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Genealogy Skeletons
Horse thief, deserter, prostitute? They remain our kin.
Genealogy is not about General Washington but about those who rowed his boat. Even if they were drunkards at night. It's not about if one is one of a million who trace their line to the Mayflower, or the earlier ships, or the following ships.
Who has the best documented sample of a genealogical skeleton in the family closet?
This image, by the way, is from a military pension file (but that will be another group).
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Paul Drake on
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Well stated. By way of punctuating your comment, we can not know of their personalities, have not walked in their shoes, lived the harshness most of them endured, or suffered the terrible diseases, toothaches, wounds, all without an iota of the medical care we today enjoy. It is NOT our place to make ANY judgments about anything those folks did or thought. We surely would not want our descendants in 100 years from now deciding whether our conduct was or was not appropriate. As to those folks of the shadowy past, there is no good, bad, fair, unfair, honest, dishonest, smart, dumb, diligent, lazy, etc., etc. To comment about any of those and a thousand other thoughts and emotions of our anecstors is simply silly and very poor genealogy.
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Unknown Ancestor on
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Here are some documented skeletons -your 3 ancestors, certainly not mine :D
It's an immigration document that translates into:
'deserted marriage partners abroad to come to US to live together'
'questionable character with intended husband's brother'
'prostitute'
That it is an immigration record shows how lost some ancestors and their stories can be!
My tiff won't upload, so I'll try later. Even had a 'Ning down' crash yesterday...
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Here is that documented sample of skeletons.
Just as we don't pursue only the ancestors sharing our one surname (because we are still 1/8 of each great-grandparent), we don't ignore those who lived differently. In fact, their stories may be the most exciting!
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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Shaw on
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Well my 2g-grandmother is also my 3g-grandmother. Confusing? My great-grandparents were uncle and niece. My great-great grandmother never spoke to her brother or daughter again. I'm not even sure if the [catholic] church married them. They had four child, none of which had any health problems. But imagine the shock when this was revealed to us by a cousin...
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