Any great stories about your ancestors? Family legends?

[nolabear]

My father could be a really difficult man, but he did love his own ancestry so used to tell great stories about them. Interestingly, most were about women. I'm happy to have come from such strong (and apparently outright mean) stock.

Here are two:

My great-great grandmother was a Choctaw woman who was brought in by my gg-grandfather to take care of his first wife, who was sick with "childbed fever". She was a healer and herbalist, but--and it's hard not to conjecture about this--she wasn't able to save the first wife. She did however become the second wife, and had several children herself, among them my great grandmother. My father has numerous stories of her curing him of various ills with what sound like a mixture of chanting and solid herbalist remedies and practical solutions. She chose my great uncle to pass her knowledge to, but he got religion and wouldn't have anything to do with it, so it didn't survive. I spent my whole childhood mad at that uncle.

I also apparently had a couple of great-great (not sure how far back) aunts, sisters who fell in love with the same man. One killed the other and claimed it had been because her sister had been "stealing peaches off her tree". The family actually paid the man off to run away and let them frame him for the killing, with some guarantee that they wouldn't pursue him (mind you this was a long time ago in very rural MS so it's plausible).

Anyone have any good ancestor stories?

[MrsBrady]

1. my g-g-grandma really did have her own money...

real money at the time. both her parents were dead, and her and the three sisters inherited it all.

and my g-g-grandfather really did marry her just for the money (how horrible)

mismanaged the money, lost it all... and she refused to live with him after that.

and he later was killed when struck by lightening a few years later.


and it's all true.

[WolverineDG]

2. For generations, school kids in my family (including myself) were told we were wrong

when we said "William Dawes" instead of "Paul Revere." (thank you, Longfellow) No one knew quite why, just that it was William Dawes who did this:

"One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

In digging through my family's genealogy, my mom discovered that one of my dad's ancestors was present at the Battle of Lexington & Concord. Later, my cousin dug up references to the person who knocked on his door & told him the British were coming---William Dawes.

dg

[MorningGlow]

3. My great-grandmother (mom's dad's mom)

was very beautiful, and as a young teen caught the eye of the village rich guy who lived in a big house on a hill (this was in Italy). She had four (?) kids with him (they never married). He also took a liking to her younger sister, and she moved in as well. I'm not sure if she had children by him also, but if she did, then the sisters' children would be cousins and half siblings at the same time. W00t.

Oh yeah--then my great-grandmother fell in love with the gardener and they ran off to America together. When her children were old enough, they all followed her. And here we are.

[Arugula Latte]

33. Man, I would have stayed in Italy.

What a place! :loveya:

[MorningGlow]

46. Funny how Americans' ancestors did everything they could to get out

of their home country, and then their descendants try so very hard to get back in!

[tigereye]

77. except Ireland! (well, my MGF had no desire to return there)

[Tom_Foolery]

Supposedly, a great-great-uncle on my father's side...

rode with Jesse James, which is possible because James had an uncle who lived in south western Kentucky, where my father's family lived. Also, the James gang robbed a bank in Russellville, Kentucky while visiting the uncle.

There are two accounts of how this great-great-uncle died. The first is, he was shot and killed in a gun battle with a Muhlenberg County, Kentucky sheriff and his deputies after they found out that he was on a train traveling through Dunmor.

The second one is the more likely: He apparently had gone over to a neighbor's house to have dinner. During the meal, the neighbor's son made a smart remark to him. My great-great-uncle told the boy that he was going to drag him out to the barn after dinner and shoot him. He did drag the boy to the barn, but the boy's mother followed them outside and shot and killed my great-great-uncle.

[LaurenG]

4. Yes

My gg grandfather was an inventor and became impossibly wealthy. He owned an inn as well and one day my gg grandmother came home to find him in a compromising position with the upstairs maid. My gg grandmother divorced him and opened up a hat shop. He married the upstairs maid and my gg grandmother and his only child (at the time) were disinherited.

After many years he decided to give his daughter (my g grandmother) part of his money and met her at the bank to change his will. As they pulled out his lock-box he dropped dead of a heart attack. The money is still in the hands of the wealthy side of the family somewhere in California. :shrug:

There is a newspaper article about it somewhere around here.

on edit: redacted personal information

[Denninmi]

5. Smallpox.

My great to about the 5th or 6th power grandfather died in March 1860 during a smallpox outbreak here in Michigan. His household was placed under quarantine by the authorities, and I guess a general quarantine was declared in the area. After he died, his family wanted him to have a "proper burial" in the local cemetery, so they snuck out and buried him at 3:00 in the morning. Or, so the story goes. Whether or not it's all true, or has been greatly exaggerated I can't say. There really was a smallpox epidemic in Michigan in 1860, so that much is true.

[rurallib]

6. Not me personally, but the kids we mentor

are children of latino immigrants.
When they start talking about their parents coming over the stories are quite interesting.
eg "my Mom was 8 months pregnant with me when she crossed the Rio Grande."

[frogmarch]

7. A Pilgrim ancestor of mine

in 17th century Massachusetts set fire to his barn when he saw a thunderstorm approaching. He’d already lost a couple of barns to lightning-caused fires, and he said that by burning the barn down himself, he was saving God the trouble.

[nolabear]

8. What a great crop of stories!

[frogmarch]

9. a 7th great-grandfather of mine

named Simon (sometimes spelled Symon) Tuttle was apparently ready to fight the Revolutionary War more than a century before it happened. Like many other early New England colonists, he was fed up with the way England was governing the colonies.

From Essex County MA court records, 1664:

(See bottom half)



Simon was fined and served time in prison for shooting off his mouth.

I found this and other documents about my ancestors here:
http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/transcripts.html

[tigereye]

79. that's really cool...

[frogmarch]

81. Yes, it is cool. Until I started

researching my roots, I didn’t realize that seeds of the American Revolution had been planted back in the 1600s. Although the idea of independence may not have been floating around much in the 1600s, many of the early colonists were unhappy at having little or no representation in the colonial government, and many of them refused to pay taxes to England, choosing prison instead. Simon’s father, John Tuttle, became so fed up, he moved to Ireland. Simon stayed in MA and took over his father’s trading company.

[tigereye]

82. lovely to see all that beautiful colonial-era language, too.

[hunter]

10. Some of my ancestors are Irish.

They fled to the wild west of America. One or two of 'em wouldn't have been allowed to reproduce had they stayed in Ireland. They were escaping Darwin Award by English hangman.

Another ancestor was a mail order bride. She didn't much like Salt Lake City, it wasn't as promised. So she ran away. Ain't none of her descendants gonna pay that debt. The Mormons have a long memory. They avoid us because we shoot back.

One of my great grandfathers was a brilliant engineer of the abrasive autistic sort. When he wasn't wealthy he was homeless. That stupid gene illuminates my family tree like Christmas lights with a bright glowing star on top.

[applegrove]

11. My great grandfather on my paternal grandmother's side was a judge. He died before

my dad graduated from law school. When my dad went before the same court my grandfather had been in charge of the judge looked down at his first names (which he had inherited from said grandfather of his) and said "Are you the grandson of ____________. I want you to know I was put here to undo everything your grandfather ruled". LOL! Pretty intimidating.

[Aristus]

12. One of my ancestors was a partial inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara.

Her name was Fanny Hargrove, and she was the daughter of one of the Georgia delegates who signed the secession papers for the state. His name was Bright W. Hargrove. He was a plantation owner who lost everything in the Civil War (and deserved to, if you ask me, relative or no...) Not long after the war ended, Fanny Hargrove was in Atlanta when she encountered one of her former slaves, the foreman, a man named Isaac. Dispossessed (literally) and having nowhere to go, Isaac asked Fanny: "Ms. Fanny, you come to take us home?"

Years later Fanny lived in the same neighborhood as Margaret Mitchell. It is believed that Mitchell drew some of her inspiration from Fanny Hargrove, as well as from her own experiences, and those of others.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. My maternal grandfather

grew up in a village in Latvia when it was part of the Czarist Russian Empire, went to St. Petersburg to attend teachers' college, and was then drafted into the Russian army. He hated it, and one night, when he was put on duty guarding the border down near Romania, he jumped into the river and swam to the other side.

He wandered around Europe for several years. There weren't a lot of Latvians outside of Latvia, so he tended to seek out Russian emigres wherever he went (all schools in the Russian Empire were Russian-only, so he spoke the language almost like a native). While he was in Geneva, he met two political exiles named Lenin and Trotsky. He thought Trotsky was OK but that there was something unnerving about Lenin.

When he arrived in France, a fast-talking recruiter told him that with his educational background, he could become an officer in the French Foreign Legion in no time as well as obtaining French citizenship. He signed on and soon found himself shipped off to Algeria. Conditions were really hard, and after a short time, the men he had signed up with were dying of heat stroke and disease as well as being physically abused by the officers. He decided to escape this army as well.

On his day off, he went into town and found someone who would make him some civilian clothes. Then he took off toward the coast and found a ship that was sailing for Europe.

After a while, he ended up working on the crew of a German ocean liner that sailed between Hamburg and New York. On the fifth crossing, he decided to get off and see America. He spent his first night on a park bench in Hoboken, New Jersey. He heard that there were Latvians in Boston, so he went up there and attended night school to learn English, his sixth language.

Tired of doing odd jobs, he worked his way through an American college and got a teaching license. He taught school, most math, chemisry, and French, in high schools around the Midwest before settling in Minneapolis and marrying my grandmother. Looking for new challenges, he went to law school and became an attorney. He tried private practice for a while, but it was too insecure, so he went back to teaching.

After World War II, large numbers of Latvian refugees were resettled in Minneapolis by Lutheran Social Services (ethnic Latvians are mostly Lutheran). As luck would have it, my grandfather was the only Latvian-speaking attorney in town, so he prospered as the refugees came to him with their problems with unscrupulous landlords and employers and immigration troubles.

This involvement with the Latvian community lasted well into my lifetime. In 1959, a Russian dance troupe came to Minneapolis, and a call went out for interpreters, since very few Americans spoke Russian at the time. My grandfather volunteered, and part of his payment came in the form of tickets, so he took us to a show. I was just in elementary school, but I still remember the spectacular dancing and costumes and the lively music. Afterward, he approached some of the dancers and got them to sign our programs. I still have mine.

He died of kidney failure in 1962 at the age of 78.

[frogmarch]

14. What a wonderful story.

A book should be written about your grandfather. What an amazing man he must have been

[DebJ]

55. Latvians continued to suffer a few decades later. Boston connection too.

This is from my son-in-law's father (privacy edit done). In my mind, a real "American Dream" story.

"Everyone has a different life story. Both (my wife) and I were born in Latvia. When the Russians were invading for the second time, many Latvians (over 100,000) left voluntarily or were forced to leave by the Germans to work in their factories. In the latter part of 1944, (my wife)’s mother with her two children left via ship to Germany and my mother with her two children left overland via Poland into Germany. When the Russians came in the first time (1940), they deported to Siberia over 40,000 educated Latvians. That is a lot out of a population of 2 million. My father was one of them and (my wife)’s father being an Latvian army officer was also deported. He died in Siberia. So the two mothers with young children had to make it through the war zone to some safety in southern part of Germany. At the end of the war, we were in DP camps (displaced persons) run by the UN. In 1949, we emigrated to the US and in 1950, (my wife)and her family. We were sponsored by a family in western Massachusetts and (my wife)’s family the same in the Boston area. After high school in Boston, I attended and graduated from Northeastern University as a Civil Engineer. After two years in the army, I moved to the West Coast to get my MBA degree from Stanford University. I worked for several companies including the 25 years in Europe (16 in UK and 9 in Holland). I retired in 2005 and we moved from England to establish our new home in Portland, Oregon. This is just a thumb nail description of my life."

It is so interesting to learn about history from first person perspectives! Especially for those from places like Latvia, which are never generally discussed. In fact, most of the people I know (non-history majors) don't even know that such a country exists!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

63. My grandfather helped a lot of the postwar refugees in Minneapolis

so we heard a lot of stories like that.

Many of the refugees were professional people, but they ended up doing manual labor or farm work when they first came over. He showed them the ropes of how to learn English and navigate the American educational and credentialing system.

One of my professors in college was a Latvian woman who taught German. Her father was a professor in Riga, and he wanted his children to be multilingual, so they spoke Latvian, Russian, German, and French on different days of the week. When she was at the university, she wanted to learn English, but her advisor told her that only business people needed English.

So she ends up as a refugee in the U.S....

By the way, at one point in the early 1950s, there were 23 Latvians enrolled at the University of Minnesota. All of them were on the dean's list. It's a culture that really values education.

[DebJ]

70. Riga....there is some family connection there for us. n/t

[Rowdyboy]

72. What a fascinating story....in college my best friends grandma was from Latvia....

She was in the Resistance in WWII, escaping late in the war with her young daughter (my friends mom) and leaving two adult sons behind. She came to America speaking 5 languages (damn those Europeans are amazing-why are we so lazy?) and got a job working for the phone company. She was a delightful lady with a sparkling wit who, unfortunately, was hideously anti-Semitic. She would break off a fascinating story about pre-war Europe with VERY mean-spirited comments about Jews which kind of ruined the moment. Her daughter (who's at least 80 herself now) would just roll her eyes and pretend she didn't hear.

[bluesbassman]

15. My great aunt Levy.

She was born somewhere around 1910 in Oklahoma. Nobody knew the dates for sure as she, my grandmother, and their sister were all orphans and bounced around from family to family. During the Depression they even spent some time traveling in an actual covered wagon. As was common for those times and region, she never went to school, but never let that stop her from learning. She was a voracious reader, and her entire life she kept a pocket dictionary with her and would look up and memorize any word that was new. By the time she was an adult, she had self educated herself to the point where she could hold her own in conversation with just about anyone.

After the Depression the sisters ended up in Texas. Despite not being a very physically attractive woman, but being possessed with a tremendous appetite for learning and a winning personality my great aunt ended up marrying above her station a succession of very successful businessmen. Unfortunately these fellows had a bad habit of dying on her. Her luck finally ran out when, in her late sixties, she married husband number four. It seems this fellow was some sort of oilman and they spent a lot of time traveling. After one extended trip, they returned to their home and apparently while trying to light the pilot light for the water heater they succeeded blowing up the house so bad that they had to be identified from dental charts.

At least the pilot light story was the official one. My mom never bought it though. She always maintained that it was some rival oilman taking revenge for a deal gone bad. Either way, it was a pretty remarkable end for a remarkable woman.

[Richard Steele]

16. Family legend, plus my opinion on it. "Family legend" has it....

...that the first two STEELE brothers
who came to North Murka left some vast landholdings
in the trust of the King of Denmark, and
I've got a crazy aunt who spends her free time
trying to work up a legal case that Denmark
owes our family BILLIONS of dollars due to
the magic of compound interest for those lands
that the Steele Brothers never recieved payment for.

Long story short: I've seen the documents,
and they did sign a paper putting their holdings
into the hands of the Danish King... ( actually,
into the hand of some Representative of the King
whos signature looks like a long line of freehand 'OOOXXX's)

Just like they had placed their holdings into someone's hands
when they left Easterling and moved to London,
and just like they did it again when they left London
to move to Denmark.

And if you know enough about history, you could read between the lines
of all of those transactions to know that every one of them
was just a PAYOFF for permission to move out.

They seem to have no official existense before they suddenly
appear on the tax records as two brothers with VAST landholdings,
sharing the same home at the advanced age of 30, and the records
show that they moved from place to place, losing money with every
move, until they finally arrived in the wilderness of the Colonies
with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a trunk full of
silver that they could barely carry down the gangplank.

They established a modest MANSION, kept to themselves,
lived quietly and entertained seldom, and at some point
in their late '50s or early '60s, they suddenly
RE-appear on the records as FATHERS to some children
born to teenage WIVES; daughters of local folk whose names
are currently lost to history; one of whom actually SURVIVED
the birth of her second child and lived long enough
to tell one of her granddaughters what she knew of the Steele 'brothers'.

So, I'm thinking that I don't have to actually "spell out"
what I think about the original Steele 'Brothers' to
you smart folks here at DU, do I?

And that's my "Family Legend" for today.
And that's all it is- legend, and my interpretation.


You want a REAL juicy story that I know for a FACT?
Ask me about the date my Grandpa got married.
He and Grandma LIED about it for 50 years,
and I was in the room when he broke the news
to my Dad and all my aunts and uncles.

[blue_roses_lib]

17. I've got a somewhat famous distant relative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

I was reading my great uncle's family history and came across this guy. Crazy.

[csziggy]

18. A lot since we have a long family history

My great-great-great-grandfather was quite a character. In his days it was not unlawful to make whiskey but it was to sell it. He would make whiskey, place it in jugs in a box. If a neighbor wanted some, he would remove a jug. Usually a donation would be left, but Grandpa did not sell liquor.

Another ancestor was a Confederate soldier who was captured by Union forces. While a prisoner, he got sick and was put in the camp hospital. He became interested in medicine and spent the rest of the time until the end of the war helping out in the hospital. He must have learned a lot because even though he never had formal education, he was given a license to practice medicine in 1879. He was noted as being a very good doctor that saved a lot of lives.

A cousin of my great-great-grandfather on Northern side of the family was known as being General Grant's telegraph operator during an important campaign of the war. He was famed for spending two days solid manning the telegraph and sending important dispatches. Later that reknown got him a good job with the railroad and he eventually became President of the Chicago & North Western Railroad during the period when it was doing its most massive expansion. When the railroad started putting their lines through the Badlands, he hired his cousin as part of the survey party. My great-great-grandfather took his sixteen year old son along and they spent some months laying out the first part of the railroad across the Dakota Territory.

Later, the father got a job as station agent in Escanaba, Michigan, but there were no places to live since the town was brand new. The railroad supplied an apartment upstairs in the new train station. When my great-grandfather got married, he brought his new bride to live with his family in the apparently large apartment. My grandmother was born there.

My grandmother's great uncle ran away from home as a young man and in 1853 took a ship to Australia to make a fortune in the gold rush. We still have the letters he wrote home from the ship and from Australia and New Zealand where he later went to their gold rush. He never made much money and ended up managing a sawmill in New Zealand. Later the family sent him money for his passage back to North America and he died on Vancouver Island where the family was living for a few years. His letters are terrific - I've transcribed them and am collecting additional information to flesh out his story. I plan to put them into book form to give to all the relatives for their enjoyment.

[MilesColtrane]

19. I am a descendant of Edward Doty.

A Mayflower passenger and signer of the Mayflower Compact

He was an indentured servant and was a participant in the first duel in the Mayflower colony in 1621.

Doty and Edward Leister fought with swords and daggers until one was wounded in the hand and the other in the thigh.

They were to be punished by having their ankles tied to their necks for twenty-four hours without food or drink.

Within an hour they were begging to be released, which the governor allowed upon their promise to behave.

I figure that this is where I get my distaste for authority and general belligerent asshole-ishness.

[WolverineDG]

22. Want to know something weird?

My distant great-uncle & cousins the Fullers were also on the Mayflower. So our ancestors came to North America together & now, here we are, posting on the same website. :hi:

My direct descendant of the Fuller line came over on the next ship.

dg

[MilesColtrane]

27. !

[BuddhaGirl]

57. I am a descendant of John Alden, Mayflower passenger and Compact signer

My g-g-g-g-g-g grandfather was William Williams, who signed the Declaration of Independence...his wife was the daughter of the Connecticut governor John Trumbull and a direct descendant of John Alden.

:hi:

[kwassa]

60. I am probably related to someone on the Mayflower

Both my mother's ancestors and father's ancestors came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. Since there was a limited pool of people to marry, it would be pretty likely that someone in the family tree, through marriage, was descended from the original Mayflower group.

We also have a ships log from the 1700s from a Captain Delano, the family descended from Phillipe De Lannoy, Mayflower passenger. Many famous Delanos, including FDR.

[jobycom]

20. One of mine mutinied, took over a fishing vessel, and tried to set up a commune in Greenland.

Apparently the rest of the crew decided he was insane and killed him.

Also, my father's grandfather was a Mississippi riverboat captain who just vanished. Never came home, no one knew where he went. A few years ago I googled his name for larks, and found an extended family with a progenitor of the same name at a port somewhere upriver. Quite possibly he had a family in every port.

And there's a legend that one of my grandparent's sets of grandparents met when the woman fell overboard from the ship they were immigrating to America on, and he dove in and saved her. The story comes from a relation who tended to romanticize things, though. The legend is decades old, so it's not James Cameron's fault.

[sakabatou]

21. Supposedly, if you go WAAAAAAAAY back

You get Aaron, Moses' brother.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

23. On my father's side of the family

my great-great-grandmother was adopted into the family but, as family legend goes, a very wealthy Prussian/Austrian/Russian (? no one really knows where) woman (possibly a noble) would come to visit her with a horse-driven white carriage and escort guards, giving her gifts and providing the adoptive family (my dad's great-great-grandparents) with money so she could be well schooled and fed. She did this until the child was 5-6 years old and was never seen again (note: I'm from Italy and my father's side of the family is from the Trentino-Alto Adige area - Sud Tyrol - Alps).

[Bunny]

24. Do fake family legends count?

I think I've written about this before, but I'll repeat myself.

In the 1850's, my great great grandfather Hugh D. emigrated from County Leitrim to escape the potato blight. He brought along his sister Ellen and they landed in New York, where they somehow got separated. Hugh searched for Ellen for many days (or weeks or something) but couldn't find her and eventually he had to move on. He settled in Western PA and spent the rest of his life farming. (He died when his wagon or plow or something overturned and crushed him underneath.) Poor Ellen was never seen or heard from again, and for generations the family believed that she had been kidnapped into white slavery. Her story would be a sad tragedy if it was true, but turns out that not only was Ellen never kidnapped, she never actually existed! There was no sister Ellen, ever. And Hugh actually landed in Philadelphia, not New York. The rest of the story is true, though, as far as we know...

[Richardo]

28. Were the O'Bunny family whiskey-tasters and goblins back in County Blight?

/donoghy

:D :hi:

[Bunny]

29. Aye, 'tis true!

:rofl: :hi: :loveya:

[tigereye]

80. another descendant of people desperate to get out of

Ireland! :hi: Bunny!


My mom used to say that if she heard one more story about potatoes rotting in the fields...:D

[Bunny]

84. Haha!

:hi: tigereye! :pals:

[tigereye]

88. hey, lady! How are ya? Excited about the big game?

:pals: :toast:

[MiddleFingerMom]

25. My Irish grandfather was the village drunk.

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He was from Dublin.
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[Rowdyboy]

73. We could be cousins-I had a colonial ancestor who lost the right to vote because of alcoholism....

Way back in the 1600's....Apparently the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

[lins the liberal]

26. Sheriff & the ghost

One of my great uncles was sheriff of a rural Kansas county during the depression years. The story is that he was driving down a road one day when he saw a woman walking along side it. He stopped to see if she needed help and recognized her. But she acted very strange and would not look at her or answer him. Just kept walking. He said the way she acted scared him more than he had ever been scared since he had been sheriff. Later she was found dead in her home and had apparently been dead for awhile when her body was discovered. This uncle said there was no way she could have been alive when he saw her walking along side the road.

[Rowdyboy]

74. My grandmother (1899-1962) swore that she and my grandfather saw her mom walking.....

from the street to the porch where they were sitting one evening in the 1920's before she vanished. Of course they later supposedly discovered she had died that day in a neighboring state.

Aren't family stories wonderful?

[AngryAmish]

30. Grandfather got to Ellis Island, had TB, they sent him back to Ireland

Father got into this country through various extralegal means.

[begin_within]

31. My Dad met Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. My grandfather mailed a pancake. And...

My granparents were members of the National Geographic Society and went to all the monthly luncheons. One time my grandfather was sick so my grandmother took my Dad instead. He was 14 and the guest speaker was Amelia Earhart. After the luncheon, my Dad and his Mom came upon Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt in a hallway, and had a pleasant converstion for about 5 minutes. My grandparents lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland and once had Gloria Steinem as a dinner guest at their house. My Dad also flew a flight with John Glenn once.

When he was in high school, my Dad was in a scavenger hunt around Washington DC. One of the items on the list was a piece of White House stationery. They drove through the gate and right up to the front door of the White House. A butler answered and gave them the sheet of stationery. They drove past the White House again a few minutes later and noticed that the gates were shut. So they won the scavenger hut, because they were the only ones to get that item on the list.

My grandfather went to Stanford University and worked his way through it. He once got a pancake that was so tough he decided to mail it to see if it would go through. He put a stamp and glued an address onto it, and it did in fact get delivered to the address he wrote. I never saw this or a picture, but they told me this repeatedly so I believe it happened.

A Marine friend of my Dad used to like to drink rather than eat. He attended parties held by his aunt in San Diego, which always had lavish buffets. The hostess of the party was always bugging him to eat, while he only wanted to drink. He warned her that if she told him to eat one more time, he would pick up the turkey and throw it out the window. Sure enough, 10 minutes later she came along with a plate full of food and offered it to him. True to his word, he picked up the whole turkey and threw it out the French doors onto the patio. There were people out there on the patio and were shocked to see a turkey come flying out and bounce across the patio. This happened on Easter Sunday sometime in the late 1940s. My Mom was there and corroborated the story.

[GreenPartyVoter]

32. I had an ancestor who came over on the same ship as Carnegie, who offered said ancestor the

opportunity to go into partnership with him in his new steel business. The ancestor said no as he was already set up to go into tin instead. However, there was a dispute over the land where the mining was to take place and it never came to pass. (The black sheep brother had put it up against his gambling debts.) When I was a kid my dad read in the paper that the court case had gone unresolved for 100 years, and so the state took the land and made it into a park instead.

Weird, huh? :)

[Arugula Latte]

34. Jeez, I come from boring stock, I guess.

I've got nuthin. :(

[LiberalEsto]

36. You never know what you'll find

We all have great people and bad people and quiet hard-working people in our family trees.

LOVE your screen name!

[Arugula Latte]

37. Thanks!

Someone traced ancestry on my father's side back to before the Battle of Hastings (1066) in England, so that was kinda cool. Don't have any stories, though.

[LiberalEsto]

38. Wow, that's far back

Before 1066 is amazing.
I can't trace back beyond the 19th century. I'd have to go traipsing all over Estonia and Russia and Ukraine. There are language barriers because I can't read, let alone speak or read Russian or German - which was the language used for many Estonian archives. Estonia was conquered by Russia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and heaven knows who else, so old records probably don't exist.

[LiberalEsto]

35. One of my great-grandfathers knew 17 languages

Although I'm mostly of Estonian ancestry, my mother's grandfather Arseni Zarewsky was a Russian or Ukrainian from Kiev. He was a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, which allows priests to marry. Among other things, he believed in educating women, and founded schools for girls in Russia and Estonia. His seven daughters and sons were well-educated; my grandfather had a law degree.

Arseni became a professor of theology at the University of Tartu in Estonia, one of the oldest universities in that part of the world. In those days classes were taught in Russian. He was a Biblical scholar and employed his linguistic skills in translating the Bible. I believe his languages, in addition to Russian, German and Estonian, included Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic, but I have no idea what the others were. My mother used to hold him up as an example when I struggled with high school German. I spoke only Estonian until kindergarten, when I started learning English, but I did not inherit his gift for languages and didn't learn much German.

My great-grandfather eventually became chairman of the theology department at Tartu University, and served as acting chancellor of the university for a period of time. My mother and father both studied at Tartu U., but their studies were interrupted by WW2. They fled Estonia, met in a refugee camp, and came to America in the late 1940s. I was born here, so I never met any of my grandparents but one, and she died when I was 2. My mom, an only child, died when I was in college, before I got interested in family history. Much of my information on Arseni came from writing to the university.

My Estonian cousin on my father's side has both daughters studying at the University of Tartu. One is studying medicine and the other is working on her doctorate in environmental science.

[bikebloke]

39. Way back when

My direct ancestor came over from Scotland as an indentured servant in 1677. He bought all sorts of land in Virginia. One plot was later bought by some loser named George Washington.

[bookworm65t]

40. My great-grandfather's mysterious death.

My mother was one of 10 children; 2 are now deceased. They are all in their 70s now, and at a recent family gathering, it turned out that their maternal grandfather, who died when their mom was 6 months old, had died 8 different ways. Each one had been told a story by my grandmother about his manner of death. We don't know the real story. He would have died in 1900, and some of my aunts have tried to find out the real story but so far haven't found anything.

Is it possible to locate a death certificate for Brooklyn, NY that long ago? If anyone can tell me I would really appreciate it.

[lins the liberal]

41. check local county records

Have you checked local county records? You might find something that way. I don't believe any of the states were issuing death certificates at that time. But you might check to be sure.

[bookworm65t]

42. I'm in Ohio

but I'll see what I can find, thanks!

[LiberalEsto]

45. Write to the NYC Department of Records

http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/vitalrecords/home.shtml

Here's more info on what to do:

http://genealogy.about.com/library/vital/blnyc.htm

I got my husband's great-grandfather's death certificate (from Brooklyn) that way and I live in Maryland.

[DebJ]

50. I have located several death certs in Brooklyn on my husband's

side. I'll see if I can re-locate the website for you and post it here.

[DebJ]

51. Websites for Brooklyn death/ancestry searches.

http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/
It says it is a German database, but don't be put off by that. I was searching for an English family.

I also found some of them in an Italian database, from one of the links on this website: http://www.italiangen.org/

Requesting an NYC death record form: http://www.italiangen.org/NYC_Death_Form.htm I'm not sure how much info you would need to get it; I happened to have a death certificate number. Given that info, I got the certificates in less than 2 weeks.

Here are some Brooklyn births: http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Birth/1898/1898.W.Birth.Bklyn.html

Another link of interest if checking out old NY: http://www.forgotten-ny.com/index.html

General grave-checker sites: http://www.interment.net/Default.htm and also http://www.findagrave.com/
And some cemeteries have fantastic records online. I don't know about Brooklyn, but one fine example of cemetery records online is Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, where many of my relatives are. I have picked up pictures of the grave sites, and some revealing obituaries, and death cert numbers from there.
HERE IS A BROOKLYN CEMETERY, AN ENORMOUS ONE, WITH A SEARCH FUNCTION: http://www.theevergreenscemetery.com/records/
If you don't find them there, note they are still updating/attempting to transcribe another 200,000 records. Over 500,000 people are interred there. I found my husband's emigre ancestor there. We took a trip and took photos of the burial site.
My husband was in awe to see the name on the grave: it's the same as his, though he's four generations later.

Hope this helps! Good luck and have fun!

[DebJ]

52. Regarding Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn: I just re-read

your post. See this note from Evergreens website:
"We currently have records available online for more than 300,000 of the over 500,000 people interred at the Evergreens. This list is mostly complete from 1849 - 1877 and from 1942 - present. Additional records are being added regularly. Matching names will be displayed with the date of burial. Further genealogical information may be had by contacting the cemetery directly."

So, since you are looking for something around 1900, it might not be posted yet. But eventually, it will if he is in Evergreens...which by the way has an interesting view of NYC from some of the sites.

[Kaleva]

43. All of my ancestors were dirt poor subsistance farmers

[DebJ]

53. I have a few of those, but they were descended from men

who actually owned a handful of slaves. The farthest back owned 4, and then succeeding generations less and less.

[Kaleva]

64. My family tree has been traced back to the mid 1700's.

Other then a female relative who fell off a boat and drowned in the Baltic Sea sometime in the mid 1800's, there isn't much to talk about.

[El Supremo]

44. One of my cousins got President Franklin Pierce drunk and laid.

True! It's in a recent book.

[old mark]

47. Mom's ancestors came to America around 1630, got a land grant in PA

from William Penn's sons. At one time they owned much of Northampton County in Eastern PA near New Jersey. Been pretty much downhill ever since then.
My father and his mom came here from Germany in 1920...his father was a corporal in the Imperial German Army, and was killed in WWI before my dad was born.
My dad lives near Galviston, Tx now-he was 94 on New Years day.

mark

[DebJ]

48. A few, one of the front page of the Wash. Post around 1915.

One of my great-grand uncles tried to kill another one, and it made the front page of the Washington Post and back pages on later days. They were in business together. One uncle was drinking heavily. First he tried to beat his brother up, but was chased away. He came back with a gun. The other uncle was shot, and lived with a bullet in his back for the rest of his life (which was quite awhile, I forget now...40 years?), after the Wash Post said he was going to die. The brothers made up later, by the way.
Another brother was quite a successful businessman, and his family made the society pages in the WP a number of times, including a long description of his daughters wedding, social events they attended, weddings his daughters were in. But one of the daughter's also attempted suicide because she was mad at her dad, and that made the Post also.
There was no oral tradition of this in my family; I found it all on Ancestry. Great part of having family from DC is that so many DC records are accessible online.

On the other side of my family, a paternal great-grand uncle travelled the world in the 1890s with Ziegfeld(later of Ziegfeld Follies fame in NYC). This uncle was a trapeze artist, and his face can be found at the National Archives on a poster. One of his fellow acrobats was the first person to ever do a triple sumersault....a female...but it wasn't until the 1970s that she was given credit for that achievement..the man who first managed it 10 years after she did got the credit, until the Women's Lib movement corrected history. Another person who travelled with them was a heavy weight lifting champion whose figure is now the one used for the heavy weight lifting trophy.
My family had inherited pictures of this uncle (Ben Dunham), but no one could explain them. After over a year of searching the internet, I hooked up with a man from Australia who collected circus memorabilia. He told me about the poster in the archives and gave me a little info. Then I hooked up with someone who was supposed to be writing a book about my gg uncle, and we exchanged more info, but I don't think the book ever happened.

That's just the stories that come immediately to mind, after 8 years of ancestry research.

[Maine-ah]

49. my umpteen-times great grandmother...Anneke Jans Bogardus

http://home1.gte.net/vze4p5bi/jans1.htm

[DebJ]

54. A great grand uncle who picked up a horse, barehanded, and

threw the horse across the blacksmith shop when he got angry...."Irish temper". Daniel Kendrick lived and worked in Georgetown from 1876-1938. My mother (born in 1928) told me that story; it was told to her when she was taken to the then-still-existing blacksmith shop in Georgetown outside of DC.
Recently, through Ancestry, I 'met' one of Daniel's direct descendents (she's my second cousin twice removed or something like that), and that family legend has been passed down to her as well, along with photographs of Daniel...and a horse.

Daniel's father was also a blacksmith there (William Kendrick, my 2nd great-grandfather). He was a blacksmith right outside of DC during the Civil War, when the population was only about 75,000, and there were not that many blacksmith shops around.
Makes me wonder whose horses he may have shod during the Civil War.

[DebJ]

56. Thanks for the post. Made for enjoyable Friday night reading.

[nolabear]

62. It has, hasn't it! I'm blown away by the stories.

[many a good man]

58. Slovenian Great Grandpa lost his daughter's hand in a poker game

My grandmother, who died last year at the ripe old age of 105, told of her twin sister who disappeared one day at the age of 17. Turns out her sonuvabitch father had bet his daughter's hand in marriage in a poker game and lost. The next morning the winner shows up and whists her off to Chicago. My poor Grandma lost touch with her twin sister for 25 years.

Grandma also remembered the birth of her baby sister. The family was so poor they had no cradle or crib to put her in after she was born. She remembers the little bed that was made in the bottom drawer of her parents' dresser.

[friendly_iconoclast]

59. My great (x12) grandfather owned most of Cecil County, Maryland

Augie was something of a Renaissance man- and quite the political operator:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_Herman



Augustine Herman, First Lord of Bohemia Manor (c. 1621 – September 1686) was a Czech explorer, merchant, and cartographer who lived in New Amsterdam and Cecil County, Maryland. In the employment of Lord Baltimore, he produced a remarkably accurate map of the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay regions of North America, and established the enormous Bohemia Manor plantation in southeastern Cecil County, Maryland. Chroniclers spelt the surname variously: Herman, Herrman, Harman, Harmans, Heerman, Hermans, Heermans, etc. Augustine Herman himself usually wrote Herman, which is now the accepted style. He frequently added “Bohemiensis” ("the Bohemian") as a suffix.


http://cecilobserver.com/?p=162

Who the heck was Augustine Herman?

(self-portrait from his map of Chesapeake Bay)

Augustine Herman was born in Prague or “Bohemia” about 1605, and fought in the Thirty Years War before arriving in the New World around 1629. Existing records portray a well-educated surveyor and mapmaker, fluent in several languages, and he became a key player in the early settlement of Manhattan under Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant.

On a trip through what was then the Chesapeake Bay wilderness, he was struck by the area’s natural beauty — and by the total lack of accurate maps. Ever an opportunist, he offered to map the area for Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who owned Maryland. As a down payment, Lord Baltimore gave Herman 4,000 acres north of the Bohemia River. Herman went on to produce his maps and was given a total of 15,000 acres, reaching all the way to the Delaware Bay.

It was Herman who first urged the powerful Calvert family to create Cecil County. At the time, it was part of Baltimore County. Herman became one of Maryland’s leading citizens and settled at a plantation called Bohemia Manor. In 1661, he proposed routes for digging a canal across the Delmarva peninsula. It would be 150 years before that concept was realized and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was dug; Herman’s ideas were just ahead of their time.

There is a legend that after going to work for the English Lord Baltimore, Herman returned to New York for a visit. There, the government of the Dutch colony considered him a spy and traitor for casting his lot with the English. He was arrested, jailed and sentenced to death. While in prison, Herman requested that he be allowed to ride his horse, Gustavus, around the governor’s compound for exercise. The guards became used to his daily rides. As the date for his execution approached, one day Herman rode his horse through a banquet hall and crashed through a window to escape. Horse and rider then swam the Hudson River to safety. Legend says that a grateful Herman never rode his life-saving horse again, and when Gustavus died he buried the horse in the family cemetery with a tombstone. Herman even had a portrait painted of himself and the horse....

I'm not much for what Alan Gurganus calls the "USED to be was" thing, and two bucks will get me a small coffee at Dunkie's- but it's

a helluva of a story

[kwassa]

61. My great grandfather survived Gettysburg, and died at the 50th reunion in 1913

He was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness, but recovered, or I would not be here.

He had a heart attack at the reunion, 50 years later.

[EFerrari]

65. My grandmother was one of the first if not the first women in El Salvador

to get a driver's license. My grandfather used to call down to the base and have his men clear the road when she took the car out. :)

[burrfoot]

66. Well...

I've got that Aaron Burr guy, so that side of my family (my dad's) has been around here a while. We have a pretty interesting book printed around 1902 called (creatively) "The Burr Book," that takes us back to the early 1100's, so that's pretty cool.

I have a set of cousins who, through their father, are related somehow or other to Alexander Hamilton. We had fun with that when we were younger :)

[JCMach1]

67. I am a descendant of King John of England

Yeah, that idiot!

[annabanana]

68. The Purple Gang and my Grandpa:

What I remember is this: Dad said his Dad had a cop jump up on the running board of his car telling him to "Follow that car!!!" but Grandpa couldn't keep up and the cop just said, "Oh, forget it!" and jumped off. Apparently, the bad guys the cop wanted to follow were part of the Purple Gang.

[nuxvomica]

69. My great-uncle was a spy for the Kaiser in WWI

He was a German immigrant who was a brilliant chemist. When he was captured, newspapers noted that his brother-in-law was serving in the U.S. Army at the time.

[riverwalker]

71. A young mothers burial at sea

Found a great-great-great aunt who came from Norway in 1865 with her husband and their 2 year old son. The trip across the Atlantic took 2-3 months at that time. She was pregnant and gave birth at sea and died from complications. They buried her at sea. Her husband was left with a newborn infant and a 2 year old. He went on to become a farmer in Iowa, and I researched the baby born at sea. His tombstone said "Born on the Atlantic Ocean". Both boys became successful Iowa farmers.

[Orsino]

75. My father was carried off by a tornado in '33...

...which leveled the family homestead. He was very, very young and was found a couple hundred yards away, with dirt embedded in his skin but no serious injuries. His mother broke an arm in the storm and lost her wedding ring, but the ring was recovered many years later by a neighbor's plowing.

Some of his ancestors in the same area were visited by Sherman's outriders. They had some sort of advance warning, and hid their livestock. Sherman's men, of course, "asked" after the animals and were told, "Their are none here; they have been taken away." When they "asked" for food, they were served cornbread, dripping with butter...and left.

A couple of other paternal forebears were Union sympathizers in Alabama. They had to dress as women to slip away from the house to enlist.

One of my mother's Civil War ancestors seems to have been the one who killed Colonel Shaw, commander of the 54th Massachusetts, at Battery Wagner.

[frogmarch]

76. This is a wonderful thread.

I'm lovin' it lots. What fascinating stories! :thumbsup:

[nolabear]

78. I second that emotion. Here's one more:

My grandfather was a ramblin' man, who did a lot of rail-riding in the 30's and 40's. One of his cronies was Clyde Barrow's brother, and he claimed to have spent some time "laying up" with the Barrow Boys before that whole Bonnie thing got started. The times and places checked out, and though he told a lot of fantastic stories, I've never known one to be a lie, so I trust it.

On the other side of the family, my maternal grandfather has an ancestor who was a "Captain" of a home militia in the seventeen hundreds in New England. His reputation was largely of being someone who dealt with the local Indians (I fear that meant terrorizing them, as that kind of thing sort of ran in the family).

[astonamous]

83. My Great, Great Grandmother lived to be 107 11/12...

Born in London, England, Oct. 27, 1848 she was the daughter of the British Sailor George Jarvis and Ann Prior Jarvis. Ann came with her parents to America in 1857. They first settled in Boston, intending to remain only till the health of her mother improved sufficiently for them to move west to Utah. Unfortunately, the loss of their British money through the closing of the Boston Banks in the approaching Civil War setup, kept them in Boston for three years. They arrived in Utah in the fall of 1860, and a year later were among those called to grow cotton in Utah's Dixie cotton mission.

Just aged 13 when this move was made, Ann was soon drawn into community activities and was one of the young women trained and put into active community service by Dr. Israel Ivins during the many contagions of malaria, diphtheria and other ailments which beset the pioneers in this difficult mission. The wide experience and knowledge she gained in this way served her in good hand when left with the responsibility of rearing a large family. She was the third wife of the pioneer Scottish painter, David Milne, an artist if there ever was one, whose hand work lives on in the decorations of the local homes, the Temple, the Tabernacle, the Lyceum and in the lives of his daughters.

Typical of her courageousness implanted through years of pioneering, is the fact, that blindness did not deter her progress. After 12 years of blindness from cataracts and surgery, she took up the study of Braille at the age of 88 and mastered it, only to have the joy at 90 of regaining sight following a serious technical operation. Living now in Salt Lake City, she is as one come from the dead as she sees again the beauty she used to love, and notes the progress made during her many years of darkness. Alert, clever and lovable, she has enjoyed life to its fullest in varied experiences, health and sickness, poverty and comfort, and keeps check on the progress of industry, travel, literature and art. She still keeps on with her study of Braille, just in case she might need it again.

In her lifetime, she walked across great portions of the United States as a pioneer and flew to Hollywood to be a guest on a radio show.

Ann Catherine Jarvis Milne died at the age of 107 years on 8 Oct. 1956.

A poem she wrote...

War and Love are fierce co-peers
War sheds blood and blood sheds tears;
War has swords and love has darts,
War has broken heads, and love breaks hearts.

War's a robber--Love's a thief;
War brings ruin, Love brings relief.
War's a giant, Love's a child.
War runs mad, Love runs wild.

War subdues, Love beguiles;
War by force and Love by smiles.
War in chains our bodies bind,
Love's the tyrant of our minds.

[JTG of the PRB]

85. My great-great-great-grandfather (on my mother's side) was in the French army.

He was part of the invasion force that attacked Mexico in the 1860's. The French were (naturally) defeated, and one of the defeats helped lead to the celebration of Cinco de Mayo.

So, you're all welcome for that. :P

Also, General John Pershing, Allied commander in World War I and the man who helped hunt for Pancho Villa, is a distant relative of mine (something like 5th or 6th cousin).

[elocs]

86. My only famous ancestor was General Sherman, so I reckon there are a few stories there.

My first ancestor came to this country from England in 1628 and thanks to the Mormons I have the basic information on that as well.

[Sisaruus]

87. A great-grandfather lost one of the family factories in a poker game.

My grandfather made a lot of money providing bootleg booze to the NY City police department during Prohibition. He carried a pardon from the Governor in his wallet in case some cop accidentally picked him up.

[struggle4progress]

89. Great-uncle had some federal inspector position. Towards the end of WWII,

the military contacted him, said they had an issue labeling something for RR transport

They transported him off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, wouldn't tell him where he was, showed him exactly what they wanted to ship, wouldn't tell him anything much about what it was except that it was a powerful explosive device, refused pointedly to tell him anything about how it worked

He finally allowed how it might meet federal regulations if the box were prominently labelled something like DANGER: HIGH EXPLOSIVE, at which point they were totally done with him and packed him off back home, with more attention to making sure he'd had no idea where he'd been and making sure he understood he shouldn't talk too much about that trip

So he was away from home some days, got back, eventually told a couple family members about the trip: he wasn't really sure where he'd been; he wasn't really sure what he'd seen, except it was supposed to explode; and he'd told the military just mark it HIGH EXPLOSIVE

The war in Japan ended sudden not long after that. Then he was pretty sure he knew what he'd seen

[Brother Buzz]

90. We lost our Great-Grandfather in the 1906 San Francisco fire

He died a week before the earthquake. While his body was in transit to SF to be buried in the Odd Fellows cemetery, the earthquake struck. Express company records destroyed, mortuary records destroyed. No record of him exists, he just disappeared.

If someone visits San Francisco and see an unattended coffin lying around somewhere give me a shout.



Oh, I also had a great (x 11) uncle that disappeared for a couple of hundred years. He was executed for high treason by the English in 1640. After being hung, drawn and quartered, he was then sewn together, parboiled for preservation, and shipped to his college (English College, Douai) in France for burial. His body was secreted to an unmarked grave during the French Revolution, and rediscovered in 1927. He was returned to England, where they enshrined him in Westminster Cathedral.

I think Elvis looks a lot like him.

[Xithras]

91. Here's the story: During the French and Indian War...

...one of my g^grandfathers owned several large whaling vessels and was based out of Boston. A couple of his ships were in New York at one point, selling off his catch, when the British received some intelligence of a possible upcoming attack on Boston. To shore up the towns defenses, a request was sent to New York to shift a couple hundred soldiers to reinforce some positions around Boston. Because of the need to move them quickly, and due the unavailability of nearby British Naval vessels, a call was put out for a couple of large vessels that could carry the troops quickly to Boston. My g^grandfather quickly volunteered his ships and they set sail a couple of hours later.

According to the story, the governor of the Massachusetts Colony, a guy named William Shirley, summoned my g^grandfather shortly afterward to reward him for his service. He was offered gold, but asked for control of a small island off the coast of what is now Maine instead. He was looking for a small private harbor for his boats, and wanted an island because mainland bays were at risk of attack by natives. The governor agreed, and the island was signed over to him in perpetuity in the name of the King, by the authority of the Governor.

He never took delivery of the island. A year after getting the grant, he was killed in an accident at sea and his fleet passed on to his sons. Those sons, according to the story, didn't even try to visit the island until 1780. By that time the area had become a bit more populous, and the local authorities refused to honor a deed granted decades before, by a government authority that they no longer recognized. They eventually moved their fleet to the area anyway, and sued unsuccessfully in court to gain ownership of the island. Much of my family lives in southern Maine today.

--

Now...IS IT TRUE? That's the kicker. This story has apparently been around in my family forever, but there's no actual evidence of it happening. We know beyond question that we had ancestors who were whalers, and that some of them owned several ships. We also know that we had ancestors in Boston at that time, and even the name of the governor is correct. But that's where things start falling apart.

First, several attempts have been made to find any evidence of the deeds existence, and we've come up blank on all attempts. We've also tried corroborating the movement of the soldiers, but found nothing. We also tried to find evidence that the lawsuit happened, and again came up with a big goose egg. Then there's the fact that the story can't even agree on which island it is. The MODERN version of the story claims that it was Mount Desert Island, but that seems unlikely because there was an existing colony on the island at that time. Another version written in the 1920's claimed that it was Deer Island, and references before that talk about Vinalhaven.

Still, it's impossible to fully disprove it. If the deed was never exercised, it's understandable why no paper record would exist. The "ownership" would have consisted of nothing more than a grant letter from the Governor. As for the soldiers, there are holes in the records, and it isn't unreasonable to assume that records of a short term shift of a small number of soldiers might have been lost over the centuries. As for the lawsuits...the country was still new when that was fought, and many courts were winging it at that time. Again, no shocker that records were lost. And the island name? More than a century of retelling is bound to shift SOME of the details.

Personally, I don't think it's true. But it's certainly a good story, and its been around in my family for a LONG time. The oldest record we have of it dates from the 1870's!


------------on edit


Another interesting story that I feel like mentioning, and which is 100% true, is about my maternal great grandmother who lived in Maine. Back when she was young and pretty (16!), she was walking down the street of her native Montreal when she met a dashing and handsome 21 year old American architect who was in town doing some final checks on a church that he'd just designed. He didn't speak a word of French, and she didn't speak a word of English, but they fell for each other on sight. When he hopped his steamer back home two days later, she was by his side. But that's not the interesting story.

She lived to be 103 years old, and in all that time there were two things she never bothered to do. 1) She never fixed her paperwork, and remained a Canadian citizen until the day she passed on. 2) She never spoke a word of English in her life. She forced by grandfather to learn French to speak to her, and all of her children (and grandchildren, including my mother) were fluently English/French bilingual because of her. Even though she undoubtedly understood English perfectly well after 87 years in this country, she would never speak it because she considered it to be a "barbaric and ugly language compared to the beauty that is French." She was a funny lady, and I'm glad that I had a few opportunities to meet her as a kid before she passed away :)

[nuxvomica]

92. True or not, there's probably a story behind the story

If it was made up, why?

My maternal great grandmother never spoke English, either. There are so many French-Canadians in this area that when my mother was in kindergarten, the nun never spoke English and all the classes were conducted in French. We tend to think of immigrants in the past as being very diligent about speaking English but it wasn't always the case.

[Xithras]

97. My guess is that it's like most myths...a great story layered on top of a tiny kernel of truth.

It's possible that he really did move some soldiers and that the legend "grew" from that. Or that he asked for an island but was turned down, and that part was just edited out over time. Some of the other details may have simply been tall tales. We've traced that branch of the family back to the mid 1600's, and they've pretty much always been fishermen, whalers, and lobstermen....a group notorious for "exaggerating" the truth ("that trout was as big as a whale!") I can easily see a scenario where this story simply grew with each retelling.

My mother did a huge amount of digging on the legend back in the 1980's to try and prove it one way or the other and came up empty handed. Because of that, we're 95% sure that the story is NOT true as it's told today but, as I said, it still makes a great story! I'd love to know the history of the story and what it grew out of, but most of it is so old that it's hard to nail anything down definitively.


Oh, and I totally agree on the English thing. My paternal grandfather came from a small town in Iowa that was settled by German immigrants. The entire town spoke German, and the newspaper and local government were conducted in German, right up until WWI when anti-German sentiment convinced them to move to English. Even decades later though, when my grandfather moved out west in the 1930's, most personal conversations were still in German.

I love to point that out when conservatives start railing against Spanish speaking immigrants, demanding that they "learn English the way our ancestors did". In reality, most first generation immigrants DIDN'T. English speaking usually picked up in subsequent generations, when their children were sent off to school.

[backwoodsbob]

93. hmm..not much here

my great grandfather toured with Woodie Guthrie..my grandfather and then my uncle toured with Arlo.That's about it

[MattBaggins]

94. My family goes back to the founding of the Salem Colony

They were responsible for the founding of Charleston Massachusetts and several other townships. Had two ancestral relatives that were governors of Connecticut. Lucile Ball and John Wayne are some kind of 20th cousins a million times removed.

My ancestors helped in cheating the natives, persecuting and murdering Quakers as well as burning folks for witchcraft.

[madmom]

95. My Aunt Richard.......

Yep I have an aunt named Richard. When she was born, her parents had already had 3 girls and the father desperately wanted a son. The mom knowing how disappointed he would be when she learned of another daughter, told him they had a son. Back then the fathers had little or nothing to do with babies believed this and named the son Richard. My aunt was about 6 months old before the truth was learned, she still to this day (she is in her 80's) goes my the named of Aunt Dick, although legally she does have a female name.

[Nikia]

96. My paternal grandfather's family came from the border of Virginia and West Virginia

The two brothers were on opposite sides of the Civil War and torched each other's buildings and crops. Later they forgave each other and moved to Ohio. One of the brother's grandsons, my great grandfather became an accomplished private vocal teacher to some people who made it big in jazz and opera. He married my great grandmother who graduated with a Bachelor's in music in 2 years from a 4 year program. She paid for her college by teaching lessons and also composed several songs for graduation. Shortly before the ceremony, she had a "break down" and spent some time in a mental hospital. She went on to recover, had two children, played organ at her church, and taught both in public school and private lessons for a few decades.

[undeterred]

98. During the Great Depression grandma caught a pigeon on the windowsill

of the apartment and cooked it for dinner. I don't know if it actually happened but it made us shut up and eat.