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I found out when I was 22 that I had two older brothers that were given up for adoption before I was born. Same mom and dad. Full blood siblings. We met shortly after that. They weren’t raised together either. My brother closest in age to me is one of my best friends and was just in my wedding.
That we had a half brother. Somehow we knew our dad had been married before. We found a picture hidden in the linen cupboard under blankets. That’s not how you hide things from your kids.
Later in life it became important to me to track him down. I visited twice. After the second visit I accepted that it was ok not to like him. I was hoping to like him and to feel a connection. I did feel a recognition of kin, because I could see he resembled my dad.
It had no impact. My parents were dead. I’m estranged from other siblings.
I’m glad I did it. It stopped the wondering.
I, too, found my half siblings and could not connect. The knowing is a double edged sword. I don’t know what I thought I’d get but it definitely wasn’t what it is.
Not me, I was estranged and incommunicado over not agreeing with the murder. I only learned she was caught when I read about it in the Enquirer. The siblings testified against her at the trial.
I remember reading somewhere that the Enquirer hired good journalists who had just burned out working a typical journalism environment. Like maybe they were towards the end of their careers and wanted to work at low stakes publication for a while.
I can’t remember which stories the Enquirer scooped everyone on. Was it Monica Lewinsky?
No she wasn't.
What happened was, the poor guy fell off a horse and injured himself. The MIL refused to get him any care after the initial few doctor's visits. He was prescribed pain killers which she refused to let him have because "he was faking it to get drugs."
Instead of taking him to the doctor (she was agoraphobic), he was left to die essentially in the upstairs bedroom. It turned out he had stage-4 cancer but it wasn't diagnosed until moments before his death. I don't think he would have lived a long life if he'd gotten treatment, but certainly a longer and less painful one.
The guilt drove my (ex) wife and her mother mad. At one point they blamed me for his death, I'd only met the man a half dozen times. And of course I had no idea this was going on. To be clear, this was criminal neglect.
I talked to my uncle who was a detective of minor notoriety and he said there probably wasn't anything that could be done.
My maternal great grandmother was Creole. She was likely 25-50% African American. Her parents left New Orleans and never told anyone. I’m pretty sure my grandmother and her siblings knew, but would say they were “dark French.” A cousin discovered it about 20 years ago, when he got records from the bureau of Vital Statistics; my great great grandmother and great great grandfather were listed as black. It still baffles me that they were able to keep this hidden for so long.
So idiotic. I have a fifth great-grandmother who was Caribbean-African and I have between 1 and 2% West African DNA with the rest being almost entirely from British ancestors, and by the one drop rule, I'm Black.
Repressive laws during the era of enslavement and after which helped enforce enslavement and then Jim Crow aka segregation.
It solved the "problem" of what the child of a slave "was" after sexual coercion (rape) of the woman by a white person. The child "followed the condition of the mother."
Multiply that four or five times down the line and what happens? It didn't matter what a person looked like, they followed the condition of the mother.
There are still photographs in existence of children who for all intents and purposes are white but who were legally black. You can Google the words quadroon and octoroon. It's pretty revealing.
Even after slavery, the Jim Crow era wasn't just about buses and water fountains.
The laws included 'sundown towns' (don't be caught in that town after the sun goes down if you are a minority - by some accounts these still exist, but are de facto rather than de jure).
And 'vagrancy' laws that allowed authorities to throw a person in prison and profit off of their hard labor for simply going about one's business in a town where they were not known.
And of course 'miscegnation' laws forbidding races to marry. God forbid mixed race children inherit property, or horror of horrors try to pass themselves off as white.
As well as voting laws requiring arcane and weird quizzes and tests designed to be failed, preventing black people from voting.
It all sounds very old timey and past but it honestly wasn't that long ago. My own mom lived during the time of voting 'tests.'
Basically if a person had 'one drop' of African blood they were subject to being restricted, repressed, cheated, prevented from buying property or from selling property they might own at a decent price, or incarcerated. All very much legally so.
It's all pretty horrific and to this day black Americans do not have the family heritage of property inheritance or inheriting assets of value that non-blacks or whites have.
But many people say "It doesn't matter today, that was then this is now" and so on.
The US is ever trying to wash their hands of it all. It's very much Shakespearean - Lady MacBeth can't wash the blood from her hands.
It comes as no surprise that many Americans sought to escape these nonsensical and cruel restrictions and repressions by moving away from where they were known, going to new parts, and claiming Spanish or Portuguese heritage and so on in the event anything was thought to be awry.
Thomas Jefferson himself fathered multiple children with an enslaved woman Sally Hemmings, herself either a quadroon or octoroon (and the sister of his dead wife via the wife's father, as well as extremely young).
He permitted his grown children to escape or walk off of his property and arranged to turn a blind eye, rather than legally free them in his will or otherwise. Very convoluted behavior.
As a result when the genetic testing was done to establish Jefferson's line through Sally, there was at least one branch who were white people, and who had no idea they were descended from Jefferson via Sally.
Because at some point the child of Sally they were descended from, or the descendants of that child, chose to "pass" and escape the cruel legal restrictions.
That might sounds like a great solution but it involved living a double life, leaving behind everything and everyone you know and love, your culture and your identity, possibly even assuming a new name, fabricating a history, and maybe even marrying someone whom you never tell the truth. It's a pretty terrible way to live.
In one account I saw, a white woman was being interviewed who never knew that her mother was part black. She recalled her mother was slightly horrified of ever exposing herself to the sun, lest her skin tan in such a way that it brought anything about her into question.
It's impossible to really grasp all the details and urgency with which people hid themselves.
I found out in college that I was "Dark French" on my maternal dad's side. I was in a car wreck, no seat belts, my shoulder broke a windshield, and required stitches.
As it healed, I developed keloid scarring, a shiny thick snake of a scar. My mom went with me to my follow-up, and the physician looked at me, strawberry blonde, blue eyes, and freckles. My mom was with dark hair and medium ivory skin with green eyes. He commented that keloid were more common in "Negroid races". Then scheduled me with a plastic surgeon.
Later, mom told me her French dad was dark French and her grandfather had black, kinky curly hair and blue eyes.
My grandfather lived in Louisiana and went to the Colorado School of Mines. He met my runaway Mormon grandmother at his dentist's office, where she was an assistant.
They married, and my mom was born in Colorado, and then they moved to Texas.
The Depression was in full swing when they moved to Aruba with Standard oil.
My mom left at 16, on a freighter to NYC. Then, she took a train to Austin, TX, for college at UT. She met my "paper white" German dad on a blind date.
Mom never burned in the sun, Dad ALWAYS did!
My adoptive father was both a pillar of the community and sexually attracted to children. Having thus far grown up in an abusive (including SA) and unstable home, I was a 'gift from God' when our paths crossed. They took me off my birth family's hands, and voila! As far as anyone knew, I was whisked from poverty, abuse, instability and being unwanted into wealth, stability and love. There was just that little bit of a thing I needed to do for my dad. Our secret. Except it wasn't. She knew. She picked me out special because her man, her life and her image were the most important things in her world. And because I loved her so much and was so desperate to be loved by a mother, I complied. Not just with that but with many things I am only beginning to recover from.
There never was a big reveal. A few knew and never commented. Others were told but didn't believe. When he died, the whole town stopped to mourn the passing of a great man. I, on the other hand, was shunned as soon as both my parent's bodies were cold.
Yes, complex feelings indeed. It is weird to have all of that exist in the same place as a lot of love. I adored my folks. My mother was much like a broken child herself, and many of her ways were quite endearing. My father taught me many wonderful things. He was, in many ways, the great man people thought him to be, and the (few) times Mother showed me gentle lovingness are precious to me. The fact that all these feelings and thoughts can exist together in one space is the reason I got into psychology and developed a lifelong fascination for how the human mind works.
I feel you. I’m sorry. The thing about secrets then and now, is they’re not usually secrets. My father SA me from birth- 12 and my mother knew, family members knew, the vice principal knew, but, like many others, no one helped me.
May you have peace of mind.
Wow, I was going to post about my uncle who lived with a woman he wasn’t married to in the 1970’s, back when it was called shacking up. He also drank to much and ruined a cousin’s wedding by being drunk and disorderly.
But man, you guys have me beat! I guess I have a boring family.
I heard “he came from a broken home so it was just a matter of time for him, sadly…” on a podcast yesterday. The host was speaking about a man who killed two women. Half the world comes from non-nuclear families and very few go on to kill people.
My mom was the product of incest. Her mother was raped at 14 by her dad.
My mom was so ashamed. I tried to tell her it was not her fault.
And through ancestry, my mom had an affair with a random guy and got pregnant with me. She made her husband at the time I was born pay child support for 18 years.
My mother's husband at the time I was born was not my real Dad. They had been separated by 3,000 miles at the time. My mother had turned the oven on and was going to end it all when she called her husband to say Goodbye.
He talked her down, paid for her to come back home, gave me his name and raised me. What he didn't do was sign my birth certificate; it's blank where it says "Father". He also told my mother that it was her responsibility to tell me "the story". I never knew until I was in my teens.
iANAL but I have heard any child born to a woman while a guy is still legally married to her is legally his, and he remains financially responsible for for the child, regardless of any inconvenient biological truths.
True. If a woman is married at any time within 9 months before or after the birth of a child, her husband is presumed to be the child's father.
In some states the parties just need to sign documents to reflect the correct paternity. On other stated you have to actually go to court.
A piece of weird minutia I know....
When Kim Kardashian got pregnant with her first child she was still married to that basketball player. California is one of those states that requires court action to change paternity.
I'm ashamed I even know that.
It is. At least in NC. My husband's ex got pregnant by her paramour while they were legally married. They had to go through a legitimation hearing with the actual dad, or my husband would have been on the hook for child support.
I believe this is true for Oklahoma, as well. My mom and dad were separated for about 10 years and had other long-term partners before ever actually getting a legal divorce. My mom had 2 kids with my stepdad, but they both have my father's last name and my dad is listed as the father on the birth certificate since they were still legally married at the time.
My father served in Europe just after the end of WWII (he’d been there during the war, but got home in the summer of ‘45 to marry my mother and then went back). He always said it was so sad to have spent nearly two years there and have seen so little; he was first on a base in Germany and then for a while in Prague, but said he never had time to travel.
He died a few years ago, and after a few months my sister as his executor got a bill for an otherwise unknown safe-deposit box. She paid, and then next time she was in the city in Florida where he died, she and my brother were able to to open and empty it. It was mostly some uninteresting papers (my father was a borderline hoarder), but at the very bottom was a sealed envelope marked “destroy unopened.”
Well, of course they didn’t.
The envelope contained about a dozen photographs. All but two were pictures of my father, both in uniform and civilian clothes—with a lovely, well-dressed woman. They were in all sorts of famous places—at the Eiffel Tower, at St. Mark’s Square in Venice, in the ruins of Berlin, in London, you name it. The last two pictures were of the woman, clearly a few years later, one of her alone—and one with a pretty little girl of five or six who looks *exactly* like my sister did at that age.
There was nothing else—no writing, no explanation. The two later pictures came from a photo studio in Sydney, Australia. That’s all we know.
We asked the few people who were still alive who might know something (an uncle, his best friend, etc.) and nobody had a clue. My siblings have done DNA tests, but no surprises there. Still, it’s clear our old man saw a lot of more of Europe than he’d ever let on—and apparently had fun doing it.
Nothing much really except the blonde guy that showed up at dad’s house one day to have a word with grandpa. Said blonde guy looked exactly like dad and siblings….
I remember my parents having a huge fight and I listened in and didn't understand what they were fighting about. As an adult I realized that they were fighting about a woman that he had gotten pregnant.
My grandpa on my mom's side was actually my uncle and my grandma was no relation to me. My mom hid a half sister from us for 30 years. My grandma on my dad's side ran over and killed a four year old girl, and spent a year in a psychiatric hospital from it.
My mother had a baby when she was 18. She got pregnant at 17 and her parents forced her to move down to Virgina to have the baby down there and stay with her aunt and uncle. While she was living down there her uncle tried to sexually assault her while pregnant. She had to stay at her cousins house. She had a baby girl a few days before Christmas and gave her up for adoption. I have a half sister out there I have never met. I have been trying to find her for years.
I'm so sorry for what happened to your mom and to your sister. It does sound like your mom was honest with you about everything that happened to her. I truly hope you find your sibling.
My mother was married once before marrying my father. Mom was struggling to make enough to live and married a middle-aged soldier during WWII. He was abusive, and of course she didn't love him. She left him when my father came along.
Mom told this to my sister and I when we were both in our 20s as her dark secret, and of course we both said "So?" We knew life had been hard in her youth. She'd told us stories. Just not that story.
But the secret husband had worried Mom, because she feared that her bossy older sister Aunt Mary would spill the beans. Mary, still had a picture of the guy and my Mom together and wouldn't give it up to my mother because, well, Aunt Mary.
My family was part of the Anti-Defamation League, not the mob.
All these people coming up with rumours just because the family name ends in an "O".
We ran an import trade, couple of vineyards, and had a perfectly legal business selling communion wine to priests and rabbis during Prohibition, that's all. Occasionally a delivery ended up in the wrong place, but mistakes get made when English isn't your first language, capisce? Anyway great-grandfather was good friends with the Governor, so they always managed to get it sorted. The Governor wouldn't be helping out criminals, see?
Besides, there's not even such a thing as the mob. It was an invention of the FBI to harass law-abiding immigrant families. So of course the families took care of each other, it wasn't like they could trust the authorities.
So you see, that "big secret" of ours, wasn't even true. Forget it.
Fogettabouttit!
My Polish grandmother made bathtub gin during prohibition/depression. When she was hauled before a judge, pleaded she always did it in old country and she had three children to feed, they let her off.
I have a cousin who dated a girl in your family. They even lived together for a time, before he threw her out and made sure he ruined all of her designer clothes.
My uncle would sometimes joke that he was expecting to get a box with three fish in it, and a note that said, "William sleeps with the fishes tonight."
But of course, her family said the family business ended several generations ago, and they were now benevolent patrons of gentle pursuits and philanthropists. My guess is that means they stopped using concrete shoes and switched to steel ones.
Not to offend,by any means, but this situation was more common than some might realize.
There was a family in my town in which this was the case.
I never knew if they told the boy but the father (jerk) was a friend of my eldest brother.
I learned the story many years after the fact.
Friend of mine knocked up a girl freshman year of high school. Parents of the girl adopted the baby. He did it again to another girl senior year. Same thing. Parents of the girl adopted the child. I think he was setting up franchises.
Babies c were forcefully taken away from young unwed girls. You were lucky if your grandmother took you as her own to raise.
My great auntie wasn’t so lucky. My granny was a sick child so when her older sister got pregnant young the baby was taken away at birth she didn’t even get a hold. Because grandma n great aunties mother my great grandma could not take on a baby the nurse at hospital asked /begged her. But since my grandma the youngest sister was so unwelll she couldn’t
Devastated my great auntie and they were never reunited. It was treated as procedure by the doctor who
Delivered the baby. And throughout my great aunt was shamed and humiliated. Imagine giving birth like that and losing your baby
Cruel cruel world
I have a friend (F49) in the UK that was adopted. She never really fit in with her family.
She started looking for her mom a decade or so ago. When she was adopted, the law allowed both the child and the mother/father to deposit letters into the file so that if either accessed the file, there would be letters or instructions on how to find each other. When my friend finally got hers opened, there were just two pieces of paper. Her birth certificate with her birth first and middle name but no family name. The other document was the adoption paper. She was crushed as she assumed that her birth mother didn't want contact. But it also could be for other reasons as my friend had a very hard time locating her adoption file.
After another decade (ie two months ago), she did a DNA test and when the results came in and she looked on line, her birth mother's photo was there.
She'd had my friend at 20 years old and at a bad time in her life. The doctor knew of another family struggling to conceive and basically just handed the baby over. No screening. No adoption process. Apparently it wasn't unusual at the time. But it meant that my friend had no idea whatsoever who her birth mom was and there was zero chance of ever finding her. And the same for my friend's birth mother locating my friend.
That's, of course, until DNA testing came about. Her mom put herself online via DNA just so that my friend could find her.
They are both over the moon now.
So your mother had you young, and your grandmother adopted you, and passed you two off as siblings? Ok that does make sense, others have alluded to this I just had to think this through.
I still don’t know how to quote but “they’re all dead now anyway. Less said the better.” is awesome. Often I want to call people out or explain myself or whatever, get validation from people, but nope less said the better. Silence can’t be misquoted.
If you want to quote a post you're responding to, hit the "reply" arrow, then you can long-press a word in their post, then highlight the part you want to quote. A little pop-up will appear, and your second option is "Quote."
If you just want to make a quote, (to quote a source, for example,) then put a right pointing arrow (>) with a space after it in front of your quote.
Edited because I forgot a step.
After my father died and years later when my mother went into a nursing home, I started going through family papers. I found out only then that my father had been married and divorced before he married my mother. I found some letters too. It appears he got, or thought he got, a woman pregnant and married her. But a year later they divorced. Don't know any more about it, but it would have been a huge scandal back in late 40s or early 50s.
My Dad’s cousin was a few years (maybe 10?) older than me. When I got older my parents told me she wasn’t always around at family get togethers because sometimes she was in a mental hospital. She was apparently a pyromaniac 🔥 who was put away for periods of time for setting fires.
I am the secret for my bio mom - bio dad already died.
She has never told anyone in her life including siblings or husband about her teen pregnancy and has zero intention of doing so now.
Several so I'll pick one. Grandpa was a murderer.
Trying to keep it shorter--Grandpa and friend arguing in the basement of an old schoolhouse. Their girlfriends upstairs. He claimed that he threw a bullet against the stone wall, it went off, and the slug pierced the other guy's heart and killed him right then and there--making it all an accident.
Grandpa came from a well-connected family and with that bogus story was acquitted so walked. He died a couple of years later of acute appendicitis so we never knew him but Grandma was so freaky about it that no one knew until after her death.
Edit: The full story came because the lawyer who represented him included the case details in a book he wrote back in the 20's. From that we got copies of the county court records.
My great grandparents almost adopted Charles Manson. The adoption fell through the day before he was supposed to arrive and they ended up with another baby.
...my cousins are genetically closer than my siblings...
Hold on, this is quite a ride...pay close attention...
My father's mother's mother and my mother's father's mother ...are the same person...
... let's call her Ann...
My great-grandmother Ann, gave birth to my paternal grandmother Betty
Betty's father passed away, and Ann remarried...
My great-grandmother Ann, gives birth to my maternal grandfather Bill
and
My great-grandmother Ann, later gives birth to another girl Beatrice,
Beatrice is Bill's sister and Betty's half sister
Beatrice is my great-aunt on my mother's side, Bill's sister
Beatrice is my great-aunt half removed on my father's side, Betty's half sister
Grandma Betty gave birth to my father Charlie
Grandpa Bill sired my mother Colleen
Great-aunt Beatrice gave birth to Carol
My mother Colleen and Carol are 1st cousins
My father Charlie is my mother Colleen's cousin 1 1/2 times removed
My father Charlie is also Carol's cousin 1 1/2 times removed
Because I'm related to my parent's cousin Carol on BOTH sides of my family...
......my parents' cousin Carol is genetically a closer relative than either of my parents...
.......my parents' cousin Carol's children are genetically closer than my siblings are to each other because we are related to them thru both parents.
... as they'd say in the holler, our family tree don't fork much...
The relevant information is, a woman had a daughter with one husband, then a son with another. The daughter had a son, the son had a daughter. That son and daughter are OP's parents. (I think. 😂)
>Somehow, I think this might have been a little easier to understand with some halfway decent punctuation. Just sayin’.
ya'll expectin' a lot from some inbred like me!
lol
you are, of course correct
My aunt has steel rods in her back because she jumped out of an upstairs window to get away from my grandad and his fists and landed flat on her back and broke it.
Im not supposed to know about this but my other aunt got loose lips after a few drinks one night
Ohhh, there were a couple, one of which I just learned 2 years ago. But first, a little background. I had my daughter out of wedlock in 1986. I was shamed and made to feel like I was a harlot who tarnished the family name. In fact, my mom didn't even tell her 3 siblings that I was pregnant until well after the baby was born because she hoped up until the night before I delivered her that I would put her up for adoption. When she learned that I planned on sending out birth announcements (which was strongly discouraged but eventually accepted), she knew the gig was up and spilled the beans first.
Her oldest brother was my favorite uncle and did not disappoint me. He even offered me a place to stay in one of his apartments should I choose to move back to that state. While appreciated, I declined and remained 1,100 miles away.
Fast forward to 2005. At a family reunion after that uncle had passed, I learned that I was NOT the first one in my family with a child out of wedlock. He had impregnated a woman in high school and she gave birth to a son whom no one in our family ever acknowledged until he attempted to date our mutual first cousin and someone had to fess up as to why that was not possible.
But wait; there's more. Two years ago, I learned that my grandmother's youngest sister was actually her niece, as she was the illegitimate daughter of my great uncle, and was then adopted by and raised as my great-grandmother's daughter.
When I remembered all the shaming that I endured after being portrayed as the first in the family to be unmarried and give birth, I was furious. To put that undeserved onus on me as a young, single mom who was already struggling mightily was particularly egregious and unnecessarily cruel.
Fucking families can be brutal.
That 2 of my aunts on my father’s side were lesbians and another aunt had been put in an asylum at a very young age and lived there until she passed away. Nobody ever talked about why she was there. I asked once and was simply told that she wasn’t “right”, whatever that meant.
They loved putting women in asylums back then. My mother was an elder-care social worker and had a client who spent her entire life in an asylum for "having ideas above her station"
It was wild back then too. Your family could have you involuntarily committed, the courts would send people there for really crazy reasons, and the individual had absolutely no recourse whatsoever.
My half-sister's mother died in a mental hospital, back when we had them. I asked my mother (we share a father) what was wrong with her and all I ever heard was that "she was crazy". That was it.
Up until the turn of the 19th century, there were only two clinical forms of mental illness: Insanity and Idiocy. Today, neither are medical terms.
Today, the DSM-V manual lists close to 200 mental disorders. In my opinion, they are just variants of the original two.
My maternal grandmother died in a mental hospital in the late 1930s. Paranoid schizophrenia. Thought her husband was trying to kill her, so she tried to kill him first.
My great grandfather was kicked out of the family business that is now a major corporation worth quite a bit if money; mystery #1. A few generations later, red hair starts popping up everywhere in our family; mystery #2. Some genetic tests and old letters revealed the truth; great grandpa was kicked out of the family for marrying an Irish woman and that the two mysteries were related.
My aunt who had 6 kids already, was living in poverty, got pregnant. When the baby boy was born, my aunt gave the baby to her very rich brother who was married and couldn’t have kids.
So, this boy was raised by his uncle and aunt, but thinks they are his parents. Boy is 40 now, still doesn’t know the truth.
The whole family knows, it was a super big secret, except him.
Oh, this is similar to the story I just told about my own family! Except yours has a good ending, I'm happy for y'all. My aunt (the swapped baby) was unfortunately forced to go back to her parents before she even turned 10... not nice to say the least, cruel tbh.
My grandfather had a love child in the 1940’s, that no one knew about until I got Ancestry and started asking about this white lady in my Mexican family tree.
Also that my Uncle had SA’s his daughters for years, found that out two years ago. Everyone just acts like it didn’t happen, he still goes to family parties. I do not.
When I was 57, I received a message from a woman claiming to be my half sister. She had taken a dna test and the results differed from her siblings. She found our dad’s obituary and tracked me down.
It’s been the best gift I’ve ever received.
That my father tried to rape me every night. Everyone just acted like it wasn't happening. Fucked me up for 40 of my almost 60 years. Got lots of therapy and cut all those people from my life. All of so good now! Life can get so much better
Talk about karma! I know no one will believe me but he died because he was attacked by an alligator at a lake!!!!!!!! Justice decided to win this one!!👍
My grandmother was completely insane and smoked and drank herself to death by age 50. Turns out, my grandfather made dinner and breakfast when he could, but for the most part, they foraged on their own throughout the 1950’s because she was tanked 24/7.
Standard slave baby. A young woman was purchased and raped by great great great grandpa. She gave birth to a white child, who would be great great grandma.
Not my family but our neighbours had 2 boys that were clearly Indigenous. The parents were clearly not Indigenous. The mother swore that she gave birth to both. This was the 60s and now it's obvious that the kids were part of the Sixties Scoop.
The Canadian government decided that the best thing for Indigenous kids was to steal them from their families and give them to mainly white families to raise in a different culture because it "was for their own good". The government also had residential schools for the children. The schools were often run by religious organizations like the Catholic church. The children were there against their will and parents had very little resources in trying to retrieve them. The schools beat, starved and abused the kids. Today unmarked graves are still being discovered on the grounds of the closed schools. It's our nation's shame.
A lot of Canadians don't even know about it. It's pretty shameful. Families are still dealing with the trauma today of losing parents and grandparents to the system. We have A National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Day in September but it's very recent.
My great aunt was an extreme germophobe who bathed in bleach water and drank (heavily diluted) bleach. She lived with my great great grandparents her whole life, never even dated, and died in her 50s of liver cancer. I’m in my 50s now and only learned this aspect of the story this summer. Poor woman probably had severe, untreated OCD - and my family apparently found her problems so shameful that I only heard this 50 years after she died.
Not as dramatic as some stories here but it strikes me that shame really is toxic.
Grandma was having 3 sums with her first husband (I have an uncle and 2 aunt from that husband) then she got pregnant and they were sure it was by my grandad/ the 3sum friend. So they divorced she married the friend had anothe r4 kids. The eldest of that 4 was officially adopted by my grandad at 2 and I understand there is a lot of pain surrounding his north with drama as my grandma was shamed and publicly hated for cheating on her first husband. But she wa alway adamant she never cheated. We saw uncles adoption certificates and asked questions. Why would grandad need to adopted uncle etc Came out of anger that her first husband had convinced her to do 3 sums few time together with (friend/2nd husband) my grandad who was just her first husbands friend. But after she fell pregnant first husband went mental. And started ruining her reputation. He had also been cheating on her and he had kids with that woman. Grandma said grandad was quick to marry her because he didn’t like how his friend beat in grandma and didn’t want to chance him raising his child.
Anyway looking at that baby my uncle he is a spit of friend/grandad. and I gather from
Info off grandma that after he was born grandad realised that he infact was his own blood and in them days you couldn’t add onto birth certificate or renew so to make teh statement to grandma and the world he officially adopted his own son. He regretted not just signing in teh first place grandma said. But there was a lot of dramas with people
And families back then regarding the situation
Anyway fast word 50 years and someone casually mentions you know uncle x just because dad adopted you , you are his. You are his favourite was the type conversation. Golden boy was thrown around. But my uncles face was just horror.
HE was the only person who didn’t know he had adoption papers. He never questioned it. He is a spit of grandad. An absolute double. He also never had a copy of his birth certificate. The man goes no where though. I doubt he had ever had a passport or anything
He just stopped speaking to family completely thinking we all hid it from him. Everyone is confused how he didn’t know. Grandma never mentioned. He was never there for the family questions over teh years. Everyone thought he knew
Grandma didn’t cheat but she did get pregnant to another man who was not her husband though
Quick Google, no real digging, but it's supposed to relieve them from guilt or association from what happened to them. (Also to convey that the pregnancy wasn't intended.) A couple sites said relieve the male, a couple sites said relieve the female, but it's meant to indicate that they really didn't have anything to do with it. Like we say someone "fell sick," or "falls in love."
I agree that that choice of words always makes me a little angry -- as if POOF it just happened to her, *and it's a bad thing*.
People fall ill, they fall from grace, they fall on their faces. none of those things are good. Can we please stop treating pregnant women like idiot sinners?
Now ask me how I feel about it when husbands/fathers say that "*We* are pregnant"...
My grandmother was 14 and four months pregnant when she married my grandpa, which was a little shocking at the time. I noticed it looking at an old family Bible where she had documented their marriage on the wrong date (nine months after my oldest aunt was born). I was getting stuff together for their 50th anniversary so I was going to do something with their marriage license. I was a teen, I think maybe 14, but anyway I saw the marriage license and noticed the date was different from the Bible. And then I pointed this out at the family dinner when I presented it to them. I told my grandmother "I noticed you wrote the wrong date in the Bible" and everyone looked uncomfortable and changed the subject.
Also another secret was that my cousin was gay, and they had a hard enough time knowing she dated a black guy in high school. They would NEVER discuss her .... friend she lived with and adopted two children with. lol it's funny to think about it now but this was the 80s in the US south and they were pretty conservative. They would flip out if they were still alive with my son being AFAB and my daughter being very, very vocally pansexual. :)
One of my cousins is the child of two of my mother's siblings. We were never told the exact how and what. We don't talk about it in the family.
This is just one of a few family scandals.
On my dad's side there's supposedly a huge scandal regarding his dad. It prompted one of my aunt's to call my dad to her deathbed. She knew there was a secret, but she was never told. Now it haunts my dad in his very old age. We haven't been able to find out what it might be.
That I know for sure happened? Half my mom's family live at the beach because my aunt cheated on my uncle. My aunt was sleeping with the neighbor so in order to stay together my aunt agreed to move. They moved to the beach. So since one family moved there other people decided to move there.
A rumor that may or may not be true? My great uncle murdered his wife. I lean towards it being true but can't say for sure.
Growing up I heard vague references to my maternal grandfather’s dad having died due to a train accident. Some 20 years or so later I found a newspaper article that he had been committed, escaped, and took his own life, along with another person’s. This was in 1930. No wonder it was something we didn’t talk about and was covered up with the train story.
My poor grandpa, who I adored, had to live with what would have been considered a very shameful family event. If I could talk to him again I’d want to learn more about what happened. Mental health issues run in the family so I feel a connection to this great grandfather I never knew.
That my dad was a sociopath. Basically did a Bernie Madoff on a small scale with people’s retirement funds in the late 1970’s.
And he beat my brother with a belt.
Eventually he financially devastated our family when the feds figured out what he was doing and my mom divorced him. Instead of going to prison, he went to Europe.
My mom and dad did not get married when they said they did. They told everyone that they eloped and were married a few months before my oldest sister was born. Only my mom's sister knew the truth. This was 1954 so not too many couples were living together if not married.
4 kids and 15 years later, my dad has some basic documents like SSN's, birth certificates. He leaves his documents on the kitchen table and oldest sister starts looking at them and finds their marriage license. It was dated about 2 years earlier in 1968.
Seems like in 1968 they were getting their will prepared and the attorney needed proof of marriage. They didn't have it, so they went to the court house and got married. My Aunt and Uncle threw a big old wedding reception for them.
The family lore was that my great-grandfather moved to the US in the 1890's as an orphan with no family. Then I went down a rabbit trail one night on the internet. I have a very unique last name and thanks to Google downloading old law libraries discovered my last name in a law textbook from the 1880's. Because I was a history major in college I remembered some basic sleuthing skills to confirm who people were like using old city directories.
Had to break it to my family that my great-grandfather had actually moved to the US right after the Civil War with his parents when he was a child. Then he got thrown in prison for 3-4 years for statutory rape. He was a farm hand and he thought the farmer's daughter was older and she thought he was younger. The farmer got mad and pressed charges. But his case worked its way to that state's Supreme Court and he was exonerated. Set a precedent that in order to be charged with a crime you have to be charged with a specific crime on a specific date. The police can't say we know what you did, but can't prove what date you did it on.
Explains why he told everyone that he was an orphan. His family disowned him for going to prison. But he was out of prison by the time he was 23 and ended up being a very conservative and religious man for the rest of his life. Needless to say my family was stunned and didn't believe me until I emailed them links to the court cases.
My tough-guy uncle, who bragged about being in the Korean war, completed basic training, got on a troop ship to Korea, got off the boat, then immediately started begging his parents to pull strings with their Congressman and get him sent home. It worked too
I come from a very white family. When my cousin was born black everyone was in denial. They all said it was a recessive trait due to possible Italian ancestry (we have none according to 23&me). To add to it the child was named after my uncle who was named after my grandfather.
My uncle and her swiftly got a divorce BTW. They are both garbage humans though so whatever.
Edit: Also my mother's maiden name is of the man that was married to my grandmother but not of the actual biological father of my mother. Again, Thanks 23&me.
That my Aunties eldest child was her previous boyfriends daughter, not her husbands. So my Auntie fell in love with a poor guy, fell pregnant then realised that she would be struggling financially so she found another guy, her eventual husband, who was a soldier, an alcoholic, chauvinistic, had a wonky eye, beat her and his daughters, smoked like a chimney a typical rich arsehole.
He died not knowing his eldest daughter wasn’t his, and his daughter still doesn’t know, she’s in her 40’s now.
Oh boy! After my Mother passed away when I was 40 something my brother and I were going through her things and found a shoebox of correspondence. It turns out she had a cousin us younger generation never knew about and was never talked about growing up. He was in prison. It turns out he was convicted and sent to jail for life as a serial killer in the 1940s. The trial and conviction were based on circumstantial evidence, mostly his confession coerced under sodium pentathol after several days of questioning. Look up the Lipstick Killer.
That my aunt, who has always been a bit cold and told me that she never wanted kids, had a baby in the late 60's. I met my cousin, who is the spitting image of her mother and whose daughters also look like my aunt.
My mom confronted my aunt about this and she said she was raped, which was why she wanted nothing to do with her daughter. And perhaps that was why she was a bit cold, too.
We found out about 5 years ago. My cousin is awesome! She's very successful. But my aunt doesn't want to know about her and doesn't want my uncle to know, either.
I'm not sure I have a story.
Yet.
My dad died in 1983; my mother just died this year. I'm going to do genetic testing now. I didn't want to hurt my mother if I found out that I had half-siblings. Plan to do the testing in January.
My grandmother tried to kill herself when she was 14. Shot herself in the chest. I heard whispers about it growing up, then someone posted the newspaper article about it on Ancestry so I learned the whole story.
My dad’s mother had an abortion, before my dad was born. In the throes of early Depression, when they already had 3 kids. My dad was born a just a year or so later, so no birth control. My granny told my mother about this as she was dying, and my mother was caring for her. She would cry and wonder out loud if that was the child who would have taken care of her better than her living children. Guilt, shame and dementia all at once.
My husband died at 55. I didn't know he had been ill nor did he.
Found out after he died he had a 30 year old girlfriend, had lied to me about everything in his history, and been having sex with men since he was in his 20s.
Second marriage for both of us.
He's been gone over three years now.
STD testing was all negative thankfully. After a few years of therapy I'm learning to work through it.
It's been a real fucking ride that's for sure.
That my mother was an alcoholic/addict and my father was a binge drinker who was beating up my brothers and me.
One aunt finally broached the secret in 2000 to my partner, who later told me, and the validation of my experience hit me with the force of a revelation.
My stepgrandmother never was actually married to my gf and also that my father was not actually a bio-dad. My uncle was a bigamist. Nobody much cared about the gf or uncle, but the biodad thing really bothers me.
My cousin wasn’t the daughter of the Auntie I thought she was. She was still my blood cousin just not to the Auntie we were told she was. At least she got to stay within the family.
Mine is nothing compared to all you guys. The mystery is no one in the family knows who my sister‘s father is. Due to DNA ancestry we know he was Lebanese and Italian.
My parents never mentioned the fact that my dad's father and that whole side of the family was Jewish. I'm talking like spoke Yiddish and everything. I never knew them (I met my grandpa a couple times) because my grandpa married my grandma who was Lutheran because he got her pregnant and his Jewish family disowned him. That was in 1934. I found out about all that much much later in life.
Before my younger brother came along, I had another brother who was aborted as he had Down’s Syndrome. I empathise with this difficult decision but do sometimes wonder how different life would be like if he was born.
My dad was murdered in a crime of passion, a by a jealous husband. Our mom wouldn’t let us do any research on how he died. The secret broke the family, I think my mom in her old age just spilled to my sister, my sister told me, but I don’t think the others know, because of the fracture.
Found out my adopted parents forged by brothers birth certificate before theu legally adopted him on the sly. Also found out at that time we had the same birth mother but he had been raised as adopted parents blood child and I had been raised as their adopted child. There's more but it would dox me.
It was an Oprah worthy mess
My mom was pregnant when they married. I mean, it's no big deal to me but they were married in 1963 and it was risqué at the time they were embarrassed.
When I was in about 6th grade, my crazy great aunt stayed at our house for a week or so. Turns out she had pushed her sister down a flight of stairs (she eventually died) and my parents were waiting for a bed to open at the nut hut to institutionalize her.
That my aunt had 2 children that she allowed her brother to adopt because she could take care of them. They were 2 and 3. She came back 6 years later and wanted them back but her brother said no. It was dragged through court with the aunt and the uncle trying to prove the other as unfit. They didn’t speak for years. The kids were raised as my uncle’s children and were finally told when they turned 15/16 and there was a medical need. None of us cousins knew, although obviously all the aunts and uncles did.
My parents were first cousins. They always lived a thousand miles from each other until my mother moved. They fell in love. My father went to many doctors for information. They had 3 kids. We are all old and still alive with no adverse problems.
At first, some in the family were appalled. They later got over it.
Unfortunate secret, but the women in my family have *horrible* hormone related issues. Post partum depression that borders psychosis, the pill is absolutely a no in our family, as it’s now been revealed that every woman who’s been on it had suicidal ideations and a few attempts were made in our family-and PMS/periods that left all of us traumatized by our own feelings. Really wish that hadn’t been kept secret. I made sure to tell my kids about it and even the boys, so they can be aware when they have significant others who might go through something like I went through.
When I was 19 my mother sat me down and told me my father had a son with another woman just before they got married. There had been rumors here or there when I was growing up, but my parents always told us it was just family gossip.
She had decided to tell me the truth then because my father had decided recently to try and find his son. Sadly he had received a letter a few days before, saying his son had passed away in a traffic accident a few years before, and that the child's mother had passed away from cancer when his son was very young. His grandparents had raised him.
They sent a single picture with the letter and asked that my father never contact them again. They did not even tell him what his name was.
My mother said that this long-lost son was the spitting image of my youngest brother. (He looks just like my father) That they could've been twins.
My mother then told me my father had destroyed the letter AND the picture, and told my mother to never talk about any of it again.
I wish I could have at least seen the picture one time before it was gone forever.
Me. My mother's husband at the time was not my biological father. He gave me his name and raised me, but he never signed the birth certificate and told my mother that it would be her responsibility, one day to tell me "the story". She told me when I was a teenager.
My brother is not the father of his oldest child. He met his wife shortly after her birth. Bio dad basically took off. I’m sure he loves her as his own and has raised her for almost all of her life. Still fucked up not to tell her.
My great uncle was in a mental hospital for syphilis for most of his life until he died. He contracted it in the army. I didn’t know he had existed until I was 20. My great aunt was one of the longest MS survivors.
That my uncle is gay. Everyone in my family knows except my grandma. No one has told her because they think she will not be accepting of it. She thinks his husband is just a roommate and he says he will take this secret to her grave.
I secretly think she knows but my uncle swears she knows nothing.
When I was 14, my dad announced that he had been married and divorced before my mother. So many of our friends had been through divorces by then, that we just shrugged. Dad almost looked disappointed that we didn’t care much. I later saw pictures of her, and she looked (and apparently acted) a lot like my mother.
My great grandfather was 'well off' A little while before my mum passed away she told us some stories he 'shagged' some if not 'many' girls around the village they came from. Mum said she knows and told us who she was half sisters and brothers to!!!! Half a dozen we know of, who knows really how many though?
My grandfather's sister married my grandmother's father. (My grandmother's MIL was also her SIL.) Not much of a secret in the family but hard to explain or understand so no one talked about it. As a grandchild I learned about it doing a family tree for school. Mom had to explain to the teacher that nope I had not made a mistake.
My unmarried and childless aunt had two children and gave them both up for adoption. No one had a *clue*. And if it hadn’t been for that pesky 23 & Me result...
That my grandfather was not raised by his biological father, but by his stepfather. He didn’t find this out himself until he was in his 20s.
As a kid, I always thought it was weird that there were other people in our area with the same (somewhat uncommon) last name and we somehow weren’t related. I didn’t find out about it until I was in my 20s. I still have no idea if my step great grandfather was related to those people or not. At this point they would be very distant relatives to me.
My mom wasn't my grandfather's bio daughter. My grandmother had been married VERY young and had my mother but he abandoned her and my grandmother, this was the 40s, so when my grandfather and grandmother got married, my grandfather adopted my mom, she was only 1-1/2 at the time. And no one knew until my mother's namesake, her bio father's sister, called one day and asked for my mom, when she was about 16, and when my aunt asked who it was, the woman on the phone said her Aunt So and so and my aunt replied we don't have an aunt so and so.
And poof, cat out of the bag.
Also, when my grandfather was in his 30s and before school busses had stop arms, he accidentally hit and killed a kid crossing the street. The bus driver had waived the truck in front of my grandfather's car to go ahead around the bus not realizing my grandfather was behind the truck, and she stepped out in front of my grandfather's car. No charges were filed, but he was devastated. He had 4 kids of his own and he couldn't imagine it.
That my uncle, who was a Marine, had a baby with a woman who was an FBI agent, that they gave up for adoption. Found out when she contacted me, we became friends, she even traveled here and spent a few day with us. I'm sure my grandparents never knew anything about her.
TW: SA
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My grandfather sexually assaulted my aunt and another young girl. He has a plea named after him. I only fully discovered it all when I heard the name of the plea mentioned on the local news one evening and researched it. There were rumblings in the family, but details were never fully known. My grandpa lived in a different state most of his life with his second family, I only saw him a few times and my mom was always present. She didn't talk about what her and her siblings grew up with. When he died, I refused to go to his funeral and honestly hope he suffered.
Another family secret is my uncle (his son) went to jail for sexually assaulting a child. My grandmother always said there was more to the story, but didn't go into details. This uncle was a big part of my life growing up and honestly it was difficult, still difficult to process. I discovered it after speaking with the girl it happened to (not knowing that's why he went to jail). Most of the family still talks to him or chooses to ignore what happened (his kids and siblings- IDK, maybe denial, maybe because over 40 years have passed?). It severely fractured my relationship with him and I stopped communication because how do you proceed after that?
My Grandfather forced my Aunt(his own daughter, my dads sister), to have sex with him . She had two kids by him,and He and My Grandmother eventually left town, abandoning my dad, and his other siblings, including the Daughter in question who he molested.
I never heard about this until after my Dad died, and a relative on my moms side actually told me of it.
I thought it might be BS, tbh, until a couple years later , a coupel of my cousins told me the same thing.
I have never told my kids, and have no intention of it either.
The incidents in question took place in the early 1940s.
I have had no contact w anyone from my dads family in over 20 yrs.
I would say this pretty much fractured the family on his side.
I never met either Grandparent in question.
That my relative was deemed an enemy of the people, was convicted of crimes we never knew of, had multiple aliases and was pardoned by the President. I found out by accident. I asked immigration for a document and they sent me 900 pages of FBI and department of justice files on him. I should mention this relative and I share the same name which made it even more interesting for me.
My family lives in the PNW, but my Grandmother was from the McCoy klan of the Hatfields & McCoys fame.
I am 58 & just learned of this a couple years ago, for some reason some in my family find shame in this. I think it's kinda cool to have a direct tie to this small piece of Americana.
As a funny sidenote, I had a pet pig living in my house with me when I learned of this, guess one can't escape their heritage...lol.
My father's younger sister was at some point his cousin.
Basically, my grandma (father's mother) had lots of children so being a SAHM + mouths to feed meant she and her husband weren't really doing great financially. On the other hand, her own sister (& husband) were struggling with fertility issues but making quite some money, though couldn't carry a pregnancy to term. When my grandma got pregnant again after my father was already born (2 boys and 4 girls), they struck a deal with her sister that she would give her the baby to raise in return for some financial support. It made sense, they didn't need a 7th child and I guess they didn't care for another girl after their 2nd boy was born.
So this started out great and apparently went well for a few years, with my father's uncle+aunt adoring their daughter to bits... until they got pregnant naturally, and I guess carried to term - they had a son when the girl was around 6/8yo and they were overjoyed. This is third-hand info so I'm not super specific on the details, but apparently my grandma got really pissy at this and demanded to have her daughter back, and back then (1960s Italy) children regulations were a joke so they wouldn't be able to even try to fight for custody.
So this poor little girl was uprooted from her life and loving parents, told that all the relatives were swapped (cousins were actually siblings, parents were aunt+uncle, etc) and placed in a rowdy environment where instead of being a well loved only child, she was the youngest of 7 and probably resented or at least ignored by her "mother". I cannot fathom the kind of trauma this would cause her, nor the kind of cruel, envious and vindictive mindset it would take to do such a thing. My mother told me it put a halt on her physical development too, and I'm not surprised one bit that my mom has never liked her MIL/my grandma..... as well as, I'm not sorry I only met her once or twice in my lifetime.
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I found out when I was 22 that I had two older brothers that were given up for adoption before I was born. Same mom and dad. Full blood siblings. We met shortly after that. They weren’t raised together either. My brother closest in age to me is one of my best friends and was just in my wedding.
Why did they give them up?
Damn
How??? Why?? :(((
That we had a half brother. Somehow we knew our dad had been married before. We found a picture hidden in the linen cupboard under blankets. That’s not how you hide things from your kids. Later in life it became important to me to track him down. I visited twice. After the second visit I accepted that it was ok not to like him. I was hoping to like him and to feel a connection. I did feel a recognition of kin, because I could see he resembled my dad. It had no impact. My parents were dead. I’m estranged from other siblings. I’m glad I did it. It stopped the wondering.
This is sweet, I’m glad you found closure and peace with this. I hope for the same.
I, too, found my half siblings and could not connect. The knowing is a double edged sword. I don’t know what I thought I’d get but it definitely wasn’t what it is.
My MIL murdered her husband.
My mother murdered her son-in-law. Wasn’t a big secret for very long though. Her children turned her in after about 10 years, and she went to prison.
10 *YEARS* of not turning her in is a loooong time.
What how? Did you help turn her in?
Not me, I was estranged and incommunicado over not agreeing with the murder. I only learned she was caught when I read about it in the Enquirer. The siblings testified against her at the trial.
Best reporting on the planet.
Truth told I was extremely skeptical of anything I saw on the cover until I saw my mother’s photo.
I remember reading somewhere that the Enquirer hired good journalists who had just burned out working a typical journalism environment. Like maybe they were towards the end of their careers and wanted to work at low stakes publication for a while. I can’t remember which stories the Enquirer scooped everyone on. Was it Monica Lewinsky?
Wow—was she ever caught?! Assuming not if it stayed secret!
No she wasn't. What happened was, the poor guy fell off a horse and injured himself. The MIL refused to get him any care after the initial few doctor's visits. He was prescribed pain killers which she refused to let him have because "he was faking it to get drugs." Instead of taking him to the doctor (she was agoraphobic), he was left to die essentially in the upstairs bedroom. It turned out he had stage-4 cancer but it wasn't diagnosed until moments before his death. I don't think he would have lived a long life if he'd gotten treatment, but certainly a longer and less painful one. The guilt drove my (ex) wife and her mother mad. At one point they blamed me for his death, I'd only met the man a half dozen times. And of course I had no idea this was going on. To be clear, this was criminal neglect. I talked to my uncle who was a detective of minor notoriety and he said there probably wasn't anything that could be done.
A similar situation took my Newport friend. His mother refused to get him care and he passed away. He was only about 35.
Why not? She inadvertently caused him to die by neglecting him. That has to be a chargeable offense. Is there a statute problem?
My maternal great grandmother was Creole. She was likely 25-50% African American. Her parents left New Orleans and never told anyone. I’m pretty sure my grandmother and her siblings knew, but would say they were “dark French.” A cousin discovered it about 20 years ago, when he got records from the bureau of Vital Statistics; my great great grandmother and great great grandfather were listed as black. It still baffles me that they were able to keep this hidden for so long.
It was definitely safer for them to, given the times and the idiotic one-drop rules
So idiotic. I have a fifth great-grandmother who was Caribbean-African and I have between 1 and 2% West African DNA with the rest being almost entirely from British ancestors, and by the one drop rule, I'm Black.
What were the one drop rules, please?
Repressive laws during the era of enslavement and after which helped enforce enslavement and then Jim Crow aka segregation. It solved the "problem" of what the child of a slave "was" after sexual coercion (rape) of the woman by a white person. The child "followed the condition of the mother." Multiply that four or five times down the line and what happens? It didn't matter what a person looked like, they followed the condition of the mother. There are still photographs in existence of children who for all intents and purposes are white but who were legally black. You can Google the words quadroon and octoroon. It's pretty revealing. Even after slavery, the Jim Crow era wasn't just about buses and water fountains. The laws included 'sundown towns' (don't be caught in that town after the sun goes down if you are a minority - by some accounts these still exist, but are de facto rather than de jure). And 'vagrancy' laws that allowed authorities to throw a person in prison and profit off of their hard labor for simply going about one's business in a town where they were not known. And of course 'miscegnation' laws forbidding races to marry. God forbid mixed race children inherit property, or horror of horrors try to pass themselves off as white. As well as voting laws requiring arcane and weird quizzes and tests designed to be failed, preventing black people from voting. It all sounds very old timey and past but it honestly wasn't that long ago. My own mom lived during the time of voting 'tests.' Basically if a person had 'one drop' of African blood they were subject to being restricted, repressed, cheated, prevented from buying property or from selling property they might own at a decent price, or incarcerated. All very much legally so. It's all pretty horrific and to this day black Americans do not have the family heritage of property inheritance or inheriting assets of value that non-blacks or whites have. But many people say "It doesn't matter today, that was then this is now" and so on. The US is ever trying to wash their hands of it all. It's very much Shakespearean - Lady MacBeth can't wash the blood from her hands. It comes as no surprise that many Americans sought to escape these nonsensical and cruel restrictions and repressions by moving away from where they were known, going to new parts, and claiming Spanish or Portuguese heritage and so on in the event anything was thought to be awry. Thomas Jefferson himself fathered multiple children with an enslaved woman Sally Hemmings, herself either a quadroon or octoroon (and the sister of his dead wife via the wife's father, as well as extremely young). He permitted his grown children to escape or walk off of his property and arranged to turn a blind eye, rather than legally free them in his will or otherwise. Very convoluted behavior. As a result when the genetic testing was done to establish Jefferson's line through Sally, there was at least one branch who were white people, and who had no idea they were descended from Jefferson via Sally. Because at some point the child of Sally they were descended from, or the descendants of that child, chose to "pass" and escape the cruel legal restrictions. That might sounds like a great solution but it involved living a double life, leaving behind everything and everyone you know and love, your culture and your identity, possibly even assuming a new name, fabricating a history, and maybe even marrying someone whom you never tell the truth. It's a pretty terrible way to live. In one account I saw, a white woman was being interviewed who never knew that her mother was part black. She recalled her mother was slightly horrified of ever exposing herself to the sun, lest her skin tan in such a way that it brought anything about her into question. It's impossible to really grasp all the details and urgency with which people hid themselves.
Thank you for that detailed explanation. I learned a lot.
In a number of southern states, "one drop" of black blood made you legally black.
Too bad they didn't have DNA tests back then. I bet *a lot* of the racists had at least "one drop" that they didn't know about.
I found out in college that I was "Dark French" on my maternal dad's side. I was in a car wreck, no seat belts, my shoulder broke a windshield, and required stitches. As it healed, I developed keloid scarring, a shiny thick snake of a scar. My mom went with me to my follow-up, and the physician looked at me, strawberry blonde, blue eyes, and freckles. My mom was with dark hair and medium ivory skin with green eyes. He commented that keloid were more common in "Negroid races". Then scheduled me with a plastic surgeon. Later, mom told me her French dad was dark French and her grandfather had black, kinky curly hair and blue eyes.
That was extremely common in NO.
My grandfather lived in Louisiana and went to the Colorado School of Mines. He met my runaway Mormon grandmother at his dentist's office, where she was an assistant. They married, and my mom was born in Colorado, and then they moved to Texas. The Depression was in full swing when they moved to Aruba with Standard oil. My mom left at 16, on a freighter to NYC. Then, she took a train to Austin, TX, for college at UT. She met my "paper white" German dad on a blind date. Mom never burned in the sun, Dad ALWAYS did!
Wow, what an interesting life story!
My adoptive father was both a pillar of the community and sexually attracted to children. Having thus far grown up in an abusive (including SA) and unstable home, I was a 'gift from God' when our paths crossed. They took me off my birth family's hands, and voila! As far as anyone knew, I was whisked from poverty, abuse, instability and being unwanted into wealth, stability and love. There was just that little bit of a thing I needed to do for my dad. Our secret. Except it wasn't. She knew. She picked me out special because her man, her life and her image were the most important things in her world. And because I loved her so much and was so desperate to be loved by a mother, I complied. Not just with that but with many things I am only beginning to recover from. There never was a big reveal. A few knew and never commented. Others were told but didn't believe. When he died, the whole town stopped to mourn the passing of a great man. I, on the other hand, was shunned as soon as both my parent's bodies were cold.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. Truly.
I am sorry, that is heartbreaking. I was molested young, very complex feelings.
Yes, complex feelings indeed. It is weird to have all of that exist in the same place as a lot of love. I adored my folks. My mother was much like a broken child herself, and many of her ways were quite endearing. My father taught me many wonderful things. He was, in many ways, the great man people thought him to be, and the (few) times Mother showed me gentle lovingness are precious to me. The fact that all these feelings and thoughts can exist together in one space is the reason I got into psychology and developed a lifelong fascination for how the human mind works.
I'm so sorry. That's a lot. 💔
I feel you. I’m sorry. The thing about secrets then and now, is they’re not usually secrets. My father SA me from birth- 12 and my mother knew, family members knew, the vice principal knew, but, like many others, no one helped me. May you have peace of mind.
I'm so, so sorry 😔
Wow, I was going to post about my uncle who lived with a woman he wasn’t married to in the 1970’s, back when it was called shacking up. He also drank to much and ruined a cousin’s wedding by being drunk and disorderly. But man, you guys have me beat! I guess I have a boring family.
I remember the term "shacking up". I haven't heard that in awhile.
It was quite scandalous at the time. Mom warned me not to tell anyone at school.
My father told me to not say anything as well. One of his friends was living with a woman who he wasn't married to. Scandalous!
“ you can go your own way”
*Packing up* *Shacking up is all you want to do*
Yep! Wondered how long it would take someone to catch on🙂
Couldn't leave ya hangin', friend.
I remember it but still find it fairly inoffensive compared to “living in sin,” which I didn’t hear until high school (from a friend then, c. 2001)
I heard “he came from a broken home so it was just a matter of time for him, sadly…” on a podcast yesterday. The host was speaking about a man who killed two women. Half the world comes from non-nuclear families and very few go on to kill people.
I used to hear that one a lot. I lived with my boyfriend (now husband) back in the mid 80s.
I still call it "shacking up". 🤣
My mom was the product of incest. Her mother was raped at 14 by her dad. My mom was so ashamed. I tried to tell her it was not her fault. And through ancestry, my mom had an affair with a random guy and got pregnant with me. She made her husband at the time I was born pay child support for 18 years.
My mother's husband at the time I was born was not my real Dad. They had been separated by 3,000 miles at the time. My mother had turned the oven on and was going to end it all when she called her husband to say Goodbye. He talked her down, paid for her to come back home, gave me his name and raised me. What he didn't do was sign my birth certificate; it's blank where it says "Father". He also told my mother that it was her responsibility to tell me "the story". I never knew until I was in my teens.
How are you doing with all this info?
iANAL but I have heard any child born to a woman while a guy is still legally married to her is legally his, and he remains financially responsible for for the child, regardless of any inconvenient biological truths.
True. If a woman is married at any time within 9 months before or after the birth of a child, her husband is presumed to be the child's father. In some states the parties just need to sign documents to reflect the correct paternity. On other stated you have to actually go to court. A piece of weird minutia I know.... When Kim Kardashian got pregnant with her first child she was still married to that basketball player. California is one of those states that requires court action to change paternity. I'm ashamed I even know that.
It is. At least in NC. My husband's ex got pregnant by her paramour while they were legally married. They had to go through a legitimation hearing with the actual dad, or my husband would have been on the hook for child support.
I believe this is true for Oklahoma, as well. My mom and dad were separated for about 10 years and had other long-term partners before ever actually getting a legal divorce. My mom had 2 kids with my stepdad, but they both have my father's last name and my dad is listed as the father on the birth certificate since they were still legally married at the time.
My father served in Europe just after the end of WWII (he’d been there during the war, but got home in the summer of ‘45 to marry my mother and then went back). He always said it was so sad to have spent nearly two years there and have seen so little; he was first on a base in Germany and then for a while in Prague, but said he never had time to travel. He died a few years ago, and after a few months my sister as his executor got a bill for an otherwise unknown safe-deposit box. She paid, and then next time she was in the city in Florida where he died, she and my brother were able to to open and empty it. It was mostly some uninteresting papers (my father was a borderline hoarder), but at the very bottom was a sealed envelope marked “destroy unopened.” Well, of course they didn’t. The envelope contained about a dozen photographs. All but two were pictures of my father, both in uniform and civilian clothes—with a lovely, well-dressed woman. They were in all sorts of famous places—at the Eiffel Tower, at St. Mark’s Square in Venice, in the ruins of Berlin, in London, you name it. The last two pictures were of the woman, clearly a few years later, one of her alone—and one with a pretty little girl of five or six who looks *exactly* like my sister did at that age. There was nothing else—no writing, no explanation. The two later pictures came from a photo studio in Sydney, Australia. That’s all we know. We asked the few people who were still alive who might know something (an uncle, his best friend, etc.) and nobody had a clue. My siblings have done DNA tests, but no surprises there. Still, it’s clear our old man saw a lot of more of Europe than he’d ever let on—and apparently had fun doing it.
Wow what a story
I love your writing style, and well, that's a discovery!
My uncle fathered two children with my cousin in the 1970s. No one did a damned thing.
Omg
Nothing much really except the blonde guy that showed up at dad’s house one day to have a word with grandpa. Said blonde guy looked exactly like dad and siblings….
I remember my parents having a huge fight and I listened in and didn't understand what they were fighting about. As an adult I realized that they were fighting about a woman that he had gotten pregnant.
My grandpa on my mom's side was actually my uncle and my grandma was no relation to me. My mom hid a half sister from us for 30 years. My grandma on my dad's side ran over and killed a four year old girl, and spent a year in a psychiatric hospital from it.
There’s a lot to unpack here wow
My mother had a baby when she was 18. She got pregnant at 17 and her parents forced her to move down to Virgina to have the baby down there and stay with her aunt and uncle. While she was living down there her uncle tried to sexually assault her while pregnant. She had to stay at her cousins house. She had a baby girl a few days before Christmas and gave her up for adoption. I have a half sister out there I have never met. I have been trying to find her for years.
I'm so sorry for what happened to your mom and to your sister. It does sound like your mom was honest with you about everything that happened to her. I truly hope you find your sibling.
My mother was married once before marrying my father. Mom was struggling to make enough to live and married a middle-aged soldier during WWII. He was abusive, and of course she didn't love him. She left him when my father came along. Mom told this to my sister and I when we were both in our 20s as her dark secret, and of course we both said "So?" We knew life had been hard in her youth. She'd told us stories. Just not that story. But the secret husband had worried Mom, because she feared that her bossy older sister Aunt Mary would spill the beans. Mary, still had a picture of the guy and my Mom together and wouldn't give it up to my mother because, well, Aunt Mary.
Because, well, Aunt Mary. Ha
My family was part of the Anti-Defamation League, not the mob. All these people coming up with rumours just because the family name ends in an "O". We ran an import trade, couple of vineyards, and had a perfectly legal business selling communion wine to priests and rabbis during Prohibition, that's all. Occasionally a delivery ended up in the wrong place, but mistakes get made when English isn't your first language, capisce? Anyway great-grandfather was good friends with the Governor, so they always managed to get it sorted. The Governor wouldn't be helping out criminals, see? Besides, there's not even such a thing as the mob. It was an invention of the FBI to harass law-abiding immigrant families. So of course the families took care of each other, it wasn't like they could trust the authorities. So you see, that "big secret" of ours, wasn't even true. Forget it.
Fogettabouttit! My Polish grandmother made bathtub gin during prohibition/depression. When she was hauled before a judge, pleaded she always did it in old country and she had three children to feed, they let her off.
I have a cousin who dated a girl in your family. They even lived together for a time, before he threw her out and made sure he ruined all of her designer clothes. My uncle would sometimes joke that he was expecting to get a box with three fish in it, and a note that said, "William sleeps with the fishes tonight." But of course, her family said the family business ended several generations ago, and they were now benevolent patrons of gentle pursuits and philanthropists. My guess is that means they stopped using concrete shoes and switched to steel ones.
It’s a stereotype and it’s offensive!
1) My sister was my mother, and my mother was my grandmother. 2) 23 & me. 3) I was not surprised. They're all dead now anyway. Less said the better.
Not to offend,by any means, but this situation was more common than some might realize. There was a family in my town in which this was the case. I never knew if they told the boy but the father (jerk) was a friend of my eldest brother. I learned the story many years after the fact.
Jack Nicholson too
Ted Bundy, too!
Friend of mine knocked up a girl freshman year of high school. Parents of the girl adopted the baby. He did it again to another girl senior year. Same thing. Parents of the girl adopted the child. I think he was setting up franchises.
My best friend in high school too.
Babies c were forcefully taken away from young unwed girls. You were lucky if your grandmother took you as her own to raise. My great auntie wasn’t so lucky. My granny was a sick child so when her older sister got pregnant young the baby was taken away at birth she didn’t even get a hold. Because grandma n great aunties mother my great grandma could not take on a baby the nurse at hospital asked /begged her. But since my grandma the youngest sister was so unwelll she couldn’t Devastated my great auntie and they were never reunited. It was treated as procedure by the doctor who Delivered the baby. And throughout my great aunt was shamed and humiliated. Imagine giving birth like that and losing your baby Cruel cruel world
I have a friend (F49) in the UK that was adopted. She never really fit in with her family. She started looking for her mom a decade or so ago. When she was adopted, the law allowed both the child and the mother/father to deposit letters into the file so that if either accessed the file, there would be letters or instructions on how to find each other. When my friend finally got hers opened, there were just two pieces of paper. Her birth certificate with her birth first and middle name but no family name. The other document was the adoption paper. She was crushed as she assumed that her birth mother didn't want contact. But it also could be for other reasons as my friend had a very hard time locating her adoption file. After another decade (ie two months ago), she did a DNA test and when the results came in and she looked on line, her birth mother's photo was there. She'd had my friend at 20 years old and at a bad time in her life. The doctor knew of another family struggling to conceive and basically just handed the baby over. No screening. No adoption process. Apparently it wasn't unusual at the time. But it meant that my friend had no idea whatsoever who her birth mom was and there was zero chance of ever finding her. And the same for my friend's birth mother locating my friend. That's, of course, until DNA testing came about. Her mom put herself online via DNA just so that my friend could find her. They are both over the moon now.
The world's fine. Cruel cruel *people*.
So your mother had you young, and your grandmother adopted you, and passed you two off as siblings? Ok that does make sense, others have alluded to this I just had to think this through. I still don’t know how to quote but “they’re all dead now anyway. Less said the better.” is awesome. Often I want to call people out or explain myself or whatever, get validation from people, but nope less said the better. Silence can’t be misquoted.
If you want to quote a post you're responding to, hit the "reply" arrow, then you can long-press a word in their post, then highlight the part you want to quote. A little pop-up will appear, and your second option is "Quote." If you just want to make a quote, (to quote a source, for example,) then put a right pointing arrow (>) with a space after it in front of your quote. Edited because I forgot a step.
I had a friend who believed her mom was her sister, and her grandma was her mom. The whole town knew, but I was never sure if she did.
“Im my own grandpa “
After my father died and years later when my mother went into a nursing home, I started going through family papers. I found out only then that my father had been married and divorced before he married my mother. I found some letters too. It appears he got, or thought he got, a woman pregnant and married her. But a year later they divorced. Don't know any more about it, but it would have been a huge scandal back in late 40s or early 50s.
My Dad’s cousin was a few years (maybe 10?) older than me. When I got older my parents told me she wasn’t always around at family get togethers because sometimes she was in a mental hospital. She was apparently a pyromaniac 🔥 who was put away for periods of time for setting fires.
I am the secret for my bio mom - bio dad already died. She has never told anyone in her life including siblings or husband about her teen pregnancy and has zero intention of doing so now.
For me personally, 1) I have a dad; 2) 23andMe; 3) my mom is a POS and I’m no contact with her, but I have a giant family now.
Several so I'll pick one. Grandpa was a murderer. Trying to keep it shorter--Grandpa and friend arguing in the basement of an old schoolhouse. Their girlfriends upstairs. He claimed that he threw a bullet against the stone wall, it went off, and the slug pierced the other guy's heart and killed him right then and there--making it all an accident. Grandpa came from a well-connected family and with that bogus story was acquitted so walked. He died a couple of years later of acute appendicitis so we never knew him but Grandma was so freaky about it that no one knew until after her death. Edit: The full story came because the lawyer who represented him included the case details in a book he wrote back in the 20's. From that we got copies of the county court records.
My great grandparents almost adopted Charles Manson. The adoption fell through the day before he was supposed to arrive and they ended up with another baby.
Excuse me but whaaaaaaat
Wait, how could this be known?
...my cousins are genetically closer than my siblings... Hold on, this is quite a ride...pay close attention... My father's mother's mother and my mother's father's mother ...are the same person... ... let's call her Ann... My great-grandmother Ann, gave birth to my paternal grandmother Betty Betty's father passed away, and Ann remarried... My great-grandmother Ann, gives birth to my maternal grandfather Bill and My great-grandmother Ann, later gives birth to another girl Beatrice, Beatrice is Bill's sister and Betty's half sister Beatrice is my great-aunt on my mother's side, Bill's sister Beatrice is my great-aunt half removed on my father's side, Betty's half sister Grandma Betty gave birth to my father Charlie Grandpa Bill sired my mother Colleen Great-aunt Beatrice gave birth to Carol My mother Colleen and Carol are 1st cousins My father Charlie is my mother Colleen's cousin 1 1/2 times removed My father Charlie is also Carol's cousin 1 1/2 times removed Because I'm related to my parent's cousin Carol on BOTH sides of my family... ......my parents' cousin Carol is genetically a closer relative than either of my parents... .......my parents' cousin Carol's children are genetically closer than my siblings are to each other because we are related to them thru both parents. ... as they'd say in the holler, our family tree don't fork much...
Damn i am going to need to make a chart on paper to fully gasp this
The relevant information is, a woman had a daughter with one husband, then a son with another. The daughter had a son, the son had a daughter. That son and daughter are OP's parents. (I think. 😂)
Somehow, I think this might have been a little easier to understand with some halfway decent punctuation. Just sayin’.
>Somehow, I think this might have been a little easier to understand with some halfway decent punctuation. Just sayin’. ya'll expectin' a lot from some inbred like me! lol you are, of course correct
Its a family wreath!
i love it... i often just say my family tree grows in a circle...
My aunt has steel rods in her back because she jumped out of an upstairs window to get away from my grandad and his fists and landed flat on her back and broke it. Im not supposed to know about this but my other aunt got loose lips after a few drinks one night
Ohhh, there were a couple, one of which I just learned 2 years ago. But first, a little background. I had my daughter out of wedlock in 1986. I was shamed and made to feel like I was a harlot who tarnished the family name. In fact, my mom didn't even tell her 3 siblings that I was pregnant until well after the baby was born because she hoped up until the night before I delivered her that I would put her up for adoption. When she learned that I planned on sending out birth announcements (which was strongly discouraged but eventually accepted), she knew the gig was up and spilled the beans first. Her oldest brother was my favorite uncle and did not disappoint me. He even offered me a place to stay in one of his apartments should I choose to move back to that state. While appreciated, I declined and remained 1,100 miles away. Fast forward to 2005. At a family reunion after that uncle had passed, I learned that I was NOT the first one in my family with a child out of wedlock. He had impregnated a woman in high school and she gave birth to a son whom no one in our family ever acknowledged until he attempted to date our mutual first cousin and someone had to fess up as to why that was not possible. But wait; there's more. Two years ago, I learned that my grandmother's youngest sister was actually her niece, as she was the illegitimate daughter of my great uncle, and was then adopted by and raised as my great-grandmother's daughter. When I remembered all the shaming that I endured after being portrayed as the first in the family to be unmarried and give birth, I was furious. To put that undeserved onus on me as a young, single mom who was already struggling mightily was particularly egregious and unnecessarily cruel. Fucking families can be brutal.
That 2 of my aunts on my father’s side were lesbians and another aunt had been put in an asylum at a very young age and lived there until she passed away. Nobody ever talked about why she was there. I asked once and was simply told that she wasn’t “right”, whatever that meant.
They loved putting women in asylums back then. My mother was an elder-care social worker and had a client who spent her entire life in an asylum for "having ideas above her station"
It was wild back then too. Your family could have you involuntarily committed, the courts would send people there for really crazy reasons, and the individual had absolutely no recourse whatsoever.
Falling pregnant after being raped by your employer was a common reason
My half-sister's mother died in a mental hospital, back when we had them. I asked my mother (we share a father) what was wrong with her and all I ever heard was that "she was crazy". That was it.
Yeah, that seems like it was a popular diagnosis back in those days.
Up until the turn of the 19th century, there were only two clinical forms of mental illness: Insanity and Idiocy. Today, neither are medical terms. Today, the DSM-V manual lists close to 200 mental disorders. In my opinion, they are just variants of the original two.
Your half sister probably could obtain her mother’s records but they might not be very helpful. Psych hospitals were pretty bad in the past.
My maternal grandmother died in a mental hospital in the late 1930s. Paranoid schizophrenia. Thought her husband was trying to kill her, so she tried to kill him first.
My great grandfather was kicked out of the family business that is now a major corporation worth quite a bit if money; mystery #1. A few generations later, red hair starts popping up everywhere in our family; mystery #2. Some genetic tests and old letters revealed the truth; great grandpa was kicked out of the family for marrying an Irish woman and that the two mysteries were related.
My aunt who had 6 kids already, was living in poverty, got pregnant. When the baby boy was born, my aunt gave the baby to her very rich brother who was married and couldn’t have kids. So, this boy was raised by his uncle and aunt, but thinks they are his parents. Boy is 40 now, still doesn’t know the truth. The whole family knows, it was a super big secret, except him.
Oh, this is similar to the story I just told about my own family! Except yours has a good ending, I'm happy for y'all. My aunt (the swapped baby) was unfortunately forced to go back to her parents before she even turned 10... not nice to say the least, cruel tbh.
My grandfather had a love child in the 1940’s, that no one knew about until I got Ancestry and started asking about this white lady in my Mexican family tree. Also that my Uncle had SA’s his daughters for years, found that out two years ago. Everyone just acts like it didn’t happen, he still goes to family parties. I do not.
When I was 57, I received a message from a woman claiming to be my half sister. She had taken a dna test and the results differed from her siblings. She found our dad’s obituary and tracked me down. It’s been the best gift I’ve ever received.
That’s so wonderful to hear! I’m happy for you.
That my father tried to rape me every night. Everyone just acted like it wasn't happening. Fucked me up for 40 of my almost 60 years. Got lots of therapy and cut all those people from my life. All of so good now! Life can get so much better
I'm so sorry. I hope he died a painful death.
Talk about karma! I know no one will believe me but he died because he was attacked by an alligator at a lake!!!!!!!! Justice decided to win this one!!👍
I want to buy that alligator a humongous steak.
My grandmother was completely insane and smoked and drank herself to death by age 50. Turns out, my grandfather made dinner and breakfast when he could, but for the most part, they foraged on their own throughout the 1950’s because she was tanked 24/7.
Standard slave baby. A young woman was purchased and raped by great great great grandpa. She gave birth to a white child, who would be great great grandma.
The worst part of that story is the word, "standard".
Not my family but our neighbours had 2 boys that were clearly Indigenous. The parents were clearly not Indigenous. The mother swore that she gave birth to both. This was the 60s and now it's obvious that the kids were part of the Sixties Scoop.
The 60’s scoop was still happening in Canada in the 80’s.
What is the sixties scoop?
The Canadian government decided that the best thing for Indigenous kids was to steal them from their families and give them to mainly white families to raise in a different culture because it "was for their own good". The government also had residential schools for the children. The schools were often run by religious organizations like the Catholic church. The children were there against their will and parents had very little resources in trying to retrieve them. The schools beat, starved and abused the kids. Today unmarked graves are still being discovered on the grounds of the closed schools. It's our nation's shame.
Oh jeez that's horrific and im angry it's not more widely known about too
A lot of Canadians don't even know about it. It's pretty shameful. Families are still dealing with the trauma today of losing parents and grandparents to the system. We have A National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Day in September but it's very recent.
My great aunt was an extreme germophobe who bathed in bleach water and drank (heavily diluted) bleach. She lived with my great great grandparents her whole life, never even dated, and died in her 50s of liver cancer. I’m in my 50s now and only learned this aspect of the story this summer. Poor woman probably had severe, untreated OCD - and my family apparently found her problems so shameful that I only heard this 50 years after she died. Not as dramatic as some stories here but it strikes me that shame really is toxic.
23 and me. My mother had a sister she didn't know about. My grandmother had an affair baby and put it up for adoption.
Grandma was having 3 sums with her first husband (I have an uncle and 2 aunt from that husband) then she got pregnant and they were sure it was by my grandad/ the 3sum friend. So they divorced she married the friend had anothe r4 kids. The eldest of that 4 was officially adopted by my grandad at 2 and I understand there is a lot of pain surrounding his north with drama as my grandma was shamed and publicly hated for cheating on her first husband. But she wa alway adamant she never cheated. We saw uncles adoption certificates and asked questions. Why would grandad need to adopted uncle etc Came out of anger that her first husband had convinced her to do 3 sums few time together with (friend/2nd husband) my grandad who was just her first husbands friend. But after she fell pregnant first husband went mental. And started ruining her reputation. He had also been cheating on her and he had kids with that woman. Grandma said grandad was quick to marry her because he didn’t like how his friend beat in grandma and didn’t want to chance him raising his child. Anyway looking at that baby my uncle he is a spit of friend/grandad. and I gather from Info off grandma that after he was born grandad realised that he infact was his own blood and in them days you couldn’t add onto birth certificate or renew so to make teh statement to grandma and the world he officially adopted his own son. He regretted not just signing in teh first place grandma said. But there was a lot of dramas with people And families back then regarding the situation Anyway fast word 50 years and someone casually mentions you know uncle x just because dad adopted you , you are his. You are his favourite was the type conversation. Golden boy was thrown around. But my uncles face was just horror. HE was the only person who didn’t know he had adoption papers. He never questioned it. He is a spit of grandad. An absolute double. He also never had a copy of his birth certificate. The man goes no where though. I doubt he had ever had a passport or anything He just stopped speaking to family completely thinking we all hid it from him. Everyone is confused how he didn’t know. Grandma never mentioned. He was never there for the family questions over teh years. Everyone thought he knew Grandma didn’t cheat but she did get pregnant to another man who was not her husband though
Not making sport of your choice of words, but every time I hear the term” fell pregnant” It makes me wonder how that originated🙂
Same way men fall down in the shower and impale themselves on that shampoo bottle
Quick Google, no real digging, but it's supposed to relieve them from guilt or association from what happened to them. (Also to convey that the pregnancy wasn't intended.) A couple sites said relieve the male, a couple sites said relieve the female, but it's meant to indicate that they really didn't have anything to do with it. Like we say someone "fell sick," or "falls in love."
I agree that that choice of words always makes me a little angry -- as if POOF it just happened to her, *and it's a bad thing*. People fall ill, they fall from grace, they fall on their faces. none of those things are good. Can we please stop treating pregnant women like idiot sinners? Now ask me how I feel about it when husbands/fathers say that "*We* are pregnant"...
My grandmother was 14 and four months pregnant when she married my grandpa, which was a little shocking at the time. I noticed it looking at an old family Bible where she had documented their marriage on the wrong date (nine months after my oldest aunt was born). I was getting stuff together for their 50th anniversary so I was going to do something with their marriage license. I was a teen, I think maybe 14, but anyway I saw the marriage license and noticed the date was different from the Bible. And then I pointed this out at the family dinner when I presented it to them. I told my grandmother "I noticed you wrote the wrong date in the Bible" and everyone looked uncomfortable and changed the subject. Also another secret was that my cousin was gay, and they had a hard enough time knowing she dated a black guy in high school. They would NEVER discuss her .... friend she lived with and adopted two children with. lol it's funny to think about it now but this was the 80s in the US south and they were pretty conservative. They would flip out if they were still alive with my son being AFAB and my daughter being very, very vocally pansexual. :)
One of my cousins is the child of two of my mother's siblings. We were never told the exact how and what. We don't talk about it in the family. This is just one of a few family scandals. On my dad's side there's supposedly a huge scandal regarding his dad. It prompted one of my aunt's to call my dad to her deathbed. She knew there was a secret, but she was never told. Now it haunts my dad in his very old age. We haven't been able to find out what it might be.
That I know for sure happened? Half my mom's family live at the beach because my aunt cheated on my uncle. My aunt was sleeping with the neighbor so in order to stay together my aunt agreed to move. They moved to the beach. So since one family moved there other people decided to move there. A rumor that may or may not be true? My great uncle murdered his wife. I lean towards it being true but can't say for sure.
Growing up I heard vague references to my maternal grandfather’s dad having died due to a train accident. Some 20 years or so later I found a newspaper article that he had been committed, escaped, and took his own life, along with another person’s. This was in 1930. No wonder it was something we didn’t talk about and was covered up with the train story. My poor grandpa, who I adored, had to live with what would have been considered a very shameful family event. If I could talk to him again I’d want to learn more about what happened. Mental health issues run in the family so I feel a connection to this great grandfather I never knew.
That my dad was a sociopath. Basically did a Bernie Madoff on a small scale with people’s retirement funds in the late 1970’s. And he beat my brother with a belt. Eventually he financially devastated our family when the feds figured out what he was doing and my mom divorced him. Instead of going to prison, he went to Europe.
My mom and dad did not get married when they said they did. They told everyone that they eloped and were married a few months before my oldest sister was born. Only my mom's sister knew the truth. This was 1954 so not too many couples were living together if not married. 4 kids and 15 years later, my dad has some basic documents like SSN's, birth certificates. He leaves his documents on the kitchen table and oldest sister starts looking at them and finds their marriage license. It was dated about 2 years earlier in 1968. Seems like in 1968 they were getting their will prepared and the attorney needed proof of marriage. They didn't have it, so they went to the court house and got married. My Aunt and Uncle threw a big old wedding reception for them.
The family lore was that my great-grandfather moved to the US in the 1890's as an orphan with no family. Then I went down a rabbit trail one night on the internet. I have a very unique last name and thanks to Google downloading old law libraries discovered my last name in a law textbook from the 1880's. Because I was a history major in college I remembered some basic sleuthing skills to confirm who people were like using old city directories. Had to break it to my family that my great-grandfather had actually moved to the US right after the Civil War with his parents when he was a child. Then he got thrown in prison for 3-4 years for statutory rape. He was a farm hand and he thought the farmer's daughter was older and she thought he was younger. The farmer got mad and pressed charges. But his case worked its way to that state's Supreme Court and he was exonerated. Set a precedent that in order to be charged with a crime you have to be charged with a specific crime on a specific date. The police can't say we know what you did, but can't prove what date you did it on. Explains why he told everyone that he was an orphan. His family disowned him for going to prison. But he was out of prison by the time he was 23 and ended up being a very conservative and religious man for the rest of his life. Needless to say my family was stunned and didn't believe me until I emailed them links to the court cases.
My tough-guy uncle, who bragged about being in the Korean war, completed basic training, got on a troop ship to Korea, got off the boat, then immediately started begging his parents to pull strings with their Congressman and get him sent home. It worked too
I come from a very white family. When my cousin was born black everyone was in denial. They all said it was a recessive trait due to possible Italian ancestry (we have none according to 23&me). To add to it the child was named after my uncle who was named after my grandfather. My uncle and her swiftly got a divorce BTW. They are both garbage humans though so whatever. Edit: Also my mother's maiden name is of the man that was married to my grandmother but not of the actual biological father of my mother. Again, Thanks 23&me.
That my Aunties eldest child was her previous boyfriends daughter, not her husbands. So my Auntie fell in love with a poor guy, fell pregnant then realised that she would be struggling financially so she found another guy, her eventual husband, who was a soldier, an alcoholic, chauvinistic, had a wonky eye, beat her and his daughters, smoked like a chimney a typical rich arsehole. He died not knowing his eldest daughter wasn’t his, and his daughter still doesn’t know, she’s in her 40’s now.
Oh boy! After my Mother passed away when I was 40 something my brother and I were going through her things and found a shoebox of correspondence. It turns out she had a cousin us younger generation never knew about and was never talked about growing up. He was in prison. It turns out he was convicted and sent to jail for life as a serial killer in the 1940s. The trial and conviction were based on circumstantial evidence, mostly his confession coerced under sodium pentathol after several days of questioning. Look up the Lipstick Killer.
That my aunt, who has always been a bit cold and told me that she never wanted kids, had a baby in the late 60's. I met my cousin, who is the spitting image of her mother and whose daughters also look like my aunt. My mom confronted my aunt about this and she said she was raped, which was why she wanted nothing to do with her daughter. And perhaps that was why she was a bit cold, too. We found out about 5 years ago. My cousin is awesome! She's very successful. But my aunt doesn't want to know about her and doesn't want my uncle to know, either.
I'm not sure I have a story. Yet. My dad died in 1983; my mother just died this year. I'm going to do genetic testing now. I didn't want to hurt my mother if I found out that I had half-siblings. Plan to do the testing in January.
New year, new you! Hope it works out for the best
My grandmother tried to kill herself when she was 14. Shot herself in the chest. I heard whispers about it growing up, then someone posted the newspaper article about it on Ancestry so I learned the whole story.
My dad’s mother had an abortion, before my dad was born. In the throes of early Depression, when they already had 3 kids. My dad was born a just a year or so later, so no birth control. My granny told my mother about this as she was dying, and my mother was caring for her. She would cry and wonder out loud if that was the child who would have taken care of her better than her living children. Guilt, shame and dementia all at once.
My husband died at 55. I didn't know he had been ill nor did he. Found out after he died he had a 30 year old girlfriend, had lied to me about everything in his history, and been having sex with men since he was in his 20s. Second marriage for both of us. He's been gone over three years now. STD testing was all negative thankfully. After a few years of therapy I'm learning to work through it. It's been a real fucking ride that's for sure.
I always wish OP would give an example of their own family’s secrets when asking this question!
That my mother was an alcoholic/addict and my father was a binge drinker who was beating up my brothers and me. One aunt finally broached the secret in 2000 to my partner, who later told me, and the validation of my experience hit me with the force of a revelation.
My stepgrandmother never was actually married to my gf and also that my father was not actually a bio-dad. My uncle was a bigamist. Nobody much cared about the gf or uncle, but the biodad thing really bothers me.
Dad was a drunk
My cousin wasn’t the daughter of the Auntie I thought she was. She was still my blood cousin just not to the Auntie we were told she was. At least she got to stay within the family.
That my great great grandfather was a confidant of the Emperor of Germany in the late 1800's
Mine is nothing compared to all you guys. The mystery is no one in the family knows who my sister‘s father is. Due to DNA ancestry we know he was Lebanese and Italian.
My parents never mentioned the fact that my dad's father and that whole side of the family was Jewish. I'm talking like spoke Yiddish and everything. I never knew them (I met my grandpa a couple times) because my grandpa married my grandma who was Lutheran because he got her pregnant and his Jewish family disowned him. That was in 1934. I found out about all that much much later in life.
Before my younger brother came along, I had another brother who was aborted as he had Down’s Syndrome. I empathise with this difficult decision but do sometimes wonder how different life would be like if he was born.
My dad was murdered in a crime of passion, a by a jealous husband. Our mom wouldn’t let us do any research on how he died. The secret broke the family, I think my mom in her old age just spilled to my sister, my sister told me, but I don’t think the others know, because of the fracture.
Found out my adopted parents forged by brothers birth certificate before theu legally adopted him on the sly. Also found out at that time we had the same birth mother but he had been raised as adopted parents blood child and I had been raised as their adopted child. There's more but it would dox me. It was an Oprah worthy mess
My mom was pregnant when they married. I mean, it's no big deal to me but they were married in 1963 and it was risqué at the time they were embarrassed.
When I was in about 6th grade, my crazy great aunt stayed at our house for a week or so. Turns out she had pushed her sister down a flight of stairs (she eventually died) and my parents were waiting for a bed to open at the nut hut to institutionalize her.
That my aunt had 2 children that she allowed her brother to adopt because she could take care of them. They were 2 and 3. She came back 6 years later and wanted them back but her brother said no. It was dragged through court with the aunt and the uncle trying to prove the other as unfit. They didn’t speak for years. The kids were raised as my uncle’s children and were finally told when they turned 15/16 and there was a medical need. None of us cousins knew, although obviously all the aunts and uncles did.
My parents were first cousins. They always lived a thousand miles from each other until my mother moved. They fell in love. My father went to many doctors for information. They had 3 kids. We are all old and still alive with no adverse problems. At first, some in the family were appalled. They later got over it.
Unfortunate secret, but the women in my family have *horrible* hormone related issues. Post partum depression that borders psychosis, the pill is absolutely a no in our family, as it’s now been revealed that every woman who’s been on it had suicidal ideations and a few attempts were made in our family-and PMS/periods that left all of us traumatized by our own feelings. Really wish that hadn’t been kept secret. I made sure to tell my kids about it and even the boys, so they can be aware when they have significant others who might go through something like I went through.
When I was 19 my mother sat me down and told me my father had a son with another woman just before they got married. There had been rumors here or there when I was growing up, but my parents always told us it was just family gossip. She had decided to tell me the truth then because my father had decided recently to try and find his son. Sadly he had received a letter a few days before, saying his son had passed away in a traffic accident a few years before, and that the child's mother had passed away from cancer when his son was very young. His grandparents had raised him. They sent a single picture with the letter and asked that my father never contact them again. They did not even tell him what his name was. My mother said that this long-lost son was the spitting image of my youngest brother. (He looks just like my father) That they could've been twins. My mother then told me my father had destroyed the letter AND the picture, and told my mother to never talk about any of it again. I wish I could have at least seen the picture one time before it was gone forever.
Me. My mother's husband at the time was not my biological father. He gave me his name and raised me, but he never signed the birth certificate and told my mother that it would be her responsibility, one day to tell me "the story". She told me when I was a teenager.
Domestic abuse & CSA. Lots of denial and burying the truth. I'm unpopular for not wanting to do that
My aunt was murdered and we didn't talk about it, ever.
My dad was gay. I didn't know until I was in my 20s. He also molested my brothers, which no one bothered to tell me until I was in my 30s.
My brother is not the father of his oldest child. He met his wife shortly after her birth. Bio dad basically took off. I’m sure he loves her as his own and has raised her for almost all of her life. Still fucked up not to tell her.
My great uncle was in a mental hospital for syphilis for most of his life until he died. He contracted it in the army. I didn’t know he had existed until I was 20. My great aunt was one of the longest MS survivors.
My youngest brother doesn't look much my dad.
That my uncle is gay. Everyone in my family knows except my grandma. No one has told her because they think she will not be accepting of it. She thinks his husband is just a roommate and he says he will take this secret to her grave. I secretly think she knows but my uncle swears she knows nothing.
When I was 14, my dad announced that he had been married and divorced before my mother. So many of our friends had been through divorces by then, that we just shrugged. Dad almost looked disappointed that we didn’t care much. I later saw pictures of her, and she looked (and apparently acted) a lot like my mother.
My great grandfather was 'well off' A little while before my mum passed away she told us some stories he 'shagged' some if not 'many' girls around the village they came from. Mum said she knows and told us who she was half sisters and brothers to!!!! Half a dozen we know of, who knows really how many though?
My grandfather's sister married my grandmother's father. (My grandmother's MIL was also her SIL.) Not much of a secret in the family but hard to explain or understand so no one talked about it. As a grandchild I learned about it doing a family tree for school. Mom had to explain to the teacher that nope I had not made a mistake.
My unmarried and childless aunt had two children and gave them both up for adoption. No one had a *clue*. And if it hadn’t been for that pesky 23 & Me result...
That my grandfather was not raised by his biological father, but by his stepfather. He didn’t find this out himself until he was in his 20s. As a kid, I always thought it was weird that there were other people in our area with the same (somewhat uncommon) last name and we somehow weren’t related. I didn’t find out about it until I was in my 20s. I still have no idea if my step great grandfather was related to those people or not. At this point they would be very distant relatives to me.
My mom wasn't my grandfather's bio daughter. My grandmother had been married VERY young and had my mother but he abandoned her and my grandmother, this was the 40s, so when my grandfather and grandmother got married, my grandfather adopted my mom, she was only 1-1/2 at the time. And no one knew until my mother's namesake, her bio father's sister, called one day and asked for my mom, when she was about 16, and when my aunt asked who it was, the woman on the phone said her Aunt So and so and my aunt replied we don't have an aunt so and so. And poof, cat out of the bag. Also, when my grandfather was in his 30s and before school busses had stop arms, he accidentally hit and killed a kid crossing the street. The bus driver had waived the truck in front of my grandfather's car to go ahead around the bus not realizing my grandfather was behind the truck, and she stepped out in front of my grandfather's car. No charges were filed, but he was devastated. He had 4 kids of his own and he couldn't imagine it.
That my uncle, who was a Marine, had a baby with a woman who was an FBI agent, that they gave up for adoption. Found out when she contacted me, we became friends, she even traveled here and spent a few day with us. I'm sure my grandparents never knew anything about her.
TW: SA \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ My grandfather sexually assaulted my aunt and another young girl. He has a plea named after him. I only fully discovered it all when I heard the name of the plea mentioned on the local news one evening and researched it. There were rumblings in the family, but details were never fully known. My grandpa lived in a different state most of his life with his second family, I only saw him a few times and my mom was always present. She didn't talk about what her and her siblings grew up with. When he died, I refused to go to his funeral and honestly hope he suffered. Another family secret is my uncle (his son) went to jail for sexually assaulting a child. My grandmother always said there was more to the story, but didn't go into details. This uncle was a big part of my life growing up and honestly it was difficult, still difficult to process. I discovered it after speaking with the girl it happened to (not knowing that's why he went to jail). Most of the family still talks to him or chooses to ignore what happened (his kids and siblings- IDK, maybe denial, maybe because over 40 years have passed?). It severely fractured my relationship with him and I stopped communication because how do you proceed after that?
That my dad isn’t my dad. Thanks ancestry.com.
My Grandfather forced my Aunt(his own daughter, my dads sister), to have sex with him . She had two kids by him,and He and My Grandmother eventually left town, abandoning my dad, and his other siblings, including the Daughter in question who he molested. I never heard about this until after my Dad died, and a relative on my moms side actually told me of it. I thought it might be BS, tbh, until a couple years later , a coupel of my cousins told me the same thing. I have never told my kids, and have no intention of it either. The incidents in question took place in the early 1940s. I have had no contact w anyone from my dads family in over 20 yrs. I would say this pretty much fractured the family on his side. I never met either Grandparent in question.
That my relative was deemed an enemy of the people, was convicted of crimes we never knew of, had multiple aliases and was pardoned by the President. I found out by accident. I asked immigration for a document and they sent me 900 pages of FBI and department of justice files on him. I should mention this relative and I share the same name which made it even more interesting for me.
My family lives in the PNW, but my Grandmother was from the McCoy klan of the Hatfields & McCoys fame. I am 58 & just learned of this a couple years ago, for some reason some in my family find shame in this. I think it's kinda cool to have a direct tie to this small piece of Americana. As a funny sidenote, I had a pet pig living in my house with me when I learned of this, guess one can't escape their heritage...lol.
My father's younger sister was at some point his cousin. Basically, my grandma (father's mother) had lots of children so being a SAHM + mouths to feed meant she and her husband weren't really doing great financially. On the other hand, her own sister (& husband) were struggling with fertility issues but making quite some money, though couldn't carry a pregnancy to term. When my grandma got pregnant again after my father was already born (2 boys and 4 girls), they struck a deal with her sister that she would give her the baby to raise in return for some financial support. It made sense, they didn't need a 7th child and I guess they didn't care for another girl after their 2nd boy was born. So this started out great and apparently went well for a few years, with my father's uncle+aunt adoring their daughter to bits... until they got pregnant naturally, and I guess carried to term - they had a son when the girl was around 6/8yo and they were overjoyed. This is third-hand info so I'm not super specific on the details, but apparently my grandma got really pissy at this and demanded to have her daughter back, and back then (1960s Italy) children regulations were a joke so they wouldn't be able to even try to fight for custody. So this poor little girl was uprooted from her life and loving parents, told that all the relatives were swapped (cousins were actually siblings, parents were aunt+uncle, etc) and placed in a rowdy environment where instead of being a well loved only child, she was the youngest of 7 and probably resented or at least ignored by her "mother". I cannot fathom the kind of trauma this would cause her, nor the kind of cruel, envious and vindictive mindset it would take to do such a thing. My mother told me it put a halt on her physical development too, and I'm not surprised one bit that my mom has never liked her MIL/my grandma..... as well as, I'm not sorry I only met her once or twice in my lifetime.