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For Christmas I recieved a volume of my family's history that is being researched. I was flipping through it tonight and came across this:

In addition to the 13 or so members of the gillham family who fought in the Revolutionary War against England, the Hillis family also committed treason by fighting against the King. They sent four brothers to fight against the tyranny of the English crown. As only 1.9% of the Colonists supported the Revolution with fighting men, the fact that at least three, and for some of you, four sides of your family sent at least 18 men to the fray, grants to us permanent standing as descending from the strongest American Revolutionary Patriotic family on record.

also

Once I had a Scot tell me when I mispronounced the word Scotch-Irish, that "SCOTCH is something one drinks, SCOTS are people!" Therefore, I speak of our ancestors as SCOTS-Irish.

Heh, that's pretty cool. We had a book written about my ancestry, wasn't too good.

I got one of those weird certificates where they allegedly dig out information about your family name. Apparently my ancestors are bloodthirsty vikings that loved to plunder villages and attack ships and stuff, and they all had fiery red beards. I don't exactly buy it, but sounds funny

I remain sceptical about those sorts of things, probably with good reason, my mother's side of the family tried to dig up records etc at one point but found sinister things which they didnt really want to know about, and stopped. Oo-er...

Dang that's cool. My dad's side of the family was in the Revolutionary War and he sighned me up to be a "Son of the Revolution" or something like that.



That's strange, a Mexican who is a son of the American Revolution...

The_Lumberjack wrote:I remain sceptical about those sorts of things, probably with good reason, my mother's side of the family tried to dig up records etc at one point but found sinister things which they didnt really want to know about, and stopped. Oo-er...

My now desceased uncle was doing some family history research and stopped, as well.
My thoughts are either insanity, incest, or knowing him, mixed race drove him to abandon it.
All three of those combined aren't really out of the question, either.

My mom's folk seem to have been a group of fishermen living around the town of Huandacareo, next to Lake Cuitzeo in Michoacan, Mexico. My dad's side is a little murky in history, but they hail from the southern suburbs of Krakow, Poland. I think my great-grandfather fought for Austria-Hungary in WW1, but I'm not sure.

Frank Hipper wrote:My now desceased uncle was doing some family history research and stopped, as well.
My thoughts are either insanity, incest, or knowing him, mixed race drove him to abandon it.
All three of those combined aren't really out of the question, either.

Mabye he found out that he had some funny looking ancestors from a small new england town called issenmouth...

The_Lumberjack wrote:... my mother's side of the family tried to dig up records etc at one point but found sinister things which they didnt really want to know about, and stopped. Oo-er...

Spoilsports.

PS: As far as I can gather, my family basically drank & shagged their way across the British Empire, before finding their way to Australia by various routes.

My mom started putting together a genealogy report for my dad for his family a few years back. She's still working on it. The family tree, printed out, last I knew was horizontall ~150 pages, 25+ pages vertical.

~ver

My relatives, with the exception of a Norweigan or Irishman here and there, are all from North Shields, England. Apart from my parents, brother and I, they still all live there or five minutes down the road in Newcastle. Yeah, we certainly get around, us Geordies.

My relatives were Neapolitan villagers, although I suppose I could imagine that they were rich and powerful nobility before the Vespers, though I doubt it.

Piecing together my sordid family history was like something out of a Hardy Boys mystery and the final finished puzzle was like something out of a paperback novel. This is a long story so be warned, but i think it is very interesting and even a little touching in the end.

My dad's family history is a little unusual--my grandfather, John Kaminski, was born on a farm in Sasketchewan i believe, part of a small farm community. He had many sisters but no father, for his father, by all means a devoted family man, abruptly and mysteriously abandoned him shortly after his birth. No one knew what happened--or why--but some time later they would discover a death certificate, and learned that he apparently comitted suicide or died in an accident while working in a construction gang fixing the railroads. This would have been around the late 1930's. Even more strange is my grandfather himself though--his father was Polish and his mother was Ukraine. He should have been the whitest, fair-headedest boy in the tight-knit community. How unusual then that he was dark skinned and black-haired. All of this though would be thought nothing of until decades later when he had a son--my father.

My father, having a father himself who is half polish and half ukraine, and a mother that is half irish and half scotish, took after his dad--he had dark skin, long legs, high cheek bones and thick black hair that he grew past his shoulders. His friends said he was the spitting image of a Native Canadian--they used to call him "Kamanchee" instead of Kaminski. Oddly enough, no one in the family thought anything of it, though some wondered how these unusual physical characteristics occured. A funny story--my dad, about 20 years old, early 1970's. He's wearing his leather jacket and has his long black hair down, and through circumstance has to pass through a Native Reserve at night--a place notorious for crime, especially against "whites". Two huge native men step out of the woods and stop him. My father is shitting his pants. They say something to him in their native tongue and then say "pass on, my brother" and let him go--mistaking him for one of their own!

Decades later, he is married and has a son--me. My father still has people ask him from time to time if he is part native canadian, to which he can only reply "no". My mother suggests that, since my grandfather is now in his 80's and has little time left, a proper family history should be researched. We ourselves knew little to nothing of our many relatives and family histories and so my grandfathers collaboration would be paramount. Upon her questioning, some unusual information is gained--since the time of my fathers birth, my grandfather found out what happened to his father, or at least part of it. It turns out that my grandfather has a long-lost half-brother, whom he has never met.

Most unusual is his half-brothers birth-date--which occured after his fathers apparent suicide. Something is not right here. My mother and my grandfather then went pouring through town records, info available on the internet and family records and came to some intriguing information. My grandfather worte to his half-brother, asking him what happened to their father and how their family came to be--but oddly, the man refused to answer any questions about his father or their family's origins. There were secrets here that he knew and that he wasnt willing to let out. My grandfather tried writting to other family members but was similarly turned down.
Finally one day my grandfather recieved a letter from his half-brother, inviting him to come visit. By the time my grandfather got around to actually setting out we recieved word that his half-brother had died. It seems he wanted to spill the beans on his death bed but never got the chance.

Everything went back to the connection to the Native Canadians though. We dug through more information and came across even more clues. The truth was fairly obvious all along. My grandfather and his son both identically resemble Native Canadians, in every distinct and stereotypical way. My great-grandfathers mysterious leaving--he was a proud man of the old traditions--a family man. The small farm community in western Canada my grandfather grew up in, an area renowned for its indiginous population. Even my grandfathers name--John, a common name, but also one frequented by Native peoples.

We discovered and pieced together what really happened, and it seemed like something out of a soap opera or something:

My great-grandmother, for whatever reasons, had an affair with a native man. Although her husband was as decent a guy as the next, their marriage suffered through some tension and being a farmers housewife, she felt especially neglected. She has even contemplated leaving her husband but realizes that that would be unfair to him, especially in the tough times farmers faced. Eventually, through whatever circumstances, she meets a native man and falls in love with him. The relationship, hidden or not, was never meant to be however, as the conservative, highly religious farming communities of the 1930's--especially in those parts--would have never accepted an interracial relationship. Eventually she is pregnant--her husband thinks it is his, but she knows it is not. When the child--my grandfather--is born she cannot bear the guilt any longer and she feels she owes it to her husband to know the truth. She tells him.

The news devastates him--not only did she have an affair, she got pregnant, and not with any white farmer but with a native man. Being a proud man of the old tradition, he cannot take the humiliation--he tells her to never speak of the true father to anyone, to tell everyone it is his, to which of course she complies. Striken with anger and grief, he leaves in the night--he takes some essentials, some money and leaves her with the farm and enough to get by.

She is left with an illigitamate child and man that she loves but can never be with. I have no idea what happened to the native man, whether he hung around, if only to see his son; his name or existance do not exist in anyone record so we will never know just who we was.

Her husband on the other hand, wanted to start a new life. Immidiatly after he left his wife, he wandered the country in shame until he came upon a construction gang working on the railways. Through this motely crue he comes into contact with a man who offers him a fresh start--faking his death. The record show that he died in a construction accident while working on the railways and a death certificate find its way to his wife some time later. Meanwhile, he is alive and well, and sneaks his way across the border to Ohio, where he starts a new life--oddly enough using his same name--and starts a new family, eventually fathering one son of his own. My grandfathers half brother.

My grandfathers mother however, kept the secret of his father hidden. She told pieces of it to different people, and left clues here and there. What became of the native man, i have no idea, nor does anyone. I contemplated once, when we were discovering all of this, whether or not she was raped but quickly dismissed it--if she was raped, her husband would most definitly not have left her, and in fact they would have hunted down the man and lynched him. What broke his heart was that she loved him. In her diary, it was discovered she wrote of a mysterious man whom she loved deeply, and yet her husband had already left her and it obviously wasnt he. Even more strange is a man that we would later learn about through extremly sketchy details from a 91 year old friend of the family--about a man whose face or details she cant recall, but whom she remembers worked as a hired man on the farm after my great-grandmothers husband left. A man who worked from early in the morning until late at night to help support the family and keep them financially secure, almost as if he was one of the family himself. The farm was sold a few years later and he dissapeared. It was the native man, working from the shadows to ensure that his son and the woman he loved would be alright.

Kinda sad really. So thats my family history. I always thought about turning it into a paperback novel or something, christ.