Discovering skeletons in ancestors closets

I have discovered all kinds of stuff: My great-grandparents HAD to get married given that they were married four months before my grandfather was born. My mother married underage and lied about her birth date on the marriage license. I have a half-sister that I didn't know about. The next thing isn't a skeleton, but nonetheless interesting. My great-great grandfather arranged a quick wedding on furlough from fighting for the Union army.

There's lot's more, but you get the idea. Do any of you do the same?

SDET said:

I have discovered all kinds of stuff: My great-grandparents HAD to get married given that they were married four months before my grandfather was born. My mother married underage and lied about her birth date on the marriage license. I have a half-sister that I didn't know about. The next thing isn't a skeleton, but nonetheless interesting. My great-great grandfather arranged a quick wedding on furlough from fighting for the Union army.

There's lot's more, but you get the idea. Do any of you do the same?

Click to expand...

Every family has it. My father looked into our family and others and found quite a few odd birth and marriage dates going back centuries.

He also found out that his biological father was most likely part of one of the important Jewish families in Denmark and that the family had forbade him and my grandmother for marrying because she was not Jewish. This was in the 1930s. His mother never talked about it, so he had to find out himself.




Sent from my Honor 8X

SDET said:

I have discovered all kinds of stuff: My great-grandparents HAD to get married given that they were married four months before my grandfather was born. My mother married underage and lied about her birth date on the marriage license. I have a half-sister that I didn't know about. The next thing isn't a skeleton, but nonetheless interesting. My great-great grandfather arranged a quick wedding on furlough from fighting for the Union army.

There's lot's more, but you get the idea. Do any of you do the same?

Click to expand...

My example pales by comparison.

A nephew is a genealogy fan and has an Ancestry.Com account. Long story short, he came upon a copy of my parents' wedding license from 1939. Turns out my Dad was married before, which none of us kids knew.

My Mom at the time was 91, and starting to have memory issues (she died less than a year later). My brothers and I figured: either my mother knew and didn't want us know, at which point there was no reason to inform her we did know; or, she herself never knew, and there was certainly no point in her knowing now, 23 years after my father's death.

Next time we were all together, one of my brother's blurted out: "And wasn't Dad married before?" So much for that. My mother admitted he was married before, briefly, but otherwise didn't seem particularly surprised or upset that we'd found out.

We tend to idealize our ancestors, particularly if they're out parents or grandparents. Stuff like this just proves they were just as human as we are.

SDET said:

I have discovered all kinds of stuff: My great-grandparents HAD to get married given that they were married four months before my grandfather was born. My mother married underage and lied about her birth date on the marriage license. I have a half-sister that I didn't know about. The next thing isn't a skeleton, but nonetheless interesting. My great-great grandfather arranged a quick wedding on furlough from fighting for the Union army.

There's lot's more, but you get the idea. Do any of you do the same?

Click to expand...

I know this is an old post, but I have a skeleton I don't think will be topped, at least not on DebatePolitics.

My grandfather was a French Canadian, the vast majority of which opposed conscription, so I don't know if he enlisted or was drafted. The only items I have now are a pic and a translation (he didn't speak English) of a letter he wrote from the, 'Church Army Recreation Hut' in Feb of 1917 to home. It's a typical letter from a new soldier, how much he missed home and everyone. He wrote it after two weeks of waiting orders to "leave". He also mentioned going to a concert on a horse, "Wilfred will be able to take me with the mare".

Anyway to make a skeleton story short, growing up I never heard much about him and nothing from my grandmother. Eventually I heard the story. It seems that while in France, he visited a, 'woman of the night' and contracted syphilis which was the cause of his death.

I never found out if they were formally divorced, or separated, or when they split up, before or after he died. Coming from a religious family (two of my grandmothers sisters were nuns), I assume the former...