Anyone ever unearth old family skeletons?

[BlackVelvetElvis]

It's amazing that even though they can be over a hundred years old, people are still afraid of sharing info they have. Here's mine:

A paternal g-g grandfather had about 4 seperate families. I still get emails from people who descend from my ancestor's infidelities wondering if I can help them.

A maternal g grandmother never married, yet had four children from an officer in the confederate infantry.

A g-g-g grandfather was a slave trader.

Ancestors of mine <16th c. Switzerland> were fined a huge amount of money for having a child out of wedlock.

Anything interesting in your family?

[CBHagman]

1. Oh, yes.

I'm completely convinced that if you do any family research whatsoever, you will uncover a family scandal, tragedy, or well-kept secret.

One of my great-grandfathers committed suicide, and the family hushed it up for something like 50 years. That branch of the family was Catholic, and suicide was considered worse than a scandal. The family destroyed all photographs and other items associated with my great-grandfather. At this writing, he's the only great-grandfather I don't have a picture of. :cry:

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. My 12th great-uncle killed King Charles II of England.

He was the Physicial Royal, and thoroughly incompetent. The King complained of headache; his doctors undertook a regimen of purges, enemas, and bloodletting that killed him in two days. And his brother, my 11th great-grandfather, was apparently the first British colonist involved in the slave trade in the New World (and most of his other biographical details are just as unsavoury).

And my 5th great-grandfather seems to've married a widow some years his senior for her money, and was cut out of his father's will as a result.

And a 17th century ancestor of mine was put in stocks for telling a woman to "kiss my arse"...heh. Those are the most interesting bits of detail I've been able to discover...seems that my family's been rather dull, for the most part.

[cleofus1]

19. actually

i kind of have some admiration for your family...more so now after reading of their misadventures...

[Cooley Hurd]

3. Maybe...

I found a record of a Richard (my surname) who came to North America in 1740 on a prison ship from England, but haven't been able to draw a connection between him and the ancestor who was the first instance of my surname (with a confirmed connection to myself) in the US (1791 - NJ). No idea what crime he committed, either...:shrug:

I got this info from a book called "The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage: 1614-1775" by Peter Wilson Coldham - it's available at most libraries.

[brook]

4. I discovered...

the name of my very proper Bostonian Grandmother's first husband. The information I have says they divorced within a year of their marriage and that he died that same year in Cuba. (I'd always heard she caught him in bed with the seamstress). While I'm very curious, I've also been afraid to dig too deep for fear I'd upset some family elders.

[JohnKleeb]

5. Yeah that I had a slave great great grandmother

Kidding, that was my april fool's joke. But here's a true story, my grandfather's sister had a child out of wedlock. I dont know any other really.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

6. My uncle had a daughter out of wedlock.

He later married and had a child. This woman posted on a genealogy board looking for her half-sister. I emailed her and I finally get to meet her next month!

Even though it throws a monkey wrench into searching, I really enjoy seeing how our ancestors are more than names and dates. It puts a human face on it as well as giving us a challenge.

You never know, JohnKleeb, you may have a cousin out there who is curious!

[VRine]

17. I had an enslaved GGGFather

He escaped, along with his brother, and his future wife.

[smirkymonkey]

7. My paternal grandfather was in the Mafia and was bumped off

in a retailatory hit.

[Rhiannon12866]

8. Nope, not yet, but I'm still searching!

Rhiannon:-)

[Quakerfriend]

9. Well, I have an interesting dilemma

My beloved aunt died two years ago. She was adored by all in the family. We cousins all lived in the same neighborhood growing up.

When I was a teenager, one of the other neighbors, told me that my aunt had had an affair with a certain other neighbor, and that my cousin was probably their child.

To make a long story short, I came across a photo of this "other neighbor" recently. He was very young in the photo (maybe 28). And, I knew INSTANTLY when I saw his photo that he was, in fact, my cousins father, by blood. This man died several years ago.

My cousin is now 38, and has 3 sons. Should I tell her??

[Rhiannon12866]

14. That is a terrible dilemma.

And what you should do about it depends on so many factors. What is your relationship with her? Is she someone you're close to? And what sort of person is she? Would she welcome the truth? And is the man she knows as her Dad still living? If both biological parents are gone, then no one can corroborate this, if she chose to ask them. A tough dilemma, indeed. I'd give it a lot more thought, but my first impulse, without knowing the players, would be to let it go. I would want to know the truth, as would you, but would everyone? Not necessarily so, since it would upset their lives, and she cannot find concrete evidence. Think about it and let us know, please. I don't envy you having this knowledge. I believe you, but can you be really sure?:shrug:

[sandnsea]

10. Oh, here's a scandal for ya

Nothing unearthed through genealogy search though. Get ready...

My grandmother died, oh gee, 15 years ago. I can't remember the exact reasons why, but my mother found out... my grandfather had had an affair with my grandmother's SISTER and she had had his child!!! That's why they had never had anything to do with them all her life. Pretty scandalous, eh??

One ancestor was in the French Navy and served in Haiti during that uprising that ran the French off. Not scandalous, embarrassing really. He testified in a murder trial which is how I found he was there.

And a couple of ancestors owned slaves, 5 IIRC, not big plantation owners or anything.

That's about it, I think.

[fudge stripe cookays]

11. Here's a doozie...

one of my cousins who was researching my Crittenden line (my dad's paternal grandmother) discovered this one, and we were stunned.

One of great grandma's brothers had a son who became a child molester. The family told everyone that he had died, but he died in prison years after they told people that. My cousin found the articles from Sheboygan from back in the 1920s or 30s where he was sentenced for improperly touching a girl. He even had an alias!

Then, my dad's one great aunt outlived 3 husbands. All 3 of them were mentioned in her obituary, and I began trying to find out as much info as I could about each marriage.

One night, messing around in the IRAD database, I just started entering names in the area for the circuit courts for Lake County, Illinois, and discovered a divorce record for husband #2! He deserted her, and she waited about 2 years and divorced him on grounds of abandonment. The family told everyone he was dead.

I found some cousins from that branch, and one of them DID manage to find this guy later. He moved out to Nebraska and lived for awhile with his mother, and for awhile with a brother. And every time the census taker came around, he'd give them a slight variation of his name so no one would come round him up and take him back to Illinois!

FSC

[China_cat]

12. My great grandfather

was one of the founders of the KKK in PA. My grandparents were 'married' by him under a burning cross.

Luckily, that mindset didn't get passed on to my grandfather (who raised me). I never, ever, heard one bigoted word out of that man's mouth nor saw him treat anyone any differently because of their race or religion. Just luck, I guess.

He was, however, a dyed in the wool Republican. Until Nixon. Who, he said, should be committed, not impeached.

[Ecumenist]

42. Hilarious, China

Committed, not impeached!! LOL!!:rofl: :spray:

[Momgonepostal]

13. A friend volunteered in the local LDS Family History

...Center and was there in the library when a young, African American man discovered one of his ancestors (also A-A) had been a slave owner. She said he was very shaken up.

I personally haven't discovered anything scandalous on my own but have a great Uncle who disappeared in the 30's. His father, my great grandfather hired private detectives to find him and discovered he may have been involved with some very shifty people and drugs.

[Greylyn58]

15. Yes, I found out some interesting stuff

on my Dad's side. I found out that my g-g-g-grandfather and mother were never married. She was his common-law wife. So the family name changed at this point.

The reason was that g-g-g-grandfather was already married, but his wife was mentally ill and because of the morals of that time (1780's) you couldn't divorce a spouse for such an illness. There is some speculation as to whether my g-g-g-grandmother was a slave or servant, but I think she was a free woman. Her family was from NC. Anyway, she became his common-law wife and had 5 children with him. Since they weren't legally married all the children retained her last name. Her first child is my direct descendant and he became a minister.

My g-g-g-grandfather and mother lived on a piece of land in Virginia and kept a small house on the property for his wife to live in and he looked after her until she died.

On my Mom's side I discovered that g-g-grandfather was married twice and had a total of 18 children. His first wife died after giving him 11 children, then he married again and had another 7 children(I'm descended through the 2nd wife). He had a farm and I guess he needed farm hands, but after learning this, I found he also had 2 teen-age house slaves. I really hated that.

[libnnc]

16. google Abe Enloe and Abraham Lincoln

long story short...

Abe Enloe (my great grandfather's great grandfather) was rumored to be Abe Lincoln's real father. Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, was a "bound girl", or servant girl, in Abe Enloe's home and lived with them for many years...

http://ashevillelist.com/free-essays/lincoln.htm
http://www.blueridge.net/~chadm/

[JohnKleeb]

18. This wasnt uncovered

since people who were alive when it happened are still with us but here goes.
1. My dad's brother had a daughter out of wedlock with a neighborhood girl, I believe the mother brought her up but because of two of the daughters of my another brother of my dad's, my cousin Kelly still comes to family gatherings and stays in touch with us despite the fact her father I could argue abanonded her in many ways, shes an incredibly nice person too, has a kid who is a little younger than my youngest brother and lives in Ocean City. Sorry for ranting, I just hate what my uncle did to her and I find it amazing that shes still a strong part of this family, gotta thank my cousins Kirsten and Carrie for this.

2. My mom's dad had a child out of wedlock. Thats really all that I know and my grandpa is the only one left on that side and he was the baby so he doesnt remember it all that well.

3. The same grandfather had a mentally retarded sister.

[IA_Seth]

20. Not so much a skeleton, but a story from my grandma...

I was chattin with my grandma the other day (who is 79) and she said that back in the depression her father and another gentleman owned a logging company that went out of business (well, the guy was the money man, my g-grandfather owned the mules and ran it)...anyway during the depression the company went under and to make money my g-grandfather and his partner turned to playin poker for money.

The only thing was the "money man" didn't know how to play, and my g-grandfather was bad at it, so they learned how to cheat. They used to go down to New Orleans (they were from Mississippi) and play (cheat) over the weekends and come back with tons of money. I guess he told her later on that one time he was caught cheating and had a gun pulled on him, but he pulled his first and so did his partner, so the money guys says "Rake em in Tommy, we are goin home" and they robbed the whole table of all their money and made a break for it.

I knew I got my outlaw ways somewhere!

[Joe Chi Minh]

21. Even the most outrageous fantasist among the neocons

couldn't have made up the collection of rogues and vagabonds in one of the lines of my ancestors.

There seems to have been a strange preponderance of rogues, girls "who were no better than they ought to be...", as they used to say in the UK, and rebels who were beheaded or hanged, drawn and quartered.

Among the ones of the flighty female persuasion figure were an ancestral aunt, Mary "The Lark" Wynter, a mistress of Cardinal Wolsey; Nesta, wife of Gerald of Windsor, founder of the Irish Geraldines, a mistress of Henry I and apparently many others; Elizabeth Wrottesley reputed by some to have been the beauty, whose garter fell to the floor (honi soit qui mal y pense); and don't larf.. Lady Godiva!

It's late now, so I'll continue it later.

[fudge stripe cookays]

22. Do you mean HOOKERS?

I keed I keed!

My farm families were so freaking ordinary and boring; never did much of anything really noteworthy. I was almost PRAYING for a "soiled dove" or something to liven things up a bit.

I'm sure your tracing has been full of those great moments with an exclaimed, "Cool!" while checking out microfilms and old books.

Congrats on your notorious past!
FSC :P

[Joe Chi Minh]

23. Well, it's arguable some of them were, FSC,

but "no better than they ought to have been", I would think, covers the others better. And no need to include the Wrottesley girl, anyway, as her garter probably just broke. But I'm glad you enjoyed reading about them.

It's funny to think what some of us would have said instead of "Honi soit, etc": "You b*ggers are just dirty minded!" Still I strongly suspect that many hookers, particularly today with the drug problem, are/were always more victims than anything, sinned against, rather than sinners. Not that plain wrong'uns wouldn't have always been be well represented in their ranks.

As regards the males in this line of ancestors, two ancestral uncles, the Wynter brothers, and a consanguine, Catesby, were henchmen of one Guido Fawkes, and met a hideous end, and their poor families must have suffered terribly from the time the plot was uncovered.

There's a pirate ship owner (his son became a Jersey magistrate; natural born Republicans, I reckon), a pirate sponsor and a Welshman called Perrot, who was an important geezer, and the Mr Big of Pembrokeshire smugglers - getting off scot free, when many of his hechmen copped it. Shades of Harry Lime.

There seem to have been very sympathetic Irish connections. Perrot was appointed as some kind of official in Ireland, and apparently got on famously and was much loved by the Irish. This affinity was curiously mirrored in another character, the Earl of Desmond. He was given a large plantation in Ulster, his main job though, being to keep the Irish down. However, he rapidly "went native", and led a rebellion against the English, his bosses! Alas, he was topped for his pains.

Browsing through a book in the reference library here, I read that his lands were like the Wild West, and that, with everyone on crack. Utterly, utterly wild and lawless was how it was described.

However, when I mentioned this to an Irish priest and great patriot, steeped in Irish lore, "O o o o! No o o o!" he exclaimed, he was a great, great man, most urbane and civilised. A great poet, you know", etc, etc! It was absolutely hilarious. He and the author of that historical tome could scarcely have been talking about more incredibly different creatures. One was little better than a thug, a violent and lawless quasi-devil.. the other, a positive angel of mercy and light, steeped in the arts, a paragon of refinement and culture! I'll start another post, or I'll lose this to a computer glitch and have to start again.

[fudge stripe cookays]

24. Ha.

I love hearing differing opinions on certain family members. Some people will tell you the man was the greatest guy you could ever meet, and someone else tells you he was a complete bastard.

All in the perspective.
FSC

[Joe Chi Minh]

25. I don't really see

people so remote socially and in time as "family", on the basis of a little DNA. Most of them would have been unlikely to have given me the time of day. And, truth to tell, the lives of the non-military types would have been as routine as any other civilian's, in terms of their respective class, and consequently of little or no interest to me, or anyone outside of their own close family and social circle (however pleasant it is simply to know of them).

One of the most admirable and interesting of all the people on the tree, though, was an ancestral grandpappy, who was a ticketed Ordinary Seaman and served under Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and elsewhere. As they shared the loot from the defeated enemy's wardroom, they made a fair packet, and have been described as the pop stars of their day.

There's been a lot in the papers recently about Nelson and his triumphs as it's the bicentennial anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in October. And I doubled up when I read that, as well as the British and Irish among the crew, there were one African, one Brazilian and no less than twenty-two Americans!!! "Bloody Americans", I chortled. "They're everywhere! You can't get away from them! Twenty-two of the ********, on the Victory!"

It reminded me of a fabulous black and white film I saw on the box, once, taken by a young American lad, from the crow's nest of one of the last clippers, as it rounded Cape Horn in a storm. Only an American, I thought!

They had nets extended a few feet from the sides of the vessels, as a last line of protection for sailors on deck. Some were washed overboard, nevertheless, on every trip, but it was a subject that, understandably, they didn't talk about.

At times, the whole of the deck was not just awash, but totally submerged. They must all have been grateful to have had a seasoned old salt as skipper - a German bloke, who kept a pet pig.

[fudge stripe cookays]

26. Nleson?

Damn, but my family was boring. Bunch of Wisconsin farmers, all. Nice sturdy Pennsylvania Dutch though.

FSC

[Joe Chi Minh]

27. Don't believe it, FSC!

The world is full of wild and hilarious head-bangers. I've worked with them one or more in virtually every job I've had - and, boy, does it brighten up your life! I even found the same in hospital wards!

Are you sure you have no ties with any of those Americans at Trafalgar, or who sailed the clippers, or who played a part in significant events in history? Maybe who fought with the French, who were purportedly all together more civilised, preferring to shoot at the vessel, rather than the crew!!! I wouldn't think there would be many such people without such ties. And there must also be plenty of noggin-heads like me with precious little else to brag about but those imperfect records of other people's lives and deeds they did manage to find.

I must say, anyway, FSC, that you sound very much like the former, with more originality and chutzpah in your little finger than we're ever likely to have on any basis! Remember the drive-in incident? That had many of us in stitches and a lot of admiration for your satirical resourcefulness.

[fudge stripe cookays]

28. giggle

Me????

Aw shucks!
FSC
:blush:

[CBHagman]

29. Thanks for some jaw-dropping posts, KCDMIII

The first place I ever heard of drawing and quartering was a cartoon, believe it or not, back in the '60s, and it wasn't until many years later that I found out what it really meant. :scared: Any time someone goes on about how life is so brutal today, I think of what was done as a matter of the law in centuries past. Mind-boggling.

In the course of genealogical research, one does hope for colorful ancestors, though, and for now I've had to make do with the usual family behavior (desertions, suicide, substance abuse, possible bigamy, gambling, and the like), though we did have one relative by marriage who ran guns to the IRA. Right now I wouldn't mind finding an honest-to-goodness Molly Maguire somewhere among the blood relatives.

[Joe Chi Minh]

30. Molly Maguires? Now there were men

worthy of the name, weren't they?

It brings up the curious ambivalence we have towards success, and what constitutes real success, doesn't it?
I was reminded of it yesterday, too, when I read that the great Jack Niklaus, the fabled Golden Barr, said his father had taught him it was more important to know how to lose than it was how to win; then crediting much of his success to his wife. However plausible the truth of that, far from not diminishing him, it gave him the opportunity to add to his own stature, instead of ever seeking his own greater glory.

It's that extra dimension that makes a man, and not a spiritual mouse (the spiritual dimension being part and parcel of the ultimate reality), however macho to appearances. Jack would have been a great man no matter what his handicap, no matter what he did for a crust, wouldn't he? Fudge Stripe Cokay was right on the mark when she conceded real worth to her solid Dutch forbears. It's guranteed that there'll be more serfs and pezogs that lived a heroic life than ruthless warlords. "He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life for my sake, shall gain it", as the Boss tells us.

[dalaigh lllama]

31. When I was young and innocent

an older woman I knew was a great gossip. One of her favorite lines was: "The first baby can come any time after the wedding. The rest of 'em take nine months." I used to think she was just too cynical for words, until I started doing genealogy. Almost every branch I went back on proved her point. I was shocked -- shocked, I tell you!

I had one ancestor whose husband died in a union hospital of small pox during the civil war. I've got some rather poignant letters he sent her before he died. She later remarried and then officially separated from her second husband after she discovered he had another wife he'd left behind.

Happy to say there were no slave owners that I could find in my background. Bunch of Germans down in Green County, Tennessee, were the only southerners in my past. Green County was pro-union (Andrew Johnson, Abe's V.P., was from there.) From what I've read, the Germans there were opposed to slavery because of their religion. One of my ancestors got hung by the neck (almost, but not killing him) by some confederate soldiers who were trying to make him tell where his horses were hidden.

[CBHagman]

32. Premarital pregnancy was surprisingly common.

I've been hearing for years that, among other things, it was considered desirable to prove fertility before entering into a marriage, and therefore it wasn't necessarily a bad thing for the bride to be in the family way at the time of the wedding.

In Colonial America, from what I understand, there were a great many out-of-wedlock births, not just premarital pregnancies. Many children were conceived outside of marriage, and not just the first child, either!

As for my own family, I have a suspicious enough mind that I counted the weeks between my great-grandparents' wedding day and the birth of their first child. Unexciting conclusion: It wasn't a shotgun marriage; Great-Grandma just got pregnant right away.

[preciousdove]

33. GGGrandpa Scott was NOT monogamous.

In central NY state at age 20 he married a nice girl from Vermont and as soon as the baby girl came Elijah "ran off with a Native American woman." The wife's family decided a move was in order so everybody moved to Michigan by 1839. Wife #1 married again. Elijah was driving a stage coach between Panama City NY and Bear Lake PA and met a nice PA girl and married her in NY in 1844. They moved on out to Central WI about 1849.

Things were not going real well and they went totally bad when Elijah signed for his 15 year old son to join his 16 year old son in the Union Army. The first night on picket duty the 15 year old was killed and the 16 year old was badly wounded, one un-removed bullet allowed gangrene to set in and kill him many years later. When wife #2 parents died Elijah wanted to get better land further West and the wife wanted to stay put closer to civilization. So Elijah left and court papers document the marital troubles when she filed for desertion after a year. He came back sold the farm and everyone moved to SE MN. That was the years of drought and locusts and people were going under fight and left. The wounded son moved out to land in KS and Elijah "disappeared" in a blizzard. Wife had him declared dead and moved back to WI where she wanted to live.

Elijah had gone to MO, I don't know why. He then traveled out to visit his son in KS and met and married a widow lady, my gggrandmother. My ggrandfather was Elijah's 12th known child born 40 years after the first known child. Fate stepped in and Elijah's grandchild from the first daughter moved into the same KS county. Elijah quickly moved to Iowa. The families in KS finally figured out they were related and eventually wife #3 heard about wife's #1 and #2 so after 1896 she went back to KS to live with her oldest married son,the Methodist minister and again became a "widow" on the 1900 census. That family all moved on out to WA about 2 years later.

Elijah freed of wives and children started traveling about and visiting descendants before he died in 1901. His youngest son writes that he almost fainted when he saw his dad come walking across the field in Wisconsin cause he knew his dad was dead. A SD grandson from the first marriage tells of Elijah's 1899 visit with a Native American woman and children in tow. His granddaughter-in-law refused to let them stay in their home.

Wife #3 is buried in Washington State. Wife #2 is buried in PA. I think wife #1 is buried in MI (or did she and her second husband separate when news of her errant husband reached MI?. She is not in the 1870 Michigan census.). So who is the "Mrs Scott" buried next to Elijah in Adaville IA? Might need to do a DNA test to find out. And are there Native American kids absent in our family tree?

(My apologies to Sobrina (Sawtelle)Scott Bennett wife #1, Sarah (Carr)Scott wife #2 and Anna (Bowen)Sears Scott for not typing their names over and over.)

[fudge stripe cookays]

35. Wow!

And we thought my Calno Webster was a real jerk!

I would say monogamy was definitely not one of your guy's best qualities! I bet that was a fun search!

FSC

[Pryderi]

34. "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it

dance"

--George Bernard Shaw


My family has been fairly boring so far...

[kestrel91316]

36. My paternal g-g-g-grandfather, William Adams Hickman, was

Chief of the Danites, the (ahem) "enforcement" arm of the early Mormon church. He was richly rewarded over the years, with money and land and job titles and nine extra wives - because he was very good at "solving problems" for the church leadership, heeheehee (back then the only way you could leave the church if unhappy was six feet under). He wrote his autobiography in the 1880s after he grew a concience and went to the feds to testify against Brigham Young and his buddies, who were subsequently indicted for capital murder "times many". Then in a seemingly unrelated USSC case re empanelment of grand juries, there came a decision that got the case thrown out, never to be refiled. Bill spent the rest of his days on the run from a very angry Mormon church with long arms. He died of the bloody flux in Wyoming in the late 1880s, after a rather colorful life.

On edit: I found strong evidence in a couple of books and a mag article written around the time that he also was involved, along with the rest of the Danites, in the famous Mountain Meadows Massacre.

My branch of the family is descended from his original wife, and the daughter and son-in-law who stayed loyal to him and went on the lam with him after they all got excommunicated.

Oh, and I found out my mom and dad were 10th cousins. Who knew??? That happens when you have those 18th century New England roots, lol.

[Gormy Cuss]

37. Hey, I resemble that remark.

I have a pair of great grandparents who were 5th cousins...same deal, old Yankee roots, but in their case they were 17th century roots. They shared an ancestor who came over pre-1700.

[sybylla]

38. Got ya both beat

My grandparents were 2nd cousins and my mom was born 6 months after the wedding.

In true redneck fashion, my grandfather apparently did go to the family reunion looking for a date.

Truth is, though, they loved each other dearly.

[kestrel91316]

39. My maternal grandmother's parents were first cousins once removed.

[Nikia]

40. A couple that were bad at the time

My paternal grandmother's great grandmother left her husband, who had moved the family to Kansas, and took the children back to her family home in Michigan. I don't know if they formally divorced or not, but she later married someone else when she was older.
My maternal grandmother had her first child out of wedlock. She was living on her own at the time. When she got measles and called her family for help, they stole her child from her.
My grandmother's father was an alcoholic. I had no idea until she mentioned it recently. My grandparents never had alcohol in their house which I thought was just because she was a traditional Methodist.

[Cybergata]

41. My favorite, for the moment, skeleton...

has got to be Fray Francisco Muños. He was a Franciscan priest who came to New Mexico in 1660 to convert the Pueblo people to Christianity. That's not a part that makes him a favorite, although he deserves to be a skeleton in my closet for the horrific way they treated the Pueblo people. In records he is referred to as "vivido siempre muy escandolossamente" ("always lived very scandalously") with both a young woman and her cousin, my ancestor, Juana López de Aragón. Their children took Francisco's mother's last name, Sánches de Iñdigo. This became one of the leading families of the Rio Abajo area of New Mexico during Spanish Colonial times.

My maternal grandmother's ancestry can be traced back to Constant Southworth, a pilgrim who came on the second pilgrim ship, the Anne. His family line goes back to the kings and queens of Europe, and an evil bunch of monarchs were the lot of them. King John (son of Henri II and Eleanor of Aquitaine), walled up another one of my ancestors, along with one of her sons, in her castle.

Of course there are the two Dukes of Normandy who kidnapped the Pope, and held him in a dungeon until he would give special compensation for their two children (first cousins) to get married. I'm sorry, I don't remember their names. I focused on my mother's Anglo ancestry last year. This year I've been researching my New Mexico Hispanic father's ancestry so the names are easier to remember.

[Ecumenist]

43. Well, on my mom's side of the family,

My grandmother's g-g-g-grandfather came to this country through the Caribbean. It seems that when his father went to Glory, he took his portion of the inheritance, (which we understand was substantial and set off on the high seas to seek his fortune around 1796 in the New World. Somehow, he ended up in the Indies, which is where he first laid eyes on, fell in love with and BOUGHT my g-g-g-g-g grandmother. She was actually on the dock for sale, she was a slave. He was determined to have her as wife and when he could find no suitable place to legally marry her in the region, he decided to come to Tejas, (Mexican territory at the time), to make her his wife.

He landed on the gulf coast of Texas around the Galveston area about 1801-02. He bought a large acreage outside of modern Dallas but found that he was unable to marry her there either. SO....he married a white woman, who's name I don't yet know and set about building two manses side by side. He set his "legal" caucasian wife in one manse and placed the woman he truly loved into the other. He had one child, a son, with the bavarian wife.

Supposedly, he knew her family from the old country and had 8 (EIGHT) children with my g-g-g-g-g-gran. He made a stipulation that if the white son wanted to inherit anything, he would have to make certain that upon death, he was to buried in a plot next to g-g-g-g-g-gran and that his siblings were to be given the portions of the inheritance he'd set aside AND sent abroad to be educated well in Europe.

Apparently, that was done and consequently, here I am. For me to trace my ancestry hasn't been easy at all because many of my lines find their beginnings here in America in slavery and the Native people. I can trace alot of my bloodline to the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Southern Italy AND Sicily, Ireland, ( a g-g-grandfather came from Ireland, County Sligh, (sp)), Portugal, with a VERY strong footprint in the Andalusia area of Spain and recently, found a few ancestors from Poland, I believe at the time is was called Dalmatia.

We've also been able to trace bloodlines to many gulf states and north Africa, (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria), Niloctic areas and some areas in west Africa as well.

[Cybergata]

44. Great Story

He should have come to New Mexico. People were mixing here since 1598.

[Thirtieschild]

45. Lives that were hardest to live are often the easiest to find....

because they so often ended up in court. I think I've most enjoyed the scoundrels, such as my g-grandfather who applied for a Civil War pension because he "suffered a pain across the bowels while pursued by the Rebels." Or my husband's something g-grandmother who, in 1600s CT, claimed she had co-habited with a slave named Lot. The whole village testified in the divorce hearings. Or my PA Quaker who sold demon rum to Indians, and murdered one who demanded more. (He and his brother were jailed on charges of murder until the tribe asked that charges be dropped, maybe because he was the son-in-law of "the second richest man in Philadelphia".) And let's not forget the children who went to court to protest their aging father leaving his money to his young wife. These are the people who make genealogy so much fun.

[Cybergata]

46. How true how true!

I was able to find an ancestor in England because he had to go to court for dumping manure on a public road.

[pscot]

47. My maternal grand father, P.J. Cramer

who I resemble, was a Republican.

[Cybergata]

48. My Maternal Grandfather was a Republican too.

And he paid for it by loosing everything in the stock market crash of 1929. My maternal grandmother was silently a Democrat. Every time there was a vote, she would quietly cancel out my grandfather's vote by voting for the Democrats.