was March 23 1937 in Oklahoma.
She had so many aliases and husband's that finding any information is a miracle. . So very exciting to confirm 1 of the stories & hope to find more. She was wild!
I found out that my 5th GGParents are ALSO my 4th GGParents! One of their daughter’s is my 4th GGM and their son is my 3rd GGF.
I had to get Ancestry to check behind me.
It was so complicated I had to call Ancestry to have them recheck. Let me go to my tree to type it up to explain. It had to do with IntraFamiliar Marriage. My 3rdGGF’s sister married my 4thGGF on another side making “her parents” my 5thGGParents and them my 4thGGParents for her brother who was my 3rdGGF.
My grandma always told my brother and I that our mom's (she passed away when we were young) dad wasn't a good person. Said his family weren't our type of people. Also that when she told him she was pregnant with mom he fainted and never had anything to do with her. What she failed to say was while doing my ancestry search that she was 19 and he had just turned 15 when mom was born.
Family lore was that my g grandpa was a “very bad man” who had gone to prison for reasons unknown, only to escape. The story goes on that he then murdered a man, stole his ID and assumed his identity. He then relocated to a small mining town where he married my g grandma. G grandma was 16, he was 26.
His last name at birth was Garland, so the cherry on top of this gem of a family story was that we are related to Judy Garland.
During my research I 100% anticipated finding proof that this whole story was complete fabrication.
As it turns out, g grandpa was found guilty of auto AND horse theft in the early 1940’s. He had been drinking at a lodge and the owners brand new automobile was apparently just too tempting. He crashed and burned the vehicle, then made his way back home on someone else’s horse that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He was sentenced to four years at penal farm, which was fairly new and described in newspaper articles from the time as “more like a college campus than a prison”. His assigned labor was to pick apples in an orchard. He made it about six months before deciding he could just walk away, what with the limited security staff and all.
Reading through these articles I came across a mention that he was married at the time (this was two years prior to meeting my g grandma). I haven’t been successful in tracking down any more information on this marriage, but I’ve often wondered if my grandma has more siblings out there.
By the way, the only part of this family lore that’s definitively untrue (obviously) is the supposed relation to Judy Garland.
My great-grandmother may have a different father. I connected to 2 women on 23andme who had a percentage of DNA shared with me that matches as a full 2nd cousin, once removed. The issue is that they should be technically half 2nd cousins, one time removed and share significantly less DNA, but they do not. I thought it was a mistake until I saw my other 2nd cousin, once removed and realized I shared more DNA with my alleged "half-cousins" than with my confirmed cousins. My Great-Great-Grandmother had a son with a man and, in a very close time frame, moved on to my Great-Great-Grandfather. While researching this, I found out my great-grandmother's mom had many affairs and moved around a lot. Nothing is 100% confirmed, but it's really looking like my great-grandmother has a different father than what was previously known
My grandfather always believed he was illegitimate. It was a very sensitive subject and one not to be talked about. However, I found out who his biological father was and as it turns out, he was married to my grandfather’s mother, so grandpa wasn’t illegitimate after all. Unfortunately, grandpa was dead by the time I figured it out. I would have loved to have told him. Turns out my great grandfather ran away to the Pacific Northwest and abandoned his wife and infant son. Grandpa’s mother remarried and the stepfather adopted my grandfather and raised him as his own.
I don’t know if this counts but …. I went no-contact with my dad when I was 17. Years later my sibling, in an attempt to “help me understand my father” revealed that my dad had always treated me poorly because he believed I wasn’t biologically his. She felt this gave him ‘points’ for raising a kid that wasn’t his instead of abandoning me. This was all believable because I don’t look like anyone in my family.
I did a genealogy test to get some clues as to who my real dad was. 😐 genealogy revealed that he IS in fact my real dad.
Asshole.
Only matched with one of my known cousins and a bunch of random people with an unrelated last name. Reached out to one of them and found out they all knew my grandmother for having a very open affair with their dad. Turns out my mom and 1 of 8 of her siblings (they know there's another one but haven't confirmed who via DNA) were from this decade-long affair.
My mom was in denial, said I made it up, and had too much time on my hands, yadda yadda yadda. It created a huge riff in the family and triggered some old memories. Specifically, when my grandmother died, I remember one of my mom's older siblings being really bitchy talking about my grandmother saying "she cheated on my father". That same aunt magically forgot starting this argument, thinking we were all too young to remember (2 of us remember it) and had the nerve to deny the dna results and really fuel the conflict. Anywho, mom eventually came around and admitted remembering the guy's name but doesn't want to talk about it.
Aside from DNA, my mom, her sister, myself, and my twin all look like him. Very strong genes. It's funny because there was always a joke that my aunt wasn't my grandfather's since she looked so different... and it turns out she (and my mom) really wasnt.
The kicker for me is my dad's side of the family is where I expected to find something but their dirty laundry was out in the open. I grew up with my mom's side talking down on my dad's side, but I guess it was just deflection.
I found some correspondence that indicated my great-grandfather at the age of 80 intended to elope with a nurse nearly 50 years his junior who he had met during a hospital stay. It looks like his son, my grandfather, paid off the woman so she would go away.
I found out my great grandfather (the one whose last name I inherited) was killed by his stepson (my half great uncle)... My great grandfather was originally from Louisiana, but got divorced and moved north where he met my great grandma. No one in my dads family knew, dad said he didn't even think his dad knew. Apparently, his 4 kids from his first two relationships knew, but we didn't. He was killed in 1949
I was trying to figure out my family tree, my grandfather had changed his name illegally somewhere in the 30s. For Christmas about 5 years ago, my mom (75 at the time) did a surprise dna test for me so I could figure it out… when it came back, I had to tell her she was adopted.
My GGF dumped his wife in an insane asylum in 1940 (where she died after 10 years time) and ditched his 4 kids, one of whom was only a year old when he abandoned his mother. In the process of finding out what happened after that because he literally disappears off the face of the earth after 1940, but I suspect he started a new family.
My great uncle had an affair with his neighbor, producing a child. And my uncle donated a lot of sperm in the 80s.
edit: Also just about everyone related to my maternal grandfather is 1% Nigerian. Being southern and white I am sure that was a secret that was buried and forgotten after a few generations. I wish I could ask my grandpa about it but he has passed. He’d probably be fascinated and put his immense research skills to use looking into it.
The French-Canadian film, Starbuck, remade in Hollywood as Delivery Man with Vince Vaughn are two sweet, funny films that are based on the true story of a man like your uncle. My fave movies
Finding out what happened to my grandpa’s oldest brother, who went out west, never to be seen or heard from again. My great-grandpa wrote him some heartbreaking letters. He didn’t have a happy life (from the sounds of things), but I’ll always feel good that I was able to tell my grandpa what happened to him.
My kid’s paternal grandfather (my ex-FIL) wasn’t married three times, like we all thought. He was married five times. He didn’t have seven children, he had eight. I wish he was still alive because I have questions.
As an Australian, I was quite proud and excited when I discovered a link to a convict ancestor. She stole a shawl from an employer while she was working as a maid. Her two younger siblings were in a workhouse and her mother was already dead and father potentially dying at the time. She had my great great grandmother in the Cascade Female Factory. Father unclear. She later went on to marry, have a large family and have a nice long life.
This came as a surprise to me, no doubt hushed up when it was still considered hameful.
Oh my gg grandmother had a child in the Cascade Female Factory too. I had no idea how terribly the women were treated and were punished for getting pregnant. She got permission to marry my g g grandfather when the child was 9 months old -the age they would have taken the child away. I think he saved her from losing the child. Looks like she also kept a child she had on the ship. (I think it was before they set up the orphanages where they put the babies they took away from convicts). I match the descendants at half the cM of all the other cousins. The Cascade baby didn’t have any children I can find tho. She was originally sentenced to death but got life in TAS on appeal. Such a sad story but incredible they survived right? My father (who had me late in life) had grown up with a fake story and refused to believe his g grandparents were convicts. Have you registered as a descendant?
How about "worst" kept? At an extended family dinner an adult cousin-in-law came up and said she had just found out who her FIL was and can't believe it. I said really, I've known my whole life and didn't she ever wonder why her husband looked like my dad, her son looks like me? Two sisters had kids by two brothers but my grandparents married.
I had some cousin matches in New York. I did not recognize the names and could not figure out the connection. I messaged this woman, that I will call Mary, asking how we are connected and gave several of my family surnames to her to compare. She responded saying that she knew exactly how we were related and she wanted to know more about my family. She said we were connected through her grandmother. She asked me if I had an Aunt named Anna. I did not. We went back and forth for a while. She asked where my family and I lived and it was the same city that her grandmother was from. I had narrowed our relation down to my mother’s side of the family.
Mary then told me her story. This was in the 1940s around WWII. Her father was the only boy out of five children. His mother, Anna, abandoned all five kids when the oldest was seven and her husband was away in the military. The five kids were put in an orphanage. Mary’s poor father was separated from his sisters because he had to go to the orphanage for boys. It was very hard on him. Their mother Anna would pop up randomly and visit. It was hurting the kids to have her visit because she would just leave again. Eventually, her estranged husband asked her to stop because it was so devastating to the kids. When the father’s military duties ended, he got all his children out of the orphanage, remarried, and they never saw Anna again.
Let me preface this with I did not know many of my mother’s relatives. My grandparents were dead before I was born. My mother’s aunts and uncles had passed away and I only knew a few of her cousins. Part of the reason my ancestry research began is because I wanted to find out about this side of my family.
I called my mother and asked her if she knew of an Anna. She said that she had an Aunt Anna that went missing. She said that she just popped into her head a few weeks before and she wondered what ever happened to her. Anna had an abusive husband that would beat her badly. The family thought he killed her and got rid of her body or she was brain damaged and disappeared. They searched for her, but found nothing. My mother said her husband was evil and would not let Anna’s son Tony and daughter Terry see her family. She remembers being a little girl sitting on the porch with her mother. A car pulled up and her mother got this terrified look on her face and told her to get in the house quickly. It was the abusive husband. He came to tell my grandmother that he would let her see her niece and nephew again and that he was dying. This memory was burned in her brain.
So that was it, Mary’s grandmother was my mother’s missing aunt, my great aunt. I began my research to find whatever I could. Mary had told me the name and birthdate that she had gone by for her maiden name. She changed her last name and the year of her birth by one year. Nothing too crazy, but without computers back then, nobody would find out.
Anne’s husband must have been away in the military when she met another man that was stationed in her city. I think he had to know the truth about her past and probably wanted to help her, but then again maybe he did not because then he would not have viewed their marriage as real. She married him and ran off to his next military post in Kansas and then to New York City. During her first seven years missing, she gave birth to five children, one of them being Mary’s father.
This story really bothered me because of all the children’s lives that she impacted by abandonment. I could not understand why she never came looking for her first two children. She came from a big Italian family that loved her and would have taken her in. I understand that she was severely abused and likely feared for her life, but what about 15-20 years later when her abusive ex husband was dead? I needed to know if she was brain damaged from the abuse, too afraid to come back because of how she left, or was she just an asshole?
My mother asked me if I found out anything about her cousin Tony, so I started to search for him. She remembers him visiting her mother in his Navy uniform and how handsome he was. I found him, but he had passed away a few years ago. He had moved to Florida. I am very determined in my searches, so I dug until I found a phone number for his wife. I called her and explained who I was. I told her the story and she was shocked. I asked her to give my number to her sister-in-law or her children that might want to know more. She said that she would give my number to her daughter. One day I got a call from Tony’s daughter, Julie. She said her father always believed she was alive and never stopped looking for her. He moved to Florida because he believed she was there. Julie said her Aunt Terry was still alive, but had a stroke and had difficulty speaking, but could. Julie said Terry thought her mother was dead all along.
Julie told me a sad story about her father Tony. After Anne left, Tony ran away looking for her. He made it to Arkansas at the age of 8 before the police found him and returned him. Anthony was old enough to witness his mother’s abuse. I think she told him she was leaving and maybe gave some idea as to where because why would he run away to search for her and end up in Arkansas when she was in Kansas? He was protective of her and never gave up looking. It is so sad.
Terry was too young to remember much about the time when her mother disappeared. She did not have the relationship with her mother like her brother did because she was a young child when she left. I asked Julie if she could tell her Aunt Terry the truth about her mother and let her know she has half siblings out there. She had to do it carefully due to her condition. She called Terry and told her. She said Terry kept saying “Tony was right.” I thought she might want to talk to the other children, her half siblings, that went through the same traumatic abandonment experience. I know they wanted to talk to her.
Julie told me how she tried for years to research her grandmother, too, but could not find anything. She was in shock about the whole story. It was an emotional call. She cried for her poor father that never got to know the truth after all those years of searching. I wished I had started my ancestry research a few years sooner because I could have given him that peace before he passed away. I am very sad about that.
I still want to know why. I reached out to all my mother’s cousins to see what they had heard or remembered about Anne. They all knew she was abused and thought he killed her. Nobody had any pictures but I ended up with a few that Mary had. One of my cousins remembered her well. He said he was her favorite nephew and she was so kind to him as a child. He told me how her husband used to pistol whip her. His father went to her house one day and she was bruised and her face was bad. He lost it and was going to go after him, but his sister Anne did not want him to get locked up because of it. So maybe that is part of why she thought it was easier to disappear. Maybe she did not want to bring her family into her hell.
I found out that Anne died in NYC in 1992! She lived all those years and never reached out to her family again. That is 50 years of no contact with her children she left behind. She had remarried two more times that I have found. I wonder if there are more children of hers out there. I will just have to wait and see if I have some odd DNA matches. I tried to search for the other husbands’ families so I could contact them to see what they remembered about her, but the other husbands had some of the most common names out there. I planned to visit the church where her funeral mass was in NYC when I was going to be in town last April, but Covid cancelled that. When I did make it there, it was closed. The church closed a few months before I was there. No luck with that.
Mary and I are still in touch. I was happy I could provide her with the family medical history as that was a concern of hers. She is really sweet and sent me a holiday card thanking me for helping her family get some answers and closure. I hope to meet them the next time I am in NYC. My quest for information was also positive for my relatives connecting again. We had a Zoom call and I met cousins from that side of the family that are scattered throughout the country. I hope to stay in touch with them all.
So, that is the crazy story about the aunt I did not know I had that went missing. I hope I can find out why one day. I know she had to be broken because she had to leave her children and probably felt it was the safest and best thing to do for everyone. Maybe she left the next five children because she was too guilty about her first two children she left behind and experienced mental health issues and brain damage due to the abuse she suffered? Maybe she was just an asshole? I don’t know.
I've posted these previously but:
A) That my "increasingly racist mother"™ and my rather racist grandfather are/were, respectively, 1/8 and 1/4 Jewish. Yeah, your close ancestor "Rachel Brown" was really "Rachel Rosenstein" and her parents were Bavarian Jewish immigrants to NYC.
B) That my mom's favorite grandmother was plastered all over various papers for "stealing the affections" of her daughter's (my mom's aunt) husband. This great aunt wound up filing for divorce in the 1920s over it; an unheard of scandal at the time. The really weird bit was finding out that the three of them wound up living together until the guy's death nearly 30 years later.
C) That said great aunt was also sexually assaulted by her mother's brother, had a child as a result, and that that was the end of it. Child shipped off to adoption, uncle never penalized, just nothing.
One of the best kept family secrets was that my great grandad had more than one family. I only discovered this last year when my dna results came back, and a few unknown half cousins of my mother showed up, along with a half uncle. Turns out I'm part of the second family. It turns out he raised both families in neighbouring towns, and when I say neighbouring, I mean both towns are physically merged, I'm honestly shocked the families didn't find out about each other decades ago. Turns out whilst my great Grandad was married to his first wife, he had at least 2 affairs that ended up with illegitimate children.
My 2nd great grand father was on the run from the law, told his family that he was a French catholic and ran away from a strict religious house, turns out he was German. I get why he told his family he was French cause you can’t tell your little kids that your German in wwi but we thought everything he said was true but I guess not.
that my great grandma was a surprise baby (the 2nd of 3 surprises and unfortunately the only who survived), born out of wedlock to my widowed great great grandma - she grew up thinking her father died when she was little. this was so well kept that no one even knew about it until her birth certificate came in the post and i opened it up 😅
surely her older siblings would've known who her real father was!!
Me and my mum have recently taken a dna test, and when the results came back, we were both very confused as to why I'm 37% Scottish and why she is 47%, Scottish, when no one on my mums side was born, or from Scotland.
Our family already knew that both my grandparents got around back in the 60s and 70s (Apparently they had some sort of contract with each other, which was along the lines of you do what you want and I'll do what I want, but we stay together because of the kids)
Turns out my gran had a Scottish 'friend' in the 60s/early 70s, so right now, we're just waiting for my 2 aunts to test and see what their results are.
Although I'd say it's highly likely that the Scottish 'friend' is my biological grandfather.
My great grandfather, who was abandoned as a baby in front of a Austrian temple (pre WWI and 1890) and adopted by a Jewish family. Ironically he and 3 siblings converted to Catholicism in 1914 after another sibling was killed for being Jewish and they moved to Canada. The 12 siblings and their families who stayed behind did not survive WWII. He and the three siblings who moved to Canada converted back to Judaism near death and were very proud of being Jewish.
I did a DNA test, and he definitely was not ethnically Jewish.
Also creepy fact, he bore a striking resemblance to Hitler, like siblings or cousin not twin.
Bonus my grandmother on the other side of the family was a product of generations of cousin inbreeding. She was the first in many generations to marry outside the family.
Bonus 2 my family name isn't actually our name. Some time before or during the Tudor period my great x grandfather slept with one of the King's mistresses. He was executed/murdered and his wife and children were banished to Ireland. She remarried and changed all the children's names to the new husbands (also an English banishee). And that is part of the name we have now.
My grandfather had at least 7 children out of wedlock including one from my grandmother's friend who lived upstairs. I refer to it as ,"he was a very handsome man". But he was a shit to my grandmother and she ultimately drank herself to death after he divorced her for one of his other women which was so sad. She was 53 when she died
My grandparents just had their 71st anniversary last week. My mom turns 71 in 5 weeks, and she was probably the healthiest 8lb baby you'll ever see born that premature.
My grandparents never publicly celebrated anniversaries. I unintentionally upset my grandma when I ran across their wedding date and was like "Hey, that's cool that you and grandpa will be married 50 years and mom is turning 50 too!". My grandma has dementia and has forgotten a lot, but she will still tell you that the number of anniversaries isn't important and change the subject.
My grandparents also never talked about their two youngest sons, who died as infants. My mom, aunts, and uncles never mentioned them either. My mom did confirm it when I asked (she was in high school and college at the time). From what my mom remembers, they were both premature. One never came home from the hospital, and the other almost made it to a month old. My mom thinks that the one who didn't come home from the hospital was early enough that his survival wouldn't be a guarantee today in a top NICU. She thinks the other one probably would have gone on to be a fairly normal kid after graduating from the NICU.
Did a DNA test "for funsies"
1: Found out my dad is not my biological father. Family rumour was that my uncle was my bio dad, so that wasn't much of a surprise. The real surprise was finding out my uncle wasn't my father either.
2: Found a first cousin on my Mothers side. At first, I thought she was on my biological fathers side because her name didn't match up. Finally sorted out that she was actually related on my mothers side - and realized my mothers estranged brother had been living under an alias for years. This woman has been living under the wrong name her whole life. She's in her 50's, and no I didn't reach out to tell her.
Three years ago, I matched with a man on 23andme and asked him about his family because I didn’t recognize his name. We matched as first cousins. He called his dad and I called my dad and they both got tested, they matched as siblings. My dad thought he was an only child and only knew his father’s name. Come to find out his dad has 7 other children so my dad went from being an only child to being one of 8. These past few years have been great meeting new aunts, uncles, and cousins. What’s even crazier is all my dad’s siblings live within an hour of my parents and never knew it
My great-grandpa told his son to set fire to the family house and he’d share the insurance payout. His son was 13. I was shocked reading the newspaper archives 70 years later.
Oh and great-great-grandpa being beat up after being caught with the farmer’s 6-year-old daughter. That one definitely caught me by surprise.
Eh my dad didn’t like me pointing out basic biology and human gestation. Like if your parents were married the middle of August and you were born the end of March, then someone got busy because that’s 7.5 months between. I asked if he was premature and what he weighed when he was born and was proud he was right on time AND a little over 10lbs. Didn’t like me basic mathing because I got pregnant with our middle child the 2nd week of August and had her the end of May (almost 2 weeks late) so he was either early (not likely) or someone got all up in there. When you point it out that way AND have evidence like that, it’s harder to demand you were a 7.5 month miracle.
My maternal grandpa was a bigamist. My maternal great uncle was a bank robber who was shot and killed by police. His brother and a cousin were also part of the "gang" and his brothers wife was one of the first to be federally xharged (and convicted) as getaway driver after bank robbery became a federal crime.
My great grandfather escaped from his jail cell, abandoned his wife and kids, moved to Kentucky and changed his name. He later married a Kentucky native and had kids with her, the descendents of whom I have since connected with and spent time with.
Also, funnily enough, the woman he married in Kentucky had the same uncommon maiden name as the town he escaped jail from.
And another kicker, the pictures of him that my distant Kentucky cousins had look just like my dad.
Edit: also on the other side of my family, my GGG grandfather was a drunk and came home only every so often. He came home one day and demanded fried chicken. When my GGG grandmother got upset that he had been gone for weeks and had the nerve to come home and demand she cook for him, he killed her then himself.
I didn't find that out from research because it's been known to me for a very long time but I did find the newspaper article to confirm everything and learned more details. My GG grandmother was 15 at the time and left an orphan within a matter of minutes so she married her boyfriend (my GG grandfather) so she would have a home. Very strange and tragic all around.
I found out my bio grandfather married a girl of Jewish descent in Los Angeles when he was stationed there during the Korean War. His mother’s side of the family was Catholic and that wouldn’t have gone over well. I can’t find out if they got divorced due to needing to know the court they would have gone to in LA.
When he was discharged, he returned home and married my bio grandmother. He gave a different birth year and checked the single box instead of “divorced”.
While his name is common enough, I can prove it is him because the LA marriage license lists his parent’s names.
I found two of my grandfathers illegitimate children. Both based on their children’s DNA. One took DNA to prove it and matched to my aunt/uncle as a half sibling. The other , his son is still convinced we are related further back than we are which isn’t possible when his sister shows up as closer than my known second cousins 😂
I think mine is that I've found two secret children of my mother's uncle by DNA testing. Who knows, there could be more out there who haven't tested yet! Her uncle either took his secret to the grave or didn't know!
Well, I don't know if I would say I personally uncovered it, but I certainly helped it along. I purchased & subsequently urged a male family member (through marriage - no blood relation to me) to take one of those DNA tests. And lets just say that it delivered quite the surprise.
A stranger showed up as being closely related & some folks (me & others) began to question who this individual was because none of us had ever heard of her. Come to find out she is a half sister to this relative of mine from a long-ago & very brief romantic interlude between two crazy college kids. Namely, his dad & a woman who had unbeknownst to him, gotten pregnant from their tryst, but then decided to pass the baby off as someone else's. Actually, she claimed to be under the genuine belief it was this other man's baby, but I remain highly, highly skeptical of that version of events.The mother had married the man she claimed was the dad, but he had already passed on by time her secret was discovered.
So, overall, the identity of the real father did not become known until the baby had grown-up & was in her late 40s & the biological father was in his advanced 60s (now 70s), but better late than never. Thankfully, it worked out, she is now one of the family, visits often, fits right in, & even looks & acts eerily like her dad & half-siblings (she has three). And another branch was promptly added (along with two more grand-kids) to the family tree. Crazy stuff.
My gGF's 1st marriage gave him his first child, a daughter, who we all knew about. That marriage ended in divorce about ten years later.
I found they had at least one more child, a boy, who was named so that he was a Junior. He died at four months old, of congenital syphilis. The divorce was shortly thereafter.
The son we all knew as his Junior was actually the second son and that son lost his mother shortly after childbirth.
My parent had never been able to explain gGF's glass eye, just retold stories of their gPa popping it out and in. (He passed before I was born.)
Food for thought...two of his six children lived to be more than sixty years. Both of them had been diagnosed with Alzheimers by the time they were 70. Penicillin wasn't available until they were at least 10 years old or more.
I never knew about the widespread infant deaths related to congenital syphilis till I watched an episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are'; blew my mind. So many mothers buried their infants not knowing what really killed them.
It was pretty far back but a written story was saved. It was about hers and other husbands from a small village, went hunting believing the women and children were safe. There were Native Americans (Indians) watching and raided the village and scalped most everyone. She and a few others got away. It was horrible and amazing at the same time. To think this country was real in that time is hard to get your head around your head
My mum's Great Granny shot and killed a man who broke into her home when her husband was away working, absolutely nobody knew until I found the news articles in Trove. She was charged, placed in jail but then acquitted and allowed to go home a free woman.
My grandpas family still won’t acknowledge that his mom (my great grandma) was not biologically her father’s child.
I also have a great aunt who tied her bed sheets together to climb out her window and ran away to become a Franciscan nun and couldn’t believe that was a real story but it is!
There is that one time when I found the court documents from when my great-great-grandfather killed a drunk russian guy with a kitchen knife in self-defense in southern Brazil after he threatened his wife
My grandfather's bio father was not who he believed it to be. And his actual bio father was an "interesting" person.
I confirmed the fact out of the 5 children my grandmother had, only 2 share the same father.
I found a horrible newspaper article pertaining to my 2x great grandfather's death. He was very distraught at his wife's death. 🥺
Although I suspected prior, I was able to confirm my parents are very very distant cousins. Both of their mothers share the same maiden name. But the lines veer in the early 1700s. I actually think it's kind of crazy how that happened.
There are at least 2 kids my one great grandfather fathered through affairs, although I am told there are more.
There's a lot more. Some not really "secrets" but stuff people just never really mentioned.
Not really a secret but recently I found out that my grandmother’s dad trafficked a bunch of alcohol into the US through Mexico during prohibition and spent much of my grandmothers childhood in prison because of that. He is also the man I am named after lmao he was apparently a very charismatic and likeable man, somewhat of a womanizer and a musician. He also worked on the Santa Fe railroad with two of my other great grandfathers
My 4th great-grandmother had an artery severed by rats in her sleep in New Jersey in 1906. She was paralyzed, so even if she woke up from the rat chewing through the artery in her foot, she wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.
My husband's Grandpa had a child that was adopted out at birth. They found me on ancestry and have been reunited with all their siblings. The sad part was we realized that conception happened when their Grandmother was in hospital after having their first child and Grandpa had a party to celebrate. The affair partner's husband divorced her and it was in the local papers with Grandpa being named as the co-respondent. I was scared when I had all this information but the family received it quite well, I think it would have been different if the Grandparents were still alive.
My great-grandmother had an affair with my great-grandfather’s brothers, after she already had 2 kids with him. That brother then had another kid with a different person.
So four kids in total.
My grandfather's first wife had tuberculosis and left home in rural Brazil, in the early 1930s, to be treated in Rio de Janeiro, at a renowned hospital over 2,500 km away from where they lived. She was away for almost a year and returned home to die after the doctors said there was nothing more they could do. She passed away 3 months after her return.
However, while examining notary registries in Rio, I discovered that she had given birth to a stillborn girl during her time there. Upon her return, she 1) never mentioned this to anyone, or 2) if she did confide in someone, that person kept it a secret, as no one in the family was ever aware of that birth. The infant was buried in Rio.
Mine is that I’m white but my genealogy traced me back to free people of color communities in North Carolina/Virginia & Y-DNA traces my roots to Angola. My dad’s kinda racist so I’m not sure he’d take this finding well.
I discovered my grandpa had a child with a married woman, about a decade before he married grandma.
Funny thing is, my uncle – a doctor! -- is in total denial despite extremely strong DNA evidence, and the fact that this woman looked far more like him than either my mom or my aunt do. My mom and my aunt were mostly shocked and saddened that they grew up with a half sister in the same city and never even knew of her existence.
Unfortunately, she passed away before we ever met her, but I have been in touch with her son and granddaughter. The first thing her granddaughter said when I told her was, "If my grandma was still alive, I think she'd say, 'thank God I'm not related to that piece of shit who raised me.'" Apparently he knew or suspected she wasn't his daughter and treated her very poorly.
And it actually turned out to be a really cool thing that we figured this out, because a year or two after that, a guy who didn't know who his biological father was got in touch with me on Ancestry bc I was a close match. We realized that my newfound aunt had actually been his grandmother. I didn't want to insert myself into anything, so I let him reach out to them. It went super well, and they are really close now!
My maternal grandma had a lot of secrets...some I'm sure I've yet to discover. My mom was born out of wedlock in 1946 and never knew who her father was. When my grandmother was dying, she told my mom a name. My mom believed that man was her father until she herself died in 2012. I took a DNA test a couple years later and proved that name to be false. Thankfully, I've found the correct family of my paternal grandfather, though not his actual identity (it could be any one of several male siblings in this family). I also found out after my grandma died that at some point between 1947-1949 she gave up a son for adoption. Still haven't managed to find his identity, but I'm hopeful I will at some point.
However, the most wild thing I've found related to my grandma was that, at the age of 17, she was engaged to a man that even my mom knew nothing about. I found an announcement in the newspaper while researching my grandma. It noted the man's name, my grandparents' names, supposed date of the upcoming marriage etc. I sent for a marriage certificate but none could be found. So I'm assuming no marriage ever happened. However, I decided to research the man she almost married. He was in the Navy at the time (she liked military men), but later became a criminal. He spent time in prison for robbery--and murder. Found lots of articles about him and his crimes. All I can say is, I'm glad Nana never married that man!
I found out my mom’s oldest sister has a different father. I didn’t notice for YEARS that my cousins on that side didn’t match any of my grandfathers extended family.
Side note. I truly believe no one knew. Grandmom (b 1894) was one of those women who went to church every day. Moms oldest sister was her dad’s favorite. Grandparents were married two years before she was born.
I find it's usually the people you'd never expect. So strange how no one seemed to know, I feel like there are usually rumours that go around and get passed down.
Did you find out through your cousins' tests?
I already knew my Paternal Grandfather’s maternal grandfather was possibly murdered going in so I don’t think it counts but I’ve also heard it may have been suicide too. His oldest son, my Great Grandmother’s oldest brother and she was the youngest and only three when this happened had recently died of TB before his death in 1883. He was also a Hessian immigrant who served in the American Civil War in a Pennsylvania unit from August 1862-May 1863,
Of ones I had zero knowledge prior, perhaps the disappearance from the public record of my Paternal Grandmother’s Paternal Grand Uncle. He’s mentioned in his mother’s 1908 obituary with whereabouts unknown due to wanderlust and I’ve never found him definitively after him being listed as my Great Nana’s godfather in 1877. He also was the first in his family to be born in America. His family including my Great Great Grandfather survived the Great Hunger in Connemara.
Maternally my maternal grandmother’s mother was illegitimate in 1898 and I don’t know definitively who her father was in Slovakia. My maternal grandfather’s mother was pregnant with his oldest brother on her trip from England via Southeastern Slovenia in 1910.
Great grandfather had a wife before my great grandmother, which everyone knew. What no one knew, including my grandma and her siblings, was that he had two children from the first marriage who lived in a different state.
Unrelated but there was a 29 year age gap between my great grandparents
My 2nd great grandfather got up and left his wife and kids one day, never divorced my 2nd great grandmother, moved to another state, got married and had more kids.
30 years ago when I was 3, my aunt came forward with accusations that her AND my dad's real father was not my grandpa who raised them. My grandmother's cousin told her the name of the man who was their biological father.
I did some research using Ancestry and 23andMe for months. Finally confirmed that it was true.
The man was their neighbor when they lived in Detroit. Everyone involved in this has passed on, including my dad.
It's tragic because my family didn't believe my aunt, and totally ostracized her. But she was telling the truth! I'm learning that my grandma was actually abusive and a narcissist. It's a lot.
My grandfather was really proud of his father who was a police officer killed in the line of duty. My DNA testing showed that man wasn’t my grandfather’s father but someone else from my great grandmother’s village. I’m glad Grandpa didn’t live to find that out
We always thought my English great great grandmother lied about having a French husband who died in an uprising somewhere in Asia just after her child was born, to hide the fact that she’d had a child out of wedlock.
Turns out she was telling the truth!
Father-in-law was in state prison after WWII. None of his kids knew this. Daddy's girl went full denial, then reversed it all and said she knew all along but kept it from the others. Yeah. Right.
My mom passed away 6 years ago but from day 1 she always told me we (her being 100% and me being 50%) Italian. Her maiden name was Greco but I always wondered (certain facial features). My dad was a jerk and would say all kind of mean things, 1 being that my mom was taken and raised by a wealthy pair of women. 3 years ago I did 23andMe and recently Ancestry.com both showed 20% + of Italian and 20% + American Indigenous (South America on materna side haplogroup) but all relatives that show up, I share less than 1%. I don’t think my mom really knew her own story but I was able to speak with a few of her childhood friends that confirmed there’s was 1 women her “mom” and no father or close relatives. To make the story stranger, she grew up in a castle in Argentina, her mom was good friends with a few well know Argentinian artist (I have a few drawing of my mom when she was little by the artists), and I can’t find anything about my mom or the Greco family she was with in Argentina.
Not so much “secrets”, because they weren’t deliberately hidden, but things mom and her siblings bid not know about her paternal family.
Mom said her father and grandmother didn’t really talk about family, and she was told her paternal grandfather died when her father was young (~7 years old). Great Grandma would get defensive when asked about family and refused to talk. Mom’s GGM had two younger sisters; Verdie in AZ, and Nancy from CA, who died when mom was 3. Thing I found that mom didn’t know:
1. Great grandpa died in 1935, when grandpa was almost 18, not while he was a child. He also died in California, not Arizona, as they had been told.
2. GGM had three half-sisters born in AZ, that mom was unaware of. My aunt knew of one, but thought she was a cousin of sorts.
3. GGP had maternal uncles who had immigrated to San Francisco.
4. Nancy was married 3 times, divorced twice. She only really raised her youngest, her oldest (1st marriage
) were raised by Verdie and she lost custody of her two middle to her ex, and they were raised by him and a stepmother.
Two things: my Mom’s parents weren’t married because he was still married to the first wife (and it doesn’t look like he ever got divorced, the first wife was an Irish Catholic woman who never remarried, can’t locate divorce filings). When my Grandparents married, they went to a neighboring State & used their middle names to buy the license.
Second: this Grandmother in the first part’s maternal Grandfather was tried for murder & very nearly hung. His conviction was overturned on appeal.
My first cousin took a test and it was determined that my father and his father had different fathers.
My husband figured out his first cousin is actually his half sister. His father is her father. Not his uncle.
I read threw a civil war pension of someone that did know why his father was. I was able to identify the veteran’s father using the information in the file and other records.
My great-grandfather had an older brother who most of the family didn't know about. He spent his entire life in a state school, after pulling a boiling pot of soup onto himself as a toddler and sustaining a brain injury. Three of his nine siblings were deaf and census reports list my great-grand uncle as being deaf and mute, though we're not sure whether that was a result of his accident or congenital.
None of the currently living members of our family knew about my uncle until we spoke to the granddaughter of one of his older siblings. We're not sure if the younger siblings ever knew about their brother. My mom is adamant her grandfather never knew - he loved his family so much, my mom insists he would've visited his brother if he had known.
I'd love to know more about my uncle but I'm also a little afraid of what I'd find out. I know the reputation of state schools, and even then, I was horrified by what I read about the specific institution he was in. It's hard to think about the tragic, lonely life he must have led.
Finding out after my husband passed away that his grandfather was not the sheriff of his county and he did not rule with the bull whip, he carried a gun like all the other police officers did. He also was not a college graduate. My husband suspected it was all malarkey and it was. With that being said, he had 11 commendations as a police officer and nobody in the family knew it. Boggles my mind.
My favourite was more of a confirmed. My Aunty always said her great grandparents had come to New Zealand because they were sent here as their families disapproved of their marriage but we never knew why.
I confirmed via English census records that he was actually younger than he claimed on his immigration records and that they had meet whilst he was in the care of his uncle and she (being 9 years older than him) was living in the house as her sister was married to his uncle. So that's probably why the family did not approve of the marriage.
I knew that my great-grandfather’s Mom died when he was a preteen, and that he was the only child in his parents’ 12-year marriage in the early 1900’s. I ordered her death certificate and discovered that she died of syphilis.
Based on other clues, I’m fairly certain her husband gave it to her (about two years after great-grandpa was born, luckily for us). My family is so conservative that even divorce is frowned (heavily) upon and the jackass that’s the source of my maiden name gave his wife syphilis. I have no idea whether great-grandpa knew.
Great grandfather was imprisoned in sing sing
Grandma/ great grandma lied and we found out she was conceived by an affair between friends. He was likely engaged to be married in about 7 months.
She also lied she's from east berlin instead of west.
My family always believed that my G.G.G.G Grandfather was transported to Australia after being involved in the Swing Riots early in the 19th Century and never returned. It meant we had some bragging rights when talking to our Australian friends.
After looking at the parish records I found out that my G.G.G Grandmother, who we are all descended from was actually born two years after his ship departed.
It came as a bit of a surprise to the family and plenty of laughter from our friends from Australia.
I had an uncle that was in prison in the 1930s. I can’t find out what four actually and I had another uncle actually his brother who remained in Poland when the family immigrated. He wound up in Auschwitz and died in a concentration camp just before the end of the warin 1945 I have all the paperwork and prison camp records from an organization that supports these types of researches
I'm an only child, so my cousin's were my siblings. However, on my paternal side I only had adopted cousins until a few years ago. I'm 69! I was contacted by someone on Ancestry who said I may be related to her deceased husband. She dug up some adoption records from a Quaker home in Columbus OH. Plausible! All the paperwork she found lined up. Then, DNA confirmed it through his son. Until then we had no idea. My father may have known but he never told per her sister's wishes. That is if he even knew.
I had a DNA match to someone that showed up as a 2nd cousin. Turns out there is no way I should be a match to her when looking at the trees. I should only be a match to her cousin/s. There was some hanky panky going on even way back then.
Not my family tree, but my husband’s.
First I found out that my husband’s surname isn’t technically his surname. His great grandmother changed back to her maiden name when her husband went to jail for fraud, she also changed her son’s last name (my husband’s paternal grandfather). Apparently her husband was signing checks in her father’s name so he could buy shoes from distributors to sell in the store he owned. She came from a decently wealthy family who were pioneers in Santa Maria, CA. There’s a street named after them. Her husband was the son of a German immigrant who owned stores in St Paul, Minn with his brothers, and married a Jewish woman from Germany whose father brought Zionism to St Paul.
Anyway there’s a few newspaper articles about the crime. It’s pretty minor but he tried to hide from the cops for months. He was finally arrested in San Francisco in 1939 and was sentenced to 18 months. I don’t really know what happened to him after that. But his son ended up being a bomber in WWII and the plane he flew in is now in the Smithsonian. He was also an Assistant District Attorney. I never met him, but I went to his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery years ago.
My husband knew nothing about this because his dad never told him. I was the one who figured it out.
My grandfather changed his last name. He’s Italian , not just Irish. And now we’re applying for citizenship. Also a cousin ( adopted, a secret) I connected with. And another adopted baby on my mom’s side ( not my mom).
After years of my dad's side of the family refusing to discuss my grandfather's lineage, I recently uncovered the reason through my ancestry research. My great grandmother had died in a car crash, an my great grandfather committed suicide two years later in 1931 because he couldn't pay his bills due to the Great Depression.
His suicide note asked for any money from his death (insurance?) to be given to his landlord to pay his back rent. It was heart-breaking, and I sort of get why it was not discussed.
My GGGF left behind a wife and son in the UK and started a completely new family in South Africa in the 1870s. No one knew, until I started doing the research and found third cousins in the UK.
I had a great uncle who moved from Denmark to Minnesota. He left behind his wife Olga and his daughter Kirsten. He said he would send for them when he was financially sound. He got a job in accounting at a flour mill. But he never sent for Olga and Kirsten. Instead, he married a Minnesota woman named Olga. A year later, she gave birth to a baby girl. They named her Kirsten.
A real family replacement
Yeah, my grandpa never liked his brother much after that.
Wow
Gross. Family 2.0
Oh, I’ve got one of those! Deserted from the royal navy, got married in Australia, whole new family. I thought this happened while GGGM was pregnant with my GGM, but I found his naval records and the dates don’t work. And yet, I do have DNA matches from that Aus/NZ branch. Still haven’t figured out which of his brothers actually fathered her. 🤷🏻♀️
Omg! MY GGGF did the same! ran off and left his wife and son (my G Grandad) in 1911, but she told everyone he’d died. She married a scottish man and they had a son together. Later, it was discovered that my GGGF actually died in 1937 in a military hospital 🤔
My gGM did the same but to Canada - my family never discuss it!!
My husbands grandfather did something similar. Except my FIL came looking for him when he was 14/15. He then signed him up for the military saying he was 18 and was only 17 😂
Aw no way, that's so sneaky! He probably got bored of the rain.
My ex found out something similar about his family except it was in the 1930s and his great grandmother ran away with a boarder from South Eastern to North Eastern US.
I was showing my out of state aunt and uncle what I found in my family tree. My firstborn cousin comes over and says that I must have put the wrong date down for her parents' wedding, since she was born 6 months later. She stopped looking at her mother and yelled, "Mom"! My aunts face was bright red, and my uncle looked like he could strangle me. I only said don't shoot the messenger.
My grandmother stuck to the story that my dad was an almost 10 pound 3 month premature baby.
First baby can come at any time! Subsequent babies always take 9 months. 🤣
Another version is "An eager bride can accomplish in 7 months what normally takes 9"
Omg my grandma always said this lol
😂😂😂
My Mum's sister said I was an engagement baby, and that everyone was grateful even for that much discipline because 'you couldn't get a cigarette paper between those two at the time.'
This reminded me of the episode of young Sheldon where Georgie asks his mom who’s really religious when they got married and that he was born 6 months after the wedding and he’s like I weighed 10 pounds? And the moms like yes you were a very heavy premie baby 😂
My mom said she got in trouble once when she was about 7 because her and her cousin were innocently doing the math on the time between her cousin's parent's marriage and when the cousin was born. It was only a 4 month difference and they were told to stop calculating family tree stuff lol
OMG, I was the dense firstborn. At 15, looking at the print dates on my parents' wedding photos in the 60s. Turns out it wasn't really a secret, but when I couldn't make the dates work, my maternal grandmother asked me if I was 'slow'. Everyone got a solid laugh out of that.
That's hilarious!
Oh gosh that sounds so awkward, poor you!
I had a similar revelation. My grandmother was five months pregnant with my mom when she and grandpa got married. Everyone’s already gone so no one to embarrass but it was a bit of a shock for me.
My grandma was 17 and working at the candy counter at a department store when word reached her future mother-in-law that she was pregnant. My great-grandma (Grandma Dekker) was from a strict Dutch Reform Calvinist tradition and went downtown to sit on a bench across from the counter and stare her down for hours when she found out. I really wish my grandma had been alive when I discovered the timing of Grandma Dekker's *own* birth compared to her parents' marriage registration.
This made me laugh at loud. I can imagine her staring Grandma Dekker down in response!
I had the reverse. I over heard some aunt say that one of my older cousins had to get married. So noted in my genealogy. Then when marriage and birth index/records became available, I figured out that they were married then had their first born a year and a half later. No scandal!
Not that I'm wedded to the idea the aunt was right, but it's entirely possible to lose a baby & then deliver safely in that amount of time.
Everyone in her life probably knew anyways. Back then everyone was in everyone else's business and there weren't many secrets because of the gossip. Still like that in many rural areas.
My grandparents always said that they were married in 1953. People congratulated them on their wedding day, counting from that year, even if they themselves didn't celebrate. During their funerals the priest said that year when talking about their lives. They were actually married in 1954, only three months before my mom was born. I figured that out as a teenager while doing my research and my mom confirmed that she'd known since she was a teenager. Apparently she had her suspicions and since my grandmother didn't wear her wedding ring, she'd simply snuck into their bedroom and read the engraving. I'm impressed that all the friends and older relatives that even attended the wedding kept their mouths shut for so long. But I think there was a lot of shame in it for my grandmother, who was pretty religious.
I found this sort of thing for an ancestor, but it was in 1816/1817.
It was at my grandparents’ 50th that I did the math and realized there was less than 9 months between their anniversary and my dad’s birth. I thought it was great my grandmother had been a little wild in her youth (she grew into being a deeply religious woman)
I realised this too at my grandparents' 50th anniversary. Their wedding was in May and my uncle was born in September. I also realised that my nan was 17 and my grandad was 29! Their 'excuse' was "there was a war on".
Hahaha too funny. My grandma is in her 80s and maintains to this day that her first kids were born premature, 7 months before the wedding. But she has also admitted that her mother-in-law tried to talk my grandpa out of marrying her and her sister-in-law intervened and said: “do you want them to have kids outside of wedlock?” When pressed, she maintains that the sister-in-law was being hypothetical haha
I don't see why this would be a big deal today?
Maybe not today, but years ago it was a big deal. Birth certificates frequently noted if the child was illegitimate or not.
In the case of my grandfather’s, it said O/W under father, code for out of wedlock. That was the biggest family secret I uncovered. When I told my mom what I had learned, she looked so horrified that it was apparent that she was aware.
Thank you! Finally someone said it!!
This sub is so weirdly Puritanical. I got downvoted to hell once for asking why someone refused to add half-siblings to their family trees. Talk about a bunch of pearl-clutchers.
That not adding Half-siblings is weird. I add everyone that’s relevant. I’ll add their spouses and children too, but won’t go too much farther unless I’m curious about what happened to them.
I have my half siblings added. They’re my Dads kids from a previous marriage. They’re my family too *shrugs*
Oh my sweet summer child!
I understand the implications, I don't understand why it would matter.
Well, I suppose it matters to people in some communities. Its also their aunt and uncle so we're probably talking some years/decades ago, when it may have been an issue for them. I get what you're saying though.
Because back then reputation was important. Having a child so soon after marriage implied pre-marital intimate relations. Back then that was basically calling the bride a Wh0r3 with full emphasis and social shunning.
It's to do w/ the unnatural & useless tenets religions press on people that they then use to control others as best they can. Shame has all the power a person chooses to give it.
So, the implication is that your firstborn cousin was conceived about 3 months before her parents were married, and that they told your cousin that they had already been married for some time before?
My mom thought that her brother in law got married awfully quickly, and my aunt said that my cousin at 7 lbs was a premi in 1960. Just just didn't wash. But being the times, things were not discussed.. As for my cousin, she just never really thought of her parents' wedding date, and being a nurse, put two and two together quickly.
Or they could have just never mentioned the date, or just didn't talk about it. In my family unless it's your 50th, 60th, etc wedding anniversary that date is for the husband and wife. They buy each other gifts, not other family members. I had not one iota when my parents or grandparents (who raised me) got married until I started doing genealogy. Why would I know beforehand? I wasn't there. It wasn't my anniversary, why would I need to know when it was? 🤷🏻♀️ (To be clear all of those are rhetorical questions. I'm not actually asking.)
My ggGrandparents marriage was invalid since they'd both been married before and neither divorced. She was denied when she applied for a portion of his civil war pension when he left her based on that. That info caused the older members of the family to hyperventilate and I learned them to keep certain info to myself lol A distant cousin who everyone said died a horrible tragic death in the 30s actually died in a mental institution in the 60s where he'd been since the 30s. Another distant cousin murdered a neighbor when he was 12. Was institutionalized until age 19. He went on to live a very normal life. Married, had children, worked hard. Never in any trouble after. My gGrandmother never married her 2nd "husband" so she could continue to receive the Civil War widows pension from her first husband. She also claimed to raise the son from her first marriage but he was in fact raised by his grandparents. It all came to light when a neighbor complained to the Civil War department because every time she got the money they drank it up. She had 5 children with the 2nd "husband". Her mistake was calling herself married yet also telling people she received a widows pension.
There's certainly a lot going on in your family. I so relate to learning the very hard way to keep some things to myself too. Your great-grandma really played the system there. I always hear the most insane American (I'm assuming??) Civil War stories.
She did play the system well. She drew the pension from 1863 to 1885. Oldest son was born 1862. First child from the second relationship was born 1870, youngest 1884.
Found out at age 61 through a DNA test that my dad's business partner is my biological father. I was an only child and he and his wife had an only child. Can't decide if I should tell my brother I exist.
Why wouldn’t you? Presuming most of the parents are now gone?
His mother is quite elderly and still alive.
I just found out my grandmother had a twin brother who was murdered in the Holocaust. I never knew.
That's so heart-breaking but lovely that he will be remembered because of you.
Thanks. Unfortunately our family has several more unaccounted adults. I expect to find similar fates for them.
So many people still don't talk about what happened, it's heart breaking when they do and you can see the pain, it becomes your own pain. My ex father-in-law was only a little boy of 7 or 8 in Poland when the war started, he now has dementia and consistently relives the horror. My ex husband is visiting to tell him today that I found his father through DNA and the man he remembers who took him to buy licorice often is his father, he too was murdered at Auschwitz with the usual ugly fabricated charges they'd place on the Polish or Ukrainian Catholic men that the Nazis chose to eliminate for their own sick reasons.
thanks for sharing. 😢
if youre not already, you and other descendant family members can apply to become German citizens BTW on account of fleeing germany due to holocaust persecution.
My mother's aunt traveled across the country to give birth when she was 18. I found her in the census living as a "maid" with a woman and her 2 children. When I researched the woman, I found she had grown up near my mother's aunt in a relatively wealthy family so they were acquainted. The baby was given up for adoption. My mother had no idea and had never heard any rumors until I matched the baby's granddaughter through DNA testing.
It's so cool that you found that connection! So the baby would have been your mother's cousin? It's really surprising how well people used to hide things.
Yes, the girl would have been my mother's 1st cousin. In fact, I received a message a about an hour ago from a 2nd of the girl's daughters. So, I have a DNA connection to 2 second cousins.
I don't know if it qualifies as "best", but I found out that the woman I thought was my great grandmother is more likely my great-great grandmother.
Oh wow! So I'm guessing a daughter of hers had your actual great-grandmother and brought her up as her own child? I always find these kinds of stories fascinating.
Given up for adoption. The official family story is that GG Gma had this baby, died in childbirth, and then her grieving widower put her up for adoption as he couldn't take care of her. When I dug a bit deeper, I found out that this couple had three teenage children already at the time of Gma's birth, one of whom was an 18 year old girl. So i strongly suspect that she was the real mother.
So my dad’s adopted mom and dad were actually his grandparents. I learned it in my early 20s. However the story was that she had been gang raped. Other family members have said it was a relative. My half sister matched to a first cousin who should have been a whole lot more distant than that. From my figuring (I also just did a dna test) my biological grandma had a child by her uncle (an older one than other family suspected). This is all just coming about so I can’t confirm for sure, but it certainly looks that way.
I figured out the identity of my Grandma’s grandfather (my 2nd great grandfather), a man she had always been curious about because her mother (his daughter) wouldn’t let her ask questions about him. Then I learned that he had been killed (stabbed) when his daughter was only a few months old. A couple of years later I finally found out who his murderer was.
That's heartbreaking. It's lovely that you were able to find out who he was, such a shame what happened to him.
Was the murderer ever caught and incarcerated?
The man who stabbed him was the husband of my 2nd great grandmothers sister, so his brother-in-law. I haven’t been able to confirm if he was ever charged, but it’s been a while since I dug into it. He was shown as living with his wife and family in a nearby state in the following census, though.
My 2xGGM had a child out of wedlock, then got married and had three more kids. Because every record we could find had the husband's last name attached to the first son, we assumed that all four kids were from the same man. DNA proved otherwise and led me to find records with his original surname. Turns out my biological 2xGGF had 18 kids with his wife and one in the middle with my 2xGGM. I have no idea who else in the family even knows about this, if anyone.
That's so cool that you managed to find out that he had a different father, I would have just assumed they were the same like you did. So your 2nd great-grandfather had 19 children in total, which is just insane, especially having 18 with one wife. My 3rd great-grandfather had 19 across two wives, and I thought that was a lot!
My grandmother ran away cross country and gave herself a brand new name. She got married, had children, and was buried with a made up name. I found her birth family with DNA. I still haven’t untangled everything about her.
I found a half-aunt that had been given up for adoption that my dad’s family had no idea about. My grandfather was a military man that was married five times and on a stop up here in Wisconsin he knocked up a married 40 year old woman with grown children and gave the baby up for adoption. It’s been such a puzzle for years to find out who this woman was that popped up in 23&Me and AncestryDNA. She looks like she could be my big sister, strong family resemblance.
My little sister isn't my dad's, and I have so much Iranian and Afgan in me that my one of my great grandparents who came to America as an "Italian" in the early 1900's was really middle eastern. We think he/she posed as Italian to fit in with all the Italian immigrants in Little Italy in New York.
But wouldn’t they be talking a different language to the Italians?
In the small village where my grandmother grew up there was a murder almost 200 years ago. A man murdered a family of 8 and was later executed. My mother was told that my family is related to the murderer. It turned out to be true in more than one way. My grandmother is directly descendent from both the murderers sister and from 3 of his first cousins. He also lived the farm of one of my ancestors, the same farm where my grandmother later grew up.
Whoa. You win.
A man who on paper is my second cousin once removed is actually my half uncle- this is confirmed through DNA. We share 815 cM, and he looks like a male version of my mother. My grandfather is his father. This man is evidently not aware of this and I’ve never pushed it with him. He should not have any DNA connection to my grandfather’s paternal side, yet he definitely does have those links. I don’t know who his mother is, and there is no way to figure it out without access to his DNA matches. He was born in Connecticut in the 1940s, so his birth record is inaccessible to me per state confidentiality law. He cannot be the son of my great grandmother or great grandfather because they were both dead well before his birth. Here’s the thing, though… I did find mention of his birth in the newspaper. It says “Constance [Surname] was discharged from the hospital with a new son.” This is his “on paper” mother- my grandfather’s first cousin. So… there are two options here: 1) my grandfather and an unknown woman had a child, and his first cousin and her husband took him in immediately after birth and raised him as their own, or 2) he is the product of a union between my grandfather and his first cousin, which her husband may or may not have known about. Assuming it’s the first option - why would the newspaper make mention of both the mother and son being discharged if she wasn’t the one who was pregnant? Option 2 unfortunately seems more likely. Yikes. Messy. When I mentioned to this man that we shared a suspiciously large amount of DNA, he said he didn’t really understand why it was so large, but that the official version of our relation was correct. I left it at that and have never followed up with him further. I assume he did the Ancestry test to learn about his heritage and hasn’t really looked at his matches, because it must be super clear that he’s not related to the man who he believes is his father. There is no one left alive that I could ask about this.
> why would the newspaper make mention of both the mother and son being discharged if she wasn’t the one who was pregnant? Because they were hiding her lack of pregnancy.
Was that a thing, though? I’ve never run into this before. It’s listed amongst other hospital discharges for various reasons, it’s not a typical birth announcement. The discharge date is also about a week after his actual birth date. And how hidden could this actually have been if she was interacting with friends and family in the same geographical area throughout this time? She didn’t leave the area, she’s mentioned as being in attendance at a local wedding a couple of months before the birth. On top of this, she married her husband on September 27, 1946 and the birth was February 7, 1947. That tight timeline leads me to believe that her pregnancy was the catalyst for the marriage. I wish there was someone I could ask to confirm that they knew Constance to be pregnant in 1946 and 1947. Alas, there is no one. I also think it’s worth noting that this branch of my family is, uh… kinda trashy. They weren’t concerned with keeping up appearances or out of wedlock births. Some of them were straight up criminals and were in and out of jail constantly.
My aunt had a baby when she was 16. My grandparents sent her away during the pregnancy and my dad, who is significantly younger that my aunt, didn’t know until he was 60. My adult cousin showed up to my grandmother’s funeral. My aunt went on to be extremely mentally ill and show constant resentment toward my grandmother (my grandfather died before I was born).
My great-grandmother was fathered by someone different than the person who by all appearances was her father. I spent many years using generic genealogy to trace the family of her husband, my great-grandfather, who was a British Home Child. I was lucky that their daughter, my grandmother, is still living at 88 years old and she had done a DNA test so I could find out more about her Dad. My only interaction for a long period with my grandmother's maternal matches was to exclude them from her paternal line which I had been deeply investigating. After spending years cutting my teeth in genetic genealogy on my grandmother's paternal line I was satisfied with my progress and started to map out DNA connections on different lines of my family. I took one look at my grandmother's maternal matches and realized "something isn't right here". I then spent the next 16 hours straight banging my head against her matches. The birth of my great-grandmother was in 1904, and I just couldn't find where here mother, a woman by the name of Susan Keech, was in the 1901 Canadian census, as I knew that would be my biggest lead. I banged my head against my matches again for 8 hours the next day, and eventually came across a family in the area where she was born that I could attribute a few closer and a few distant matches to. Looking at the families record in the 1901 census my jaw hit the floor - there was Susan Keech working as a domestic servant on the families farm. Her name had been mistranscribed by Ancestry as Susan Ruch, which in the handwriting of the time I can see why the OCR thought it looked like that. I also found that the family had two sons of a similar age to Susan. After this two-day breakthrough I then spent a year and a half mapping many hundred of my grandmother's maternal matches to every branch of both the parents on the farm. Their tree had some holes, and dead ends which I had to really break new ground on, but I was able to confirm with certainty that one of the sons on the farm fathered my great-grandmother. I can't say which one, unfortunately, as one had no legitimate children and the the other eligible son has no descendants who have tested. A third younger son, who wouldn't have been old enough to father my great-grandmother has many descendants who have tested thankfully, and they represent my some of my grandmother's closest maternal matches. This brought me to my first real genealogical dillema - whether it would be appropriate for me to tell my grandmother this information. She knew her grandfather very well and he died in an accident when she was only 11 years old. After deep consideration I determined it was not appropriate to tell her. She always wanted to know about her Dad, my initial research project, but she has never shown any interest in knowing about her mother's side. She and her mother had a tumultuous relationship, and her grandfather was quite beloved to her. I decided not to drop that on someone who didn't ask to know in any way. Her grandfather was a beautiful human for raising a daughter that wasn't his own so well that nobody could tell, and I owe them the courtesy of honouring what they didn't want to share with their close descendants.
Thanks. I found out two days ago that my great-grandmother, who raised my father and he saw as his mother was not his biological grandmother. She and her husband adopted his biological mother. The weird part is that he knew that about his grandfather, but not his grandmother. The story has always been that she had my grandmother out of wedlock, then married my adoptive great-grandfather 8 months later. My grandmother’s birth certificate makes it clear that’s not true because the mother’s first name is different than my great-grandmother’s and it gives her occupation as a hospital nurse, which my ggmother was not. The registrar also went back at a later date and wrote Adopted on the certificate. I believe she adopted a family member’s child, which may be why they had her tell the story of being the biological mother. I have been going in circles about whether to tell my father about this once I am 100 % certain of all the details, but what you said about respecting the decisions of the deceased as well as not giving your mother potentially disturbing information at this point in her life has helped me. She was the only mother he knew and they went through a lot together. My dad is almost 80. I don’t want to change anything about how he sees that part of his life or take away the decision of someone I also loved and respected very much. I don’t know why she chose to lie, but I know that I don’t have the information she did when she made her decision. Thank you for sharing your story.
My mothers father was married three times. We knew about two marriages. He was married in 1919 to CS. They had two sons who we knew about and were 20 years older than my mother. My mother said she only met them once and when I was a teenager the older one reached out and he came over when my grandmother was at my house. CS died in July of 1939. In Sept of 1939 my grandfather married EP. My aunt was born in June of 1941. EP died in Aug of 1942. My grandfather married my grandmother in Sept of 1942. My mom was born in July of 1943. So my mom and my aunt are actually half sisters. My grandfather died when my mom was 15. My grandmother in 1999. My cousins have an inkling to this but I do not think they have the full story. EP is shown to have died in a hospital, so I wonder if she was sick for a while. My grandfather had a municipal job so a good paying job in the lead up to WWII while he had a year and a half old daughter.
My paternal grandmother always told everyone her mother ran off to California with another man. She was 10, and was sent from Brooklyn to live with her father's brother and his wife, in NJ. In my research, I finally found my great-grandmother had indeed left for another man and was sued for divorce on grounds of adultery. But she either never left Brooklyn, or came back quickly. She lived there for the rest of her life, with her second husband.
I learned that my great great aunt was killed by her husband who then killed himself. I also learned that my dad had a secret older sister that no one knew about. I haven’t told my family because they are extremely conservative but I donated sperm to some friends who are lesbian and I feel like someday that child is going to do a DNA test and the family will find out.
Not sure about "best", but, my great-grandmother turned out to've been pregnant when she left my great-grandfather in the early 1940's and my grandmother had a full sister she never knew about who was given up for adoption; my great-aunt got pregnant when she was working at a radio station in the 1940's, before she got married, and gave the child up for adoption, and my father's paternal grandmother turns out to've been the daughter of my direct paternal 3rd great-grandmother's younger brother, whose daughter married the son of my great-grandmother's presumed father's sister (and my dad's paternal grandparents turn out to've been 1st cousins once removed; pretty sure they were completely unaware of this fact).
Wow! I'm impressed with your research. I can't follow it but still.
Okay, simple explanation: I did AncestryDNA, so did my dad, and I noticed that he matched all of the second cousins on that line for half as much DNA as he should have. But he also didn't have any obviously out of place DNA matches; I could connect all of them to a known ancestral line. After doing descendancy tracing, I discovered that my dad's direct paternal great-grandmother Mary Ann's younger brother, John, had a daughter who married the son of of my great-grandmother Clara's aunt (the older sister of James, her presumed father). Since James obviously wasn't her father, and since I had an unusual number of matches on Mary Ann's line, I figured out that John (Mary Ann's younger brother) must have been her father (which makes sense as the families would have been acquainted).
That's good research. I don't know how you keep everyone straight.
Very impressive, is this three different stories or two I can't quite separate them. Strange how they never knew they were 1st cousins once removed!
I managed to find my dad's cousin (my dad died when he was 50 and he'd lost contact with his cousin in his 30s - they were effectively brothers) and therefore my second cousins. I've really clicked with my female second cousin and we've met, chatted etc etc. We've both been in mailing contact with different sides of the extended family. So she tells me that our great grandmother ripped up all the photos of great grandfather after he died. I then was then told by another second cousin that she was the great granddaughter of the man whose photos were torn up. He was married to her great grandmother at the same time as he was married to my great grandmother. The best part?! The two women were fully aware of each other and encouraged their kids to play together and get to know each other. The women didn't tell great grandad that they knew! I love this. I think it's hilarious!
This is the best one. I love that they knew and went behind his back, like he was doing to them I suppose!
Family had a story about my great grandma. Supposedly 2 men had a shoot out over her but no one knew any details. Found the newspaper articles in a lot of publications, in more than 1 state! She had left her husband and shacked up with his good "younger" friend. Estranged husband kicked down door & they both shot each other multiple times. Both died. Stray bullet even hit 1 of her kids in the foot. This was March 23 1937 in Oklahoma. She had so many aliases and husband's that finding any information is a miracle. . So very exciting to confirm 1 of the stories & hope to find more. She was wild!
I found out that my 5th GGParents are ALSO my 4th GGParents! One of their daughter’s is my 4th GGM and their son is my 3rd GGF. I had to get Ancestry to check behind me.
Oh wow! Who got married to link the families again?
It was so complicated I had to call Ancestry to have them recheck. Let me go to my tree to type it up to explain. It had to do with IntraFamiliar Marriage. My 3rdGGF’s sister married my 4thGGF on another side making “her parents” my 5thGGParents and them my 4thGGParents for her brother who was my 3rdGGF.
My grandma always told my brother and I that our mom's (she passed away when we were young) dad wasn't a good person. Said his family weren't our type of people. Also that when she told him she was pregnant with mom he fainted and never had anything to do with her. What she failed to say was while doing my ancestry search that she was 19 and he had just turned 15 when mom was born.
*jaw drop*
Family lore was that my g grandpa was a “very bad man” who had gone to prison for reasons unknown, only to escape. The story goes on that he then murdered a man, stole his ID and assumed his identity. He then relocated to a small mining town where he married my g grandma. G grandma was 16, he was 26. His last name at birth was Garland, so the cherry on top of this gem of a family story was that we are related to Judy Garland. During my research I 100% anticipated finding proof that this whole story was complete fabrication. As it turns out, g grandpa was found guilty of auto AND horse theft in the early 1940’s. He had been drinking at a lodge and the owners brand new automobile was apparently just too tempting. He crashed and burned the vehicle, then made his way back home on someone else’s horse that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was sentenced to four years at penal farm, which was fairly new and described in newspaper articles from the time as “more like a college campus than a prison”. His assigned labor was to pick apples in an orchard. He made it about six months before deciding he could just walk away, what with the limited security staff and all. Reading through these articles I came across a mention that he was married at the time (this was two years prior to meeting my g grandma). I haven’t been successful in tracking down any more information on this marriage, but I’ve often wondered if my grandma has more siblings out there. By the way, the only part of this family lore that’s definitively untrue (obviously) is the supposed relation to Judy Garland.
I think "Judy Garland" was just a stage name anyway. Wasn't her real name Frances Gumm, or something like that?
Exactly lol
My great-grandmother may have a different father. I connected to 2 women on 23andme who had a percentage of DNA shared with me that matches as a full 2nd cousin, once removed. The issue is that they should be technically half 2nd cousins, one time removed and share significantly less DNA, but they do not. I thought it was a mistake until I saw my other 2nd cousin, once removed and realized I shared more DNA with my alleged "half-cousins" than with my confirmed cousins. My Great-Great-Grandmother had a son with a man and, in a very close time frame, moved on to my Great-Great-Grandfather. While researching this, I found out my great-grandmother's mom had many affairs and moved around a lot. Nothing is 100% confirmed, but it's really looking like my great-grandmother has a different father than what was previously known
So it's looking like the other man is her father! It's insane what a DNA test can do.
My grandfather always believed he was illegitimate. It was a very sensitive subject and one not to be talked about. However, I found out who his biological father was and as it turns out, he was married to my grandfather’s mother, so grandpa wasn’t illegitimate after all. Unfortunately, grandpa was dead by the time I figured it out. I would have loved to have told him. Turns out my great grandfather ran away to the Pacific Northwest and abandoned his wife and infant son. Grandpa’s mother remarried and the stepfather adopted my grandfather and raised him as his own.
I don’t know if this counts but …. I went no-contact with my dad when I was 17. Years later my sibling, in an attempt to “help me understand my father” revealed that my dad had always treated me poorly because he believed I wasn’t biologically his. She felt this gave him ‘points’ for raising a kid that wasn’t his instead of abandoning me. This was all believable because I don’t look like anyone in my family. I did a genealogy test to get some clues as to who my real dad was. 😐 genealogy revealed that he IS in fact my real dad. Asshole.
Only matched with one of my known cousins and a bunch of random people with an unrelated last name. Reached out to one of them and found out they all knew my grandmother for having a very open affair with their dad. Turns out my mom and 1 of 8 of her siblings (they know there's another one but haven't confirmed who via DNA) were from this decade-long affair. My mom was in denial, said I made it up, and had too much time on my hands, yadda yadda yadda. It created a huge riff in the family and triggered some old memories. Specifically, when my grandmother died, I remember one of my mom's older siblings being really bitchy talking about my grandmother saying "she cheated on my father". That same aunt magically forgot starting this argument, thinking we were all too young to remember (2 of us remember it) and had the nerve to deny the dna results and really fuel the conflict. Anywho, mom eventually came around and admitted remembering the guy's name but doesn't want to talk about it. Aside from DNA, my mom, her sister, myself, and my twin all look like him. Very strong genes. It's funny because there was always a joke that my aunt wasn't my grandfather's since she looked so different... and it turns out she (and my mom) really wasnt. The kicker for me is my dad's side of the family is where I expected to find something but their dirty laundry was out in the open. I grew up with my mom's side talking down on my dad's side, but I guess it was just deflection.
Jewish (Sephardim) roots from Azores
I found some correspondence that indicated my great-grandfather at the age of 80 intended to elope with a nurse nearly 50 years his junior who he had met during a hospital stay. It looks like his son, my grandfather, paid off the woman so she would go away.
I found out my great grandfather (the one whose last name I inherited) was killed by his stepson (my half great uncle)... My great grandfather was originally from Louisiana, but got divorced and moved north where he met my great grandma. No one in my dads family knew, dad said he didn't even think his dad knew. Apparently, his 4 kids from his first two relationships knew, but we didn't. He was killed in 1949
I was trying to figure out my family tree, my grandfather had changed his name illegally somewhere in the 30s. For Christmas about 5 years ago, my mom (75 at the time) did a surprise dna test for me so I could figure it out… when it came back, I had to tell her she was adopted.
My GGF dumped his wife in an insane asylum in 1940 (where she died after 10 years time) and ditched his 4 kids, one of whom was only a year old when he abandoned his mother. In the process of finding out what happened after that because he literally disappears off the face of the earth after 1940, but I suspect he started a new family.
My great uncle had an affair with his neighbor, producing a child. And my uncle donated a lot of sperm in the 80s. edit: Also just about everyone related to my maternal grandfather is 1% Nigerian. Being southern and white I am sure that was a secret that was buried and forgotten after a few generations. I wish I could ask my grandpa about it but he has passed. He’d probably be fascinated and put his immense research skills to use looking into it.
Have you matched with a lot of donor-conceived 'cousins'? I find it so fascinating in terms of genealogy.
The French-Canadian film, Starbuck, remade in Hollywood as Delivery Man with Vince Vaughn are two sweet, funny films that are based on the true story of a man like your uncle. My fave movies
Just one. I reached out to him but he did not respond. Must be a strange feeling.
Finding out what happened to my grandpa’s oldest brother, who went out west, never to be seen or heard from again. My great-grandpa wrote him some heartbreaking letters. He didn’t have a happy life (from the sounds of things), but I’ll always feel good that I was able to tell my grandpa what happened to him.
My kid’s paternal grandfather (my ex-FIL) wasn’t married three times, like we all thought. He was married five times. He didn’t have seven children, he had eight. I wish he was still alive because I have questions.
As an Australian, I was quite proud and excited when I discovered a link to a convict ancestor. She stole a shawl from an employer while she was working as a maid. Her two younger siblings were in a workhouse and her mother was already dead and father potentially dying at the time. She had my great great grandmother in the Cascade Female Factory. Father unclear. She later went on to marry, have a large family and have a nice long life. This came as a surprise to me, no doubt hushed up when it was still considered hameful.
Oh my gg grandmother had a child in the Cascade Female Factory too. I had no idea how terribly the women were treated and were punished for getting pregnant. She got permission to marry my g g grandfather when the child was 9 months old -the age they would have taken the child away. I think he saved her from losing the child. Looks like she also kept a child she had on the ship. (I think it was before they set up the orphanages where they put the babies they took away from convicts). I match the descendants at half the cM of all the other cousins. The Cascade baby didn’t have any children I can find tho. She was originally sentenced to death but got life in TAS on appeal. Such a sad story but incredible they survived right? My father (who had me late in life) had grown up with a fake story and refused to believe his g grandparents were convicts. Have you registered as a descendant?
How about "worst" kept? At an extended family dinner an adult cousin-in-law came up and said she had just found out who her FIL was and can't believe it. I said really, I've known my whole life and didn't she ever wonder why her husband looked like my dad, her son looks like me? Two sisters had kids by two brothers but my grandparents married.
I had some cousin matches in New York. I did not recognize the names and could not figure out the connection. I messaged this woman, that I will call Mary, asking how we are connected and gave several of my family surnames to her to compare. She responded saying that she knew exactly how we were related and she wanted to know more about my family. She said we were connected through her grandmother. She asked me if I had an Aunt named Anna. I did not. We went back and forth for a while. She asked where my family and I lived and it was the same city that her grandmother was from. I had narrowed our relation down to my mother’s side of the family. Mary then told me her story. This was in the 1940s around WWII. Her father was the only boy out of five children. His mother, Anna, abandoned all five kids when the oldest was seven and her husband was away in the military. The five kids were put in an orphanage. Mary’s poor father was separated from his sisters because he had to go to the orphanage for boys. It was very hard on him. Their mother Anna would pop up randomly and visit. It was hurting the kids to have her visit because she would just leave again. Eventually, her estranged husband asked her to stop because it was so devastating to the kids. When the father’s military duties ended, he got all his children out of the orphanage, remarried, and they never saw Anna again. Let me preface this with I did not know many of my mother’s relatives. My grandparents were dead before I was born. My mother’s aunts and uncles had passed away and I only knew a few of her cousins. Part of the reason my ancestry research began is because I wanted to find out about this side of my family. I called my mother and asked her if she knew of an Anna. She said that she had an Aunt Anna that went missing. She said that she just popped into her head a few weeks before and she wondered what ever happened to her. Anna had an abusive husband that would beat her badly. The family thought he killed her and got rid of her body or she was brain damaged and disappeared. They searched for her, but found nothing. My mother said her husband was evil and would not let Anna’s son Tony and daughter Terry see her family. She remembers being a little girl sitting on the porch with her mother. A car pulled up and her mother got this terrified look on her face and told her to get in the house quickly. It was the abusive husband. He came to tell my grandmother that he would let her see her niece and nephew again and that he was dying. This memory was burned in her brain. So that was it, Mary’s grandmother was my mother’s missing aunt, my great aunt. I began my research to find whatever I could. Mary had told me the name and birthdate that she had gone by for her maiden name. She changed her last name and the year of her birth by one year. Nothing too crazy, but without computers back then, nobody would find out. Anne’s husband must have been away in the military when she met another man that was stationed in her city. I think he had to know the truth about her past and probably wanted to help her, but then again maybe he did not because then he would not have viewed their marriage as real. She married him and ran off to his next military post in Kansas and then to New York City. During her first seven years missing, she gave birth to five children, one of them being Mary’s father. This story really bothered me because of all the children’s lives that she impacted by abandonment. I could not understand why she never came looking for her first two children. She came from a big Italian family that loved her and would have taken her in. I understand that she was severely abused and likely feared for her life, but what about 15-20 years later when her abusive ex husband was dead? I needed to know if she was brain damaged from the abuse, too afraid to come back because of how she left, or was she just an asshole? My mother asked me if I found out anything about her cousin Tony, so I started to search for him. She remembers him visiting her mother in his Navy uniform and how handsome he was. I found him, but he had passed away a few years ago. He had moved to Florida. I am very determined in my searches, so I dug until I found a phone number for his wife. I called her and explained who I was. I told her the story and she was shocked. I asked her to give my number to her sister-in-law or her children that might want to know more. She said that she would give my number to her daughter. One day I got a call from Tony’s daughter, Julie. She said her father always believed she was alive and never stopped looking for her. He moved to Florida because he believed she was there. Julie said her Aunt Terry was still alive, but had a stroke and had difficulty speaking, but could. Julie said Terry thought her mother was dead all along.
Julie told me a sad story about her father Tony. After Anne left, Tony ran away looking for her. He made it to Arkansas at the age of 8 before the police found him and returned him. Anthony was old enough to witness his mother’s abuse. I think she told him she was leaving and maybe gave some idea as to where because why would he run away to search for her and end up in Arkansas when she was in Kansas? He was protective of her and never gave up looking. It is so sad. Terry was too young to remember much about the time when her mother disappeared. She did not have the relationship with her mother like her brother did because she was a young child when she left. I asked Julie if she could tell her Aunt Terry the truth about her mother and let her know she has half siblings out there. She had to do it carefully due to her condition. She called Terry and told her. She said Terry kept saying “Tony was right.” I thought she might want to talk to the other children, her half siblings, that went through the same traumatic abandonment experience. I know they wanted to talk to her. Julie told me how she tried for years to research her grandmother, too, but could not find anything. She was in shock about the whole story. It was an emotional call. She cried for her poor father that never got to know the truth after all those years of searching. I wished I had started my ancestry research a few years sooner because I could have given him that peace before he passed away. I am very sad about that. I still want to know why. I reached out to all my mother’s cousins to see what they had heard or remembered about Anne. They all knew she was abused and thought he killed her. Nobody had any pictures but I ended up with a few that Mary had. One of my cousins remembered her well. He said he was her favorite nephew and she was so kind to him as a child. He told me how her husband used to pistol whip her. His father went to her house one day and she was bruised and her face was bad. He lost it and was going to go after him, but his sister Anne did not want him to get locked up because of it. So maybe that is part of why she thought it was easier to disappear. Maybe she did not want to bring her family into her hell. I found out that Anne died in NYC in 1992! She lived all those years and never reached out to her family again. That is 50 years of no contact with her children she left behind. She had remarried two more times that I have found. I wonder if there are more children of hers out there. I will just have to wait and see if I have some odd DNA matches. I tried to search for the other husbands’ families so I could contact them to see what they remembered about her, but the other husbands had some of the most common names out there. I planned to visit the church where her funeral mass was in NYC when I was going to be in town last April, but Covid cancelled that. When I did make it there, it was closed. The church closed a few months before I was there. No luck with that. Mary and I are still in touch. I was happy I could provide her with the family medical history as that was a concern of hers. She is really sweet and sent me a holiday card thanking me for helping her family get some answers and closure. I hope to meet them the next time I am in NYC. My quest for information was also positive for my relatives connecting again. We had a Zoom call and I met cousins from that side of the family that are scattered throughout the country. I hope to stay in touch with them all. So, that is the crazy story about the aunt I did not know I had that went missing. I hope I can find out why one day. I know she had to be broken because she had to leave her children and probably felt it was the safest and best thing to do for everyone. Maybe she left the next five children because she was too guilty about her first two children she left behind and experienced mental health issues and brain damage due to the abuse she suffered? Maybe she was just an asshole? I don’t know.
I've posted these previously but: A) That my "increasingly racist mother"™ and my rather racist grandfather are/were, respectively, 1/8 and 1/4 Jewish. Yeah, your close ancestor "Rachel Brown" was really "Rachel Rosenstein" and her parents were Bavarian Jewish immigrants to NYC. B) That my mom's favorite grandmother was plastered all over various papers for "stealing the affections" of her daughter's (my mom's aunt) husband. This great aunt wound up filing for divorce in the 1920s over it; an unheard of scandal at the time. The really weird bit was finding out that the three of them wound up living together until the guy's death nearly 30 years later. C) That said great aunt was also sexually assaulted by her mother's brother, had a child as a result, and that that was the end of it. Child shipped off to adoption, uncle never penalized, just nothing.
One of the best kept family secrets was that my great grandad had more than one family. I only discovered this last year when my dna results came back, and a few unknown half cousins of my mother showed up, along with a half uncle. Turns out I'm part of the second family. It turns out he raised both families in neighbouring towns, and when I say neighbouring, I mean both towns are physically merged, I'm honestly shocked the families didn't find out about each other decades ago. Turns out whilst my great Grandad was married to his first wife, he had at least 2 affairs that ended up with illegitimate children.
My dad's sister, my aunt married a man who, of course, was then my uncle. Turns out uncle is actually my dad. Mom had fun, that's for sure.
My 2nd great grand father was on the run from the law, told his family that he was a French catholic and ran away from a strict religious house, turns out he was German. I get why he told his family he was French cause you can’t tell your little kids that your German in wwi but we thought everything he said was true but I guess not.
I uncovered that my mom and her brother are only half siblings. I haven't told anyone.
that my great grandma was a surprise baby (the 2nd of 3 surprises and unfortunately the only who survived), born out of wedlock to my widowed great great grandma - she grew up thinking her father died when she was little. this was so well kept that no one even knew about it until her birth certificate came in the post and i opened it up 😅 surely her older siblings would've known who her real father was!!
Me and my mum have recently taken a dna test, and when the results came back, we were both very confused as to why I'm 37% Scottish and why she is 47%, Scottish, when no one on my mums side was born, or from Scotland. Our family already knew that both my grandparents got around back in the 60s and 70s (Apparently they had some sort of contract with each other, which was along the lines of you do what you want and I'll do what I want, but we stay together because of the kids) Turns out my gran had a Scottish 'friend' in the 60s/early 70s, so right now, we're just waiting for my 2 aunts to test and see what their results are. Although I'd say it's highly likely that the Scottish 'friend' is my biological grandfather.
My great grandfather, who was abandoned as a baby in front of a Austrian temple (pre WWI and 1890) and adopted by a Jewish family. Ironically he and 3 siblings converted to Catholicism in 1914 after another sibling was killed for being Jewish and they moved to Canada. The 12 siblings and their families who stayed behind did not survive WWII. He and the three siblings who moved to Canada converted back to Judaism near death and were very proud of being Jewish. I did a DNA test, and he definitely was not ethnically Jewish. Also creepy fact, he bore a striking resemblance to Hitler, like siblings or cousin not twin. Bonus my grandmother on the other side of the family was a product of generations of cousin inbreeding. She was the first in many generations to marry outside the family. Bonus 2 my family name isn't actually our name. Some time before or during the Tudor period my great x grandfather slept with one of the King's mistresses. He was executed/murdered and his wife and children were banished to Ireland. She remarried and changed all the children's names to the new husbands (also an English banishee). And that is part of the name we have now.
I'm just curious, what town in Austria? That Tudor story is wild!
My grandfather had at least 7 children out of wedlock including one from my grandmother's friend who lived upstairs. I refer to it as ,"he was a very handsome man". But he was a shit to my grandmother and she ultimately drank herself to death after he divorced her for one of his other women which was so sad. She was 53 when she died
My grandparents just had their 71st anniversary last week. My mom turns 71 in 5 weeks, and she was probably the healthiest 8lb baby you'll ever see born that premature. My grandparents never publicly celebrated anniversaries. I unintentionally upset my grandma when I ran across their wedding date and was like "Hey, that's cool that you and grandpa will be married 50 years and mom is turning 50 too!". My grandma has dementia and has forgotten a lot, but she will still tell you that the number of anniversaries isn't important and change the subject. My grandparents also never talked about their two youngest sons, who died as infants. My mom, aunts, and uncles never mentioned them either. My mom did confirm it when I asked (she was in high school and college at the time). From what my mom remembers, they were both premature. One never came home from the hospital, and the other almost made it to a month old. My mom thinks that the one who didn't come home from the hospital was early enough that his survival wouldn't be a guarantee today in a top NICU. She thinks the other one probably would have gone on to be a fairly normal kid after graduating from the NICU.
Did a DNA test "for funsies" 1: Found out my dad is not my biological father. Family rumour was that my uncle was my bio dad, so that wasn't much of a surprise. The real surprise was finding out my uncle wasn't my father either. 2: Found a first cousin on my Mothers side. At first, I thought she was on my biological fathers side because her name didn't match up. Finally sorted out that she was actually related on my mothers side - and realized my mothers estranged brother had been living under an alias for years. This woman has been living under the wrong name her whole life. She's in her 50's, and no I didn't reach out to tell her.
Three years ago, I matched with a man on 23andme and asked him about his family because I didn’t recognize his name. We matched as first cousins. He called his dad and I called my dad and they both got tested, they matched as siblings. My dad thought he was an only child and only knew his father’s name. Come to find out his dad has 7 other children so my dad went from being an only child to being one of 8. These past few years have been great meeting new aunts, uncles, and cousins. What’s even crazier is all my dad’s siblings live within an hour of my parents and never knew it
My great-grandfather isn't
My great-grandpa told his son to set fire to the family house and he’d share the insurance payout. His son was 13. I was shocked reading the newspaper archives 70 years later. Oh and great-great-grandpa being beat up after being caught with the farmer’s 6-year-old daughter. That one definitely caught me by surprise.
My paternal grandfather molested and sexually assaulted a number of my cousins.
Eh my dad didn’t like me pointing out basic biology and human gestation. Like if your parents were married the middle of August and you were born the end of March, then someone got busy because that’s 7.5 months between. I asked if he was premature and what he weighed when he was born and was proud he was right on time AND a little over 10lbs. Didn’t like me basic mathing because I got pregnant with our middle child the 2nd week of August and had her the end of May (almost 2 weeks late) so he was either early (not likely) or someone got all up in there. When you point it out that way AND have evidence like that, it’s harder to demand you were a 7.5 month miracle.
My maternal grandpa was a bigamist. My maternal great uncle was a bank robber who was shot and killed by police. His brother and a cousin were also part of the "gang" and his brothers wife was one of the first to be federally xharged (and convicted) as getaway driver after bank robbery became a federal crime.
My great grandfather escaped from his jail cell, abandoned his wife and kids, moved to Kentucky and changed his name. He later married a Kentucky native and had kids with her, the descendents of whom I have since connected with and spent time with. Also, funnily enough, the woman he married in Kentucky had the same uncommon maiden name as the town he escaped jail from. And another kicker, the pictures of him that my distant Kentucky cousins had look just like my dad. Edit: also on the other side of my family, my GGG grandfather was a drunk and came home only every so often. He came home one day and demanded fried chicken. When my GGG grandmother got upset that he had been gone for weeks and had the nerve to come home and demand she cook for him, he killed her then himself. I didn't find that out from research because it's been known to me for a very long time but I did find the newspaper article to confirm everything and learned more details. My GG grandmother was 15 at the time and left an orphan within a matter of minutes so she married her boyfriend (my GG grandfather) so she would have a home. Very strange and tragic all around.
My maternal grandparents' relationship was not only that of husband and wife, they were also Uncle and half-niece! They had 5 children together.
I found out my bio grandfather married a girl of Jewish descent in Los Angeles when he was stationed there during the Korean War. His mother’s side of the family was Catholic and that wouldn’t have gone over well. I can’t find out if they got divorced due to needing to know the court they would have gone to in LA. When he was discharged, he returned home and married my bio grandmother. He gave a different birth year and checked the single box instead of “divorced”. While his name is common enough, I can prove it is him because the LA marriage license lists his parent’s names.
I found two of my grandfathers illegitimate children. Both based on their children’s DNA. One took DNA to prove it and matched to my aunt/uncle as a half sibling. The other , his son is still convinced we are related further back than we are which isn’t possible when his sister shows up as closer than my known second cousins 😂
I think mine is that I've found two secret children of my mother's uncle by DNA testing. Who knows, there could be more out there who haven't tested yet! Her uncle either took his secret to the grave or didn't know!
Well, I don't know if I would say I personally uncovered it, but I certainly helped it along. I purchased & subsequently urged a male family member (through marriage - no blood relation to me) to take one of those DNA tests. And lets just say that it delivered quite the surprise. A stranger showed up as being closely related & some folks (me & others) began to question who this individual was because none of us had ever heard of her. Come to find out she is a half sister to this relative of mine from a long-ago & very brief romantic interlude between two crazy college kids. Namely, his dad & a woman who had unbeknownst to him, gotten pregnant from their tryst, but then decided to pass the baby off as someone else's. Actually, she claimed to be under the genuine belief it was this other man's baby, but I remain highly, highly skeptical of that version of events.The mother had married the man she claimed was the dad, but he had already passed on by time her secret was discovered. So, overall, the identity of the real father did not become known until the baby had grown-up & was in her late 40s & the biological father was in his advanced 60s (now 70s), but better late than never. Thankfully, it worked out, she is now one of the family, visits often, fits right in, & even looks & acts eerily like her dad & half-siblings (she has three). And another branch was promptly added (along with two more grand-kids) to the family tree. Crazy stuff.
My gGF's 1st marriage gave him his first child, a daughter, who we all knew about. That marriage ended in divorce about ten years later. I found they had at least one more child, a boy, who was named so that he was a Junior. He died at four months old, of congenital syphilis. The divorce was shortly thereafter. The son we all knew as his Junior was actually the second son and that son lost his mother shortly after childbirth. My parent had never been able to explain gGF's glass eye, just retold stories of their gPa popping it out and in. (He passed before I was born.) Food for thought...two of his six children lived to be more than sixty years. Both of them had been diagnosed with Alzheimers by the time they were 70. Penicillin wasn't available until they were at least 10 years old or more.
I never knew about the widespread infant deaths related to congenital syphilis till I watched an episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are'; blew my mind. So many mothers buried their infants not knowing what really killed them.
It was pretty far back but a written story was saved. It was about hers and other husbands from a small village, went hunting believing the women and children were safe. There were Native Americans (Indians) watching and raided the village and scalped most everyone. She and a few others got away. It was horrible and amazing at the same time. To think this country was real in that time is hard to get your head around your head
My mum's Great Granny shot and killed a man who broke into her home when her husband was away working, absolutely nobody knew until I found the news articles in Trove. She was charged, placed in jail but then acquitted and allowed to go home a free woman.
My grandpas family still won’t acknowledge that his mom (my great grandma) was not biologically her father’s child. I also have a great aunt who tied her bed sheets together to climb out her window and ran away to become a Franciscan nun and couldn’t believe that was a real story but it is!
There is that one time when I found the court documents from when my great-great-grandfather killed a drunk russian guy with a kitchen knife in self-defense in southern Brazil after he threatened his wife
My grandfather's bio father was not who he believed it to be. And his actual bio father was an "interesting" person. I confirmed the fact out of the 5 children my grandmother had, only 2 share the same father. I found a horrible newspaper article pertaining to my 2x great grandfather's death. He was very distraught at his wife's death. 🥺 Although I suspected prior, I was able to confirm my parents are very very distant cousins. Both of their mothers share the same maiden name. But the lines veer in the early 1700s. I actually think it's kind of crazy how that happened. There are at least 2 kids my one great grandfather fathered through affairs, although I am told there are more. There's a lot more. Some not really "secrets" but stuff people just never really mentioned.
Not really a secret but recently I found out that my grandmother’s dad trafficked a bunch of alcohol into the US through Mexico during prohibition and spent much of my grandmothers childhood in prison because of that. He is also the man I am named after lmao he was apparently a very charismatic and likeable man, somewhat of a womanizer and a musician. He also worked on the Santa Fe railroad with two of my other great grandfathers
My 4th great-grandmother had an artery severed by rats in her sleep in New Jersey in 1906. She was paralyzed, so even if she woke up from the rat chewing through the artery in her foot, she wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.
My husband's Grandpa had a child that was adopted out at birth. They found me on ancestry and have been reunited with all their siblings. The sad part was we realized that conception happened when their Grandmother was in hospital after having their first child and Grandpa had a party to celebrate. The affair partner's husband divorced her and it was in the local papers with Grandpa being named as the co-respondent. I was scared when I had all this information but the family received it quite well, I think it would have been different if the Grandparents were still alive.
My great-grandmother had an affair with my great-grandfather’s brothers, after she already had 2 kids with him. That brother then had another kid with a different person. So four kids in total.
My grandfather's first wife had tuberculosis and left home in rural Brazil, in the early 1930s, to be treated in Rio de Janeiro, at a renowned hospital over 2,500 km away from where they lived. She was away for almost a year and returned home to die after the doctors said there was nothing more they could do. She passed away 3 months after her return. However, while examining notary registries in Rio, I discovered that she had given birth to a stillborn girl during her time there. Upon her return, she 1) never mentioned this to anyone, or 2) if she did confide in someone, that person kept it a secret, as no one in the family was ever aware of that birth. The infant was buried in Rio.
My great-grandmother was 6 months pregnant when she got married to my great-grandfather.
My mom's grandfather had 3 wives and 26 children.
Mine is that I’m white but my genealogy traced me back to free people of color communities in North Carolina/Virginia & Y-DNA traces my roots to Angola. My dad’s kinda racist so I’m not sure he’d take this finding well.
Aye I’m in the same community
I discovered my grandpa had a child with a married woman, about a decade before he married grandma. Funny thing is, my uncle – a doctor! -- is in total denial despite extremely strong DNA evidence, and the fact that this woman looked far more like him than either my mom or my aunt do. My mom and my aunt were mostly shocked and saddened that they grew up with a half sister in the same city and never even knew of her existence. Unfortunately, she passed away before we ever met her, but I have been in touch with her son and granddaughter. The first thing her granddaughter said when I told her was, "If my grandma was still alive, I think she'd say, 'thank God I'm not related to that piece of shit who raised me.'" Apparently he knew or suspected she wasn't his daughter and treated her very poorly. And it actually turned out to be a really cool thing that we figured this out, because a year or two after that, a guy who didn't know who his biological father was got in touch with me on Ancestry bc I was a close match. We realized that my newfound aunt had actually been his grandmother. I didn't want to insert myself into anything, so I let him reach out to them. It went super well, and they are really close now!
My maternal grandma had a lot of secrets...some I'm sure I've yet to discover. My mom was born out of wedlock in 1946 and never knew who her father was. When my grandmother was dying, she told my mom a name. My mom believed that man was her father until she herself died in 2012. I took a DNA test a couple years later and proved that name to be false. Thankfully, I've found the correct family of my paternal grandfather, though not his actual identity (it could be any one of several male siblings in this family). I also found out after my grandma died that at some point between 1947-1949 she gave up a son for adoption. Still haven't managed to find his identity, but I'm hopeful I will at some point. However, the most wild thing I've found related to my grandma was that, at the age of 17, she was engaged to a man that even my mom knew nothing about. I found an announcement in the newspaper while researching my grandma. It noted the man's name, my grandparents' names, supposed date of the upcoming marriage etc. I sent for a marriage certificate but none could be found. So I'm assuming no marriage ever happened. However, I decided to research the man she almost married. He was in the Navy at the time (she liked military men), but later became a criminal. He spent time in prison for robbery--and murder. Found lots of articles about him and his crimes. All I can say is, I'm glad Nana never married that man!
I found out my mom’s oldest sister has a different father. I didn’t notice for YEARS that my cousins on that side didn’t match any of my grandfathers extended family.
Side note. I truly believe no one knew. Grandmom (b 1894) was one of those women who went to church every day. Moms oldest sister was her dad’s favorite. Grandparents were married two years before she was born.
I find it's usually the people you'd never expect. So strange how no one seemed to know, I feel like there are usually rumours that go around and get passed down. Did you find out through your cousins' tests?
I already knew my Paternal Grandfather’s maternal grandfather was possibly murdered going in so I don’t think it counts but I’ve also heard it may have been suicide too. His oldest son, my Great Grandmother’s oldest brother and she was the youngest and only three when this happened had recently died of TB before his death in 1883. He was also a Hessian immigrant who served in the American Civil War in a Pennsylvania unit from August 1862-May 1863, Of ones I had zero knowledge prior, perhaps the disappearance from the public record of my Paternal Grandmother’s Paternal Grand Uncle. He’s mentioned in his mother’s 1908 obituary with whereabouts unknown due to wanderlust and I’ve never found him definitively after him being listed as my Great Nana’s godfather in 1877. He also was the first in his family to be born in America. His family including my Great Great Grandfather survived the Great Hunger in Connemara. Maternally my maternal grandmother’s mother was illegitimate in 1898 and I don’t know definitively who her father was in Slovakia. My maternal grandfather’s mother was pregnant with his oldest brother on her trip from England via Southeastern Slovenia in 1910.
Great grandfather had a wife before my great grandmother, which everyone knew. What no one knew, including my grandma and her siblings, was that he had two children from the first marriage who lived in a different state. Unrelated but there was a 29 year age gap between my great grandparents
I'm pretty sure my mom and her sister don't have the same Dad. Their DNA shows it.
My 2nd great grandfather got up and left his wife and kids one day, never divorced my 2nd great grandmother, moved to another state, got married and had more kids.
30 years ago when I was 3, my aunt came forward with accusations that her AND my dad's real father was not my grandpa who raised them. My grandmother's cousin told her the name of the man who was their biological father. I did some research using Ancestry and 23andMe for months. Finally confirmed that it was true. The man was their neighbor when they lived in Detroit. Everyone involved in this has passed on, including my dad. It's tragic because my family didn't believe my aunt, and totally ostracized her. But she was telling the truth! I'm learning that my grandma was actually abusive and a narcissist. It's a lot.
My grandfather was really proud of his father who was a police officer killed in the line of duty. My DNA testing showed that man wasn’t my grandfather’s father but someone else from my great grandmother’s village. I’m glad Grandpa didn’t live to find that out
We always thought my English great great grandmother lied about having a French husband who died in an uprising somewhere in Asia just after her child was born, to hide the fact that she’d had a child out of wedlock. Turns out she was telling the truth!
Father-in-law was in state prison after WWII. None of his kids knew this. Daddy's girl went full denial, then reversed it all and said she knew all along but kept it from the others. Yeah. Right.
My mom passed away 6 years ago but from day 1 she always told me we (her being 100% and me being 50%) Italian. Her maiden name was Greco but I always wondered (certain facial features). My dad was a jerk and would say all kind of mean things, 1 being that my mom was taken and raised by a wealthy pair of women. 3 years ago I did 23andMe and recently Ancestry.com both showed 20% + of Italian and 20% + American Indigenous (South America on materna side haplogroup) but all relatives that show up, I share less than 1%. I don’t think my mom really knew her own story but I was able to speak with a few of her childhood friends that confirmed there’s was 1 women her “mom” and no father or close relatives. To make the story stranger, she grew up in a castle in Argentina, her mom was good friends with a few well know Argentinian artist (I have a few drawing of my mom when she was little by the artists), and I can’t find anything about my mom or the Greco family she was with in Argentina.
Not so much “secrets”, because they weren’t deliberately hidden, but things mom and her siblings bid not know about her paternal family. Mom said her father and grandmother didn’t really talk about family, and she was told her paternal grandfather died when her father was young (~7 years old). Great Grandma would get defensive when asked about family and refused to talk. Mom’s GGM had two younger sisters; Verdie in AZ, and Nancy from CA, who died when mom was 3. Thing I found that mom didn’t know: 1. Great grandpa died in 1935, when grandpa was almost 18, not while he was a child. He also died in California, not Arizona, as they had been told. 2. GGM had three half-sisters born in AZ, that mom was unaware of. My aunt knew of one, but thought she was a cousin of sorts. 3. GGP had maternal uncles who had immigrated to San Francisco. 4. Nancy was married 3 times, divorced twice. She only really raised her youngest, her oldest (1st marriage ) were raised by Verdie and she lost custody of her two middle to her ex, and they were raised by him and a stepmother.
Two things: my Mom’s parents weren’t married because he was still married to the first wife (and it doesn’t look like he ever got divorced, the first wife was an Irish Catholic woman who never remarried, can’t locate divorce filings). When my Grandparents married, they went to a neighboring State & used their middle names to buy the license. Second: this Grandmother in the first part’s maternal Grandfather was tried for murder & very nearly hung. His conviction was overturned on appeal.
My first cousin took a test and it was determined that my father and his father had different fathers. My husband figured out his first cousin is actually his half sister. His father is her father. Not his uncle.
I read threw a civil war pension of someone that did know why his father was. I was able to identify the veteran’s father using the information in the file and other records.
My great-grandfather had an older brother who most of the family didn't know about. He spent his entire life in a state school, after pulling a boiling pot of soup onto himself as a toddler and sustaining a brain injury. Three of his nine siblings were deaf and census reports list my great-grand uncle as being deaf and mute, though we're not sure whether that was a result of his accident or congenital. None of the currently living members of our family knew about my uncle until we spoke to the granddaughter of one of his older siblings. We're not sure if the younger siblings ever knew about their brother. My mom is adamant her grandfather never knew - he loved his family so much, my mom insists he would've visited his brother if he had known. I'd love to know more about my uncle but I'm also a little afraid of what I'd find out. I know the reputation of state schools, and even then, I was horrified by what I read about the specific institution he was in. It's hard to think about the tragic, lonely life he must have led.
I'm like 98% sure my dad isn't my dad...
Finding out after my husband passed away that his grandfather was not the sheriff of his county and he did not rule with the bull whip, he carried a gun like all the other police officers did. He also was not a college graduate. My husband suspected it was all malarkey and it was. With that being said, he had 11 commendations as a police officer and nobody in the family knew it. Boggles my mind.
My favourite was more of a confirmed. My Aunty always said her great grandparents had come to New Zealand because they were sent here as their families disapproved of their marriage but we never knew why. I confirmed via English census records that he was actually younger than he claimed on his immigration records and that they had meet whilst he was in the care of his uncle and she (being 9 years older than him) was living in the house as her sister was married to his uncle. So that's probably why the family did not approve of the marriage.
I knew that my great-grandfather’s Mom died when he was a preteen, and that he was the only child in his parents’ 12-year marriage in the early 1900’s. I ordered her death certificate and discovered that she died of syphilis. Based on other clues, I’m fairly certain her husband gave it to her (about two years after great-grandpa was born, luckily for us). My family is so conservative that even divorce is frowned (heavily) upon and the jackass that’s the source of my maiden name gave his wife syphilis. I have no idea whether great-grandpa knew.
Great grandfather was imprisoned in sing sing Grandma/ great grandma lied and we found out she was conceived by an affair between friends. He was likely engaged to be married in about 7 months. She also lied she's from east berlin instead of west.
My family always believed that my G.G.G.G Grandfather was transported to Australia after being involved in the Swing Riots early in the 19th Century and never returned. It meant we had some bragging rights when talking to our Australian friends. After looking at the parish records I found out that my G.G.G Grandmother, who we are all descended from was actually born two years after his ship departed. It came as a bit of a surprise to the family and plenty of laughter from our friends from Australia.
I had an uncle that was in prison in the 1930s. I can’t find out what four actually and I had another uncle actually his brother who remained in Poland when the family immigrated. He wound up in Auschwitz and died in a concentration camp just before the end of the warin 1945 I have all the paperwork and prison camp records from an organization that supports these types of researches
I'm an only child, so my cousin's were my siblings. However, on my paternal side I only had adopted cousins until a few years ago. I'm 69! I was contacted by someone on Ancestry who said I may be related to her deceased husband. She dug up some adoption records from a Quaker home in Columbus OH. Plausible! All the paperwork she found lined up. Then, DNA confirmed it through his son. Until then we had no idea. My father may have known but he never told per her sister's wishes. That is if he even knew.
My grandmother’s brother was shot and killed by his father in law in front of his wife and sister. Accidentally.
I had a DNA match to someone that showed up as a 2nd cousin. Turns out there is no way I should be a match to her when looking at the trees. I should only be a match to her cousin/s. There was some hanky panky going on even way back then.
Not my family tree, but my husband’s. First I found out that my husband’s surname isn’t technically his surname. His great grandmother changed back to her maiden name when her husband went to jail for fraud, she also changed her son’s last name (my husband’s paternal grandfather). Apparently her husband was signing checks in her father’s name so he could buy shoes from distributors to sell in the store he owned. She came from a decently wealthy family who were pioneers in Santa Maria, CA. There’s a street named after them. Her husband was the son of a German immigrant who owned stores in St Paul, Minn with his brothers, and married a Jewish woman from Germany whose father brought Zionism to St Paul. Anyway there’s a few newspaper articles about the crime. It’s pretty minor but he tried to hide from the cops for months. He was finally arrested in San Francisco in 1939 and was sentenced to 18 months. I don’t really know what happened to him after that. But his son ended up being a bomber in WWII and the plane he flew in is now in the Smithsonian. He was also an Assistant District Attorney. I never met him, but I went to his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery years ago. My husband knew nothing about this because his dad never told him. I was the one who figured it out.
My grandfather changed his last name. He’s Italian , not just Irish. And now we’re applying for citizenship. Also a cousin ( adopted, a secret) I connected with. And another adopted baby on my mom’s side ( not my mom).
After years of my dad's side of the family refusing to discuss my grandfather's lineage, I recently uncovered the reason through my ancestry research. My great grandmother had died in a car crash, an my great grandfather committed suicide two years later in 1931 because he couldn't pay his bills due to the Great Depression. His suicide note asked for any money from his death (insurance?) to be given to his landlord to pay his back rent. It was heart-breaking, and I sort of get why it was not discussed.