The things one uncovers when digging through boxes of family documents.

[Siwsan]

I found my grandfather's birth certificate. He was born in 1899. According to the birth certificate, my great-grandfather was 35 and my great-grandmother was 15.

I remember my dad telling me that a few months after grandpa was born, so was his half brother, but that's a whole OTHER kettle of fish.

This might just be the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to what my interesting information my research might uncover.

[safeinOhio]

1. Just found dad's

military ID from 1951. He was a Captain the and later retired a Major.

[Sanity Claws]

2. That does provide some insight into a different era.

Did you find the marriage certificate? Were they married at the time of birth?
If the great grandmother was in a large family, they may have married her off at an early age so the family had one less mouth to feed.

I am sure my family has many secrets too but I don't have a box of family documents to uncover them.

[Siwsan]

3. I'm hoping to find that certificate - or at least a record of it

From the few stories I've heard about my great-grandfather, he was quite a character. I found the he was supposedly born in Pennsylvania but my great-aunt told me that when she was young, they still spoke Welsh in the household so I'm wondering if, perhaps, his residency in the country was less than legitimate.

I'm pretty sure they were married in Frostburg, MD (that's where my grandfather was born) and I know they attended the Welsh Baptist Church, which is still open. I stopped by, but it was on a Saturday. They told me to let them know when I come back to town and I can research through their records. They did warn me that most of the older records are all in Welsh but I figure all I need to translate is 'born' 'married' 'died'.

Another family member researched a family tree, years and years ago. He's now gone but he shared info with my father. The family somehow went from the nobility to circus acrobats, to coal miners, both in Wales and in Maryland. According to Dad, the documentation received from Wales included an authenticated family crest. Anyway, I want to find where the family lived, in Wales, and go back for a visit.

[FakeNoose]

4. That was a common occurrence in those times

Especially for people who came from the old country, as I understand it. Naturally it wasn't considered any form of child abuse then, since most girls had little education or expectation of a working career before marriage. Most husbands-to-be had to remain single for many years while they earned enough to support a wife and family. THEN they looked for a wife, usually among teen-aged girls because the older ones were already married off.

In the early 1900s it wasn't uncommon for 40-ish men to marry women/girls who were 20 years younger. Any unmarried woman in her mid-20s was considered a spinster, but World War I changed everything. It's no disgrace that your great-grandfather was so much older than your great-grandmother, I'm sure the parents approved.

[Siwsan]

5. What I'm curious about is if he had a previous marriage

And I don't take the whole age thing as much as a disgrace but I HAVE heard some pretty scandalous stories about Great-Grandpa. I doubt there's much I could learn that would surprise me. To his credit, though, he lived to his mid-60's, dying of Black Lung Disease.

A friend of my cousin is in the LDS church and offered to do a little genealogy work, for us. She says that she hit a wall, when it comes to Great Grandpa. This birth certificate of his son seems to be the earliest family document and I'm the one who found it. Of course, maybe this friend is just making excuses because she hasn't bothered doing any research. I should just break down and join one of those ancestry sites, but they all look like a big 'nickel and dime you to death' kind of industry.

All I want is to track back to the city, town or village the family lived in, before they left Wales. I figure since they were coal miners, it's somewhere in the south.

[FakeNoose]

7. Here's a suggestion

If you know what year your great grandfather came over, try going through ship's passenger lists. Many of them are available online now, but not all. I believe there are listings in the Ellis Island archives also. The thing about ship's passenger lists is that most were hand-written and sometimes hard to read, with misspellings etc. The lists that have already been transcribed into a database are easier to search. If you find your great grandfather's name, it will also tell you his age and his hometown.

[Siwsan]

8. I'll have to check

I found his obit on a web site dedicated to people from Maryland/Pennsylvania coal country (our brick walls) but doing the math, either the obit or grandpa's birth certificate have the wrong birth year (4 year difference. He died at age 64 or 68). The obit had the wrong middle initial so I'm thinking the BC info might be more accurate.

I am going to continue my search and will definitely check out the Ellis Island archive, but, from what I've learned of his character, if he wasn't born here, he may have been a stow away. And the fact that they still spoke Welsh, when my grandfather was a child, makes me believe the 2nd possibility is probably closer to the truth.

[Coventina]

6. Yes, one of my ancestors had a similar situation. My great-great Grandfather was a Civil War vet

(Union) in his early 30s. At a bit of loose ends after the war.
He rented a room from his future in-laws, fell in love with their 17 year old daughter.

He gave her a book of Lord Byron's poetry, my Grandmother has the book with his gift inscription to her.

I joked to my Grandmother, "Byron? That's pretty racy! Were her parents OK with that?"

She said, "Well, they let him marry her so I guess so!"

We had a chuckle...

[Siwsan]

9. Great story!!

I love family lore. We have one story about my great-grandmother hearing her prize hot squealing. She saw a bear going after it, so she grabbed a cast iron frying pan and hit the bear in the head, killing it.

[Coventina]

11. Wow! That is one kick-ass lady!

I barely have the upper body strength to wield a cast-iron skillet, much less exert the force to break a bear's skull!!

Respect!!

[nitpicker]

10. Always take geneology with big pinches of salt

UNLESS it's documented (census records, tombstones, marriage records, land records, death records, DARling-deposited family histories corroborated by evidence, etc).

In the Victorian era, a number of firms made fortunes claiming that families had links to British nobility and/or prominent Americans. I initially bought into some of this, but had to accept that this could not be. (BUT I haven't been able to prove that I'm not related to Tricky Dick.)

But my grandfather, after his mother died and his sister was about to get married, got hitched at age 37 to a teenager, and took the plunge to be farm-owned. (I think she could see WWI sucking the US in and wanted to marry someone who wouldn't be "first to go".)

And one of my ancestors, at the age of 21, got married to a 14-15 year old...

[NoPasaran]

12. I have a copy of my grandmother's birth certificate from the Old Country

The country was Austria-Hungary at the time, Poland when the copy was issued. Interesting thing is that it's a church document, so it's written in Latin, which kind of threw me for a loop until I recognized the language.

[hunter]

13. My grandfather had at least three official ages.

One for his military service, one for his Social Security, one for his California Drivers License. There were more. Years apart.

There were no computerized databases then.

In the Wild West of Wyoming you were pretty much accepted at your word, especially when you were signing up with the Army to get the fuck out of Wyoming because you didn't want to work on a ranch or in a mine.

In his mid-teens my grandfather had run away from home to the Great Shining Metropolis of Cheyenne and found it wanting.

My grandfather always played fast and loose with his age and he was vain. After my grandmother passed away he would introduce me to his girlfriends as his son.

[Jokerman]

14. My mom's divorce papers...

from a first husband that none of us knew about.