I think I may have mentioned this story here before.On his hospital deathbed, my mother's father told his oldest son a story. My grandmother was 15 years old. She rode the streetcar from her home in Brooklyn (Indiana NOT NY) to Mooresville three days a week to baby sit with the children of a doctor whose wife was an invalid. From about the second week, the doctor began to attack her - but she was too afraid to tell anybody. Finally after a few months, she found out she was expecting a baby.My grandfather and her sister came up with a plot. He went to the doctor's house and beat him with a two by four....they thought he was dead, but he was not. Within a week, the doctor and his family moved out of town.My grandfather and the sister had been engaged to be married. She immediately broke everything off with him and he married the girl - my grandmother.....and my aunt their first baby was born a few months later.The sister never married - although she had a child years later - and they all lived together until after two more children, the house was too crowded.The End.
I wonder what they were putting in the water in the Midwest in the mid-20th century!Like I should talk, as my roots are right there in Columbus. But honestly, except for my uncle finding out at the tender age of 75 that he had been adopted, and managing - with the help of our family genealogy expert - to track down his birth family and everyone becoming close friends thereafter, our history is a pretty boring one.
Okay, here are a couple. At my mom and dad's wedding in Columbus, Ohio, 1948: Dad's mother, Dad, Mom, Mom's mother and father.
For our family, this one was the money shot:Back: My mom's father and mother, my dad's mother, my mom's paternal grandfather.Front: My dad's maternal grandmother and grandfather, my mom's maternal grandmother, my mom's paternal grandmother.I grew up knowing all of these to some extent or other, except for my dad's grandfather who died around the time I was born or soon thereafter.
TOD - When my sister was telling us how much she loved digging into genealogy, our mother said, “Don’t dig TOO deep.” We figured that meant either:A) She suspected a secret and didn’t want to know, or,B) She knew the secret and didn’t want us to find out.A couple of years later she casually mentioned to my niece that my father had fathered a child while in the service at the end of WWII. Now, mind you, by this time she was convinced there was a swimming pool outside her dining room and that a young couple used her couch to make out when she wasn’t in her room.So, my sister and I may, or may not, have a half-sibling between us.
For a moment there, I thought I had meandered to the wrong web page. So many tales of dark family secrets!
I need not vote today.
