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Skeletons in the Family Closet.


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True Story:

 

I had an ancestor that back in 1880's, that was hung from the tongue of a wagon on the Kansas prairie for shooting a man in the back and stealing his horse. :o

 

Thankfully, he didn't have any offspring to taint the family blood.  -_-  By golly! :lol:

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Is that all?

You're lucky.

My Irish ancestors were a blood thirsty fighting lot and the introduction of Algonquin blood made us sneakier.

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My Dad was adopted. He got to know his blood relations because they sued to get him back when he was 9 years old. He stayed with his adopted family.  Later in life he hooked up with his blood brother and we went to visit in Ohio numerous times. My Dad’s true family were a bunch of low-lifes. Probably still are. I have nothing to do with them. 
 

In doing Ancestry.com I found a guy in London England named Edward Burnworth, also known as “Frazier”. He ran gangs of pickpockets and robbers in South London. In 1726 he was hanged for murder. That guy was a real POS. I was hoping we were related somehow so it would explain a lot about my Dad’s family. Apparently, the British relatives of that time were one-offs…not exactly scurrilous but close. :lol:

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Had a great uncle who I think I saw once, when I was a little kid.  Poor guy was dying of lung cancer, which he got either from being gassed at Belleau Woods, or being a chronic smoker, or both.  Years later, my uncle told me that the great uncle had been office manager for the mob!  :o:ph34r:  He was a member of the American Legion, and every Memorial Day my family would go to the cemetery and a firing squad would fire three volleys over his (and other veterans') grave. I'd go around and pick up fired .30-06 blank cases...first time I ever saw one.  After he passed, his wife and a step-daughter moved to another state and ran a small dairy farm.  Don't think that had anything to do with his former employment, however.  Visiting her was how I learned how to milk a cow. 

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My Dad's family were a bunch of rum-runners and bootleggers during Prohibition. Also, rumored to have blown levies, etc. One just disappeared and a body found a few years ago was DNA tested and proved to be him.

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Some of my Dad's people came over the 2nd or 3rd boat after the Mayflower.  Some in the early 1720s. Nothing special in my ancestry other than one Great Grandfather survived Camp Douglas, and a Great Uncle was killed by a racoon while out hunting said racoon. Had it treed, it jumped onto a dead branch which broke, hit him in the head.  DRT.

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I've never checked my ancestry at all.

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Same as UB here. I never searched or researched.

 

I was adopted at birth and don't have a clue.

 

I'm just happy my birthmom had me and gave me up for a shot at life instead of the ugly alternative. 

 

 

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Daddy told me about an aunt and uncle of his. They had had a farm but it failed so they moved into Macon and moved next door to the cheap little rental house that Grandma lived in. Grandpa had died leaving a widow with four children. They lived in the poor neighborhood.

 

The aunt and uncle started a grocery store, and a year later moved out of the poor neighborhood and bought a big house in the rich neighborhood up on the hill.

 

Ever since he told me that story I have believed that the aunt and uncle were bootleggers. I can't think of any other way to get rich in the early thirties. Sure ain't going to happen selling groceries.

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My sister got into all that ancestry crap and hassled and annoyed me until I finally told her that I had absolutely NO interest in it and instructed her in terms strong enough to convince her to leave me alone!!

 

She finds it fascinating and seemingly never gets enough, BUT,  she no longer talks about it when she’s around me!!

 

I don’t care who your mama and papa are!!  I’ll form my own opinion of you and THAT’S what I will go by!!

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I find it interesting, finding who went where when.  Then trying to figure out why.  For example,  some of my kin went from VA to the Carolinas in the late 1770s,  then back to the same county in VA in the 1780s. Early version of draft dodgers, maybe?  Then in the 1820s some of their kids moved to KY.   My dad was  born there in 1921.  I  never found out how Dad met Mom, who was from Carbon County PA.  He also never mentioned why he decided to stay in CA after he got out of the Corps in 1947 rather than going back to KY or PA. 

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5 hours ago, Birdgun Quail, SASS #63663 said:

True Story:

 

I had an ancestor that back in 1880's, that was hung from the tongue of a wagon on the Kansas prairie for shooting a man in the back and stealing his horse. :o

 

Thankfully, he didn't have any offspring to taint the family blood.  -_-  By golly! :lol:

 

If he had no offspring, he's not anybody's ancestor....

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"..I don’t care who your mama and papa are!!  I’ll form my own opinion of you and THAT’S what I will go by!!.."

 

my rule as well , it has served well for me over the years , 

 

having said that - long before the days of ancestry.com my mother spent years researching the family , i and my siblings were given a copy of all her work , some of it is interesting and confirmed things i was told , a few skeletons came forward from the closet tho , but mostly in terms of remarriages and lost inheritances that caused rifts , it all happened long before i was born so none of it would have been of much interest than just as reading , no criminals , one bank president that liked to go on a bender once a month , always with a chauffer - generally my dad , war changed all that , one day in mid winter ill spend the time to read it all just so i can say i know , 

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Got a family history book. Says my family came over here from England, and a hundred years later had a huge plantation on Albemarle Sound. Seems like it was about a quarter of the state of North Carolina. Big plantation. BIG plantation.

 

Then it says that they have no record of what my ancestor did during the revolution. "But we are sure he was a Patriot.":huh:

 

Another set of records shows my family after the revolution. We were poor dirt farmers.

 

Now, if the first book was true, and we were rich plantation owners prior to the war, and poor as church mice after the war, then just possibly we were Torys. And them what won the war confiscated everything we had.

 

That part of the family history isn't in there, but it would certainly explain us being extremely rich in the 1760s and extremely poor in the 1790s.

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I come, I think, from a long line of Basque goat herders or smugglers, I am not sure which, but they all left "the old country" in the fastest ship they could find, which, at the time, was not very fast because it relied on wind power, and one, I think my fore bearer, became a very respected member of antillean society and married a  knockout babe (grandma), and she was a knockout, a  delicious blonde, who thought he was the best thing since apple strudel (because sliced bread had not been invented yet), and then I married one of my first cousins just to keep it all in the family (she was also a knockout, delicious blonde, just like her ((our)) grandma).

I've been trying to explain the whole thing to my grandkids, but they just can't seem to get it.    

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Searching the family history shows that my side of the family is kinda boring.  However, my wife's side is full of interesting characters.  One of her many times great grandfathers was one of the 1st white men hung for killing Indians in the United States.  Happened in 1824 in Falls Creek, Indiana.  Going back a couple of hundred more years, she is also descended from John Bridge, one of the founding fathers of Harvard University.  

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On 6/10/2021 at 3:14 PM, Subdeacon Joe said:

Some of my Dad's people came over the 2nd or 3rd boat after the Mayflower.  Some in the early 1720s. Nothing special in my ancestry other than one Great Grandfather survived Camp Douglas, and a Great Uncle was killed by a racoon while out hunting said racoon. Had it treed, it jumped onto a dead branch which broke, hit him in the head.  DRT.

My dad's family arrived on the Virginia coast from the British Isles nine years after the Mayflower landing and some are still in the Massanutten (sp?) area, or so I've been told.

 

One of my dad's brothers was a real live moonshiner in Almon, Missouri before the "gummint revenooers' built a dam down stream and flooded the whole kit and kaboodle.  He swore they put it in on purpose  just to put him out of business.  I only met hime once and recall him being a totally unlikable person.

 

Mom's family were among the first Mormons, (many came from England, Italy, Scotland, France, and Germany) and were one of the first families to settle Cache Valley, Utah.

 

What with second  and third marriages, misspelled names, polygamy, and lost records out family tree looks like a gnarly forest.

 

Dad once said that with all that we were probably related to three quarters of the people between Boise and Las Vegas.

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I had an uncle who did some serious time in Illinois, prior to WW2 ,under various aliases, for a variety of semiserious crimes, including driving the get-away car for a botched bank job. He got caught, the car was stolen so he took the hit for stolen car. My brother and I went looking for the car 60 years later with the intent to steal it again. Grifters, all around, i say.

 

Imis

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A Great-Grandpa was counted twice in a census- once at home and once in the Phenix City Jail.

 

A relative through my grandmother was a bootlegger during Prohibition, got caught with a load and did his time.  He got out of jail, stayed around a couple months and then moved to Dallas. 

 

Nobody knows where he got the money for the move.  Most speculate that he either had quite a bit of liquor that the Revenuers missed and sold it or that he was running liquor for the Phenix City mob and got rewarded for doing his time and keeping his mouth shut.

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Dad had me research to see if his grandmother was indeed Cherokee.

We found she was not, but adopted/taken in by a Cherokee family at age of 3. (Wish I knew the story behind that?)

But he also wanted to know about his great-grandfather Buck.

Buck Lambert was a known horse thief.

I was given a page from Huntsville prison with the date of his being placed in Huntsville, for thievery and a 5 year sentence.

Again, not sure what put him in there...

Never found what happened after he left prison...still not sure he even left prison.

Sad to say one of his descendants resides in the same prison.:(

 

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Many of those skeletons will be buried with me, as there is nothing constructive to come of them. Skeletons are in closets for a reason.

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3 hours ago, Singin' Sue 71615 said:

Dad had me research to see if his grandmother was indeed Cherokee.

We found she was not, but adopted/taken in by a Cherokee family at age of 3. (Wish I knew the story behind that?)

But he also wanted to know about his great-grandfather Buck.

Buck Lambert was a known horse thief.

I was given a page from Huntsville prison with the date of his being placed in Huntsville, for thievery and a 5 year sentence.

Again, not sure what put him in there...

Never found what happened after he left prison...still not sure he even left prison.

Sad to say one of his descendants resides in the same prison.:(

 

Until I confirmed it with my DNA test all my life I heard that we were part Cherokee, but that my Dad’s family was too proud to accept anything from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 
Turns out that was all hogwash…and I, for one, am glad of it. 

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My Dad’s uncle Elzie was a railroad engineer in a town in NE Arkansas.  During prohibition, he ran for City Constable.  The town was centrally located with the railroad and highway running through that corner of the state.  Uncle Elzie always knew when the area’s bootleggers would make a run.  He’d be waiting in the center of town when they'd make their way through.  Being a good democrat, he would only charge them one half of their load to proceed.  Supposedly he never had an issue collecting the fee.  He and Aunt Dora would sell the product through their restaurant.  All you would have to do was ask about the “Daily Special”. 

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My wife told me her grandfather was in the West Virginia volunteer cavalry.
He was a short man, and the issue cover was essentially a top hat (Hardee hat, maybe?) -- he was riding along a stone wall and a Confederate rifle ball whistled through that tall crowned hat.
Had he been a taller man, the outcome would have been less pleasant; as it was, he lived to a ripe old age.

No idea what happened to the hat.

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1 hour ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

Until I confirmed it with my DNA test all my life I heard that we were part Cherokee, but that my Dad’s family was too proud to accept anything from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 
Turns out that was all hogwash…and I, for one, am glad of it. 

Lambert is a 'Cherokee name...so it was always an interest of ours.

Photos of Great-great grand looked Native...

It was interesting.

And great-great- great grand dad Buck was also listed as white.

Sooooooo....

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6 hours ago, Arkie Lee said:

My Dad’s uncle Elzie was a railroad engineer in a town in NE Arkansas.  During prohibition, he ran for City Constable.  The town was centrally located with the railroad and highway running through that corner of the state.  Uncle Elzie always knew when the area’s bootleggers would make a run.  He’d be waiting in the center of town when they'd make their way through.  Being a good democrat, he would only charge them one half of their load to proceed.  Supposedly he never had an issue collecting the fee.  He and Aunt Dora would sell the product through their restaurant.  All you would have to do was ask about the “Daily Special”. 

Grandpa always said that the best 'shine he ever had came out of the trunk of the local sheriff's car.:rolleyes:

 

That's saying something- since his grandpa was supposed to have been one of the better distillers in the area.

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Howdy,

The thing is your history somehow goes all the way back past

biblical times and on back thousands of years.

A time machine that just allowed one to see the past would be amazing.

Ive read that blue eyes have only been around for ten thousand years.

I met a photographer who said going to a rally thru asia there were

towns where every last person had brown hair brown eyes and brown skin.

Everyone in town stopped and stared at the only blue eyed blonde they ever saw.

I would like to know how the heck they built those pyramids.

Best

CR

 

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On 6/10/2021 at 1:05 PM, Birdgun Quail, SASS #63663 said:

Thankfully, he didn't have any offspring to taint the family blood.  -_-  By golly! :lol:

It is said, if your mother never had any children, chances are you won't either.

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