Any Black Sheep In Your Family?

[+ Avalon]

My maternal grandmother's father was in prison for 14 years for murder. The story goes that he was in dispute with a man who kept damming up a creek. My great grandfather kept undoing it and told him if he dammed it one more time that he'd kill him. The man dammed it again and my great grandfather kept his word. My great grandparents divorced which was uncommon then in the 19th century but they remarried when he got out.

 

On the paternal side there was a teenager who during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake joined a group of other young men looting.

[bigvalboy]

LMAO...

[+ poolboy48220]

My uncle, a good friend of my Dad's that he introduced to my Mom's younger sister, and they ended up marrying. He was a charmer, but a drifter; could never hold down a job, would quit a job without another prospect because the first job "wasn't fulfilling him". They lived off my grandmother's charity for years, a fact we didn't know until after my grandmother died, and he left the family a few months after her death, saying "They'd be better without him". I asked his daughter once if she knew where he was, and she said "no idea. Probably dead".

[jjkrkwood]

Is this another DNA question ?

[+ Tarte Gogo]

@mike carey surely must have something to contribute here.

 

Aren’t all Australian descended from criminals?

 

Only joking, Mike, I know there are many, many who did not arrive to Australia as British convicts.

[+ Charlie]

I had a first cousin who disappeared when he was 18, and reappeared one day at his widowed mother's retirement trailer home in Florida when he was 32. He was an alcoholic, and was avoiding an arrest warrant in Montana for a minor felony. He lived as a recluse in her home for several years, supported by her on her meager income, until he left one day, registered at a motel, and shot himself. I had other relations who were lowlifes, but they injured no one but themselves.

[+ Topseed]

Me.

[Epigonos]

My mother’s two you younger brother’s married two sisters. Both of my aunts were a bit prudish but very nice. Their mother, however, was a real rip. She was all of 4’11” tall, was drop dead gorgeous, always wore platform high heel shoes, a long mink coat and smoked with a gold cigarette holder. Nana, as she insisted on being called, would always come to family summer Sunday barbeques, at my parent’s home, with a different young stud (think 25 to 30 when she was probably 55+) in tow. One time one of my aunts stopped by her home unannounced and found her in bed with one of her studs. Nana’s only response was to tell her daughter that if she called first she might not walk in and see things she didn’t want to see.

 

By the time I was in college Nana had slowed down considerably. I used to visit her, when I was home from school. I would go over to her place for dinner, she was an excellent cook, and we would spend the evening playing cribbage. On one visit she patted my hand and informed me that while she was finishing her trip along the road of life I was just beginning mine. She said that during her journey she had seen the left side of the road, the center of the road and the right side of the road, you name it and she had done it, none of it had killed her and she had one hell of a lot of fun. She then insisted that it was now my turn and that I was to go for it.

 

Nana died at 89 in her sleep much loved and adored by the whole family. It’s interesting that as traditional as my family was EVERYBODY accepted Nana on her own terms. I will always treasure my memories of that exciting, adventurous, interesting woman. I’m not even sure that most members of my family considered her a black sheep BUT she sure as shit was unique.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Epigonos

[+ azdr0710]

Family whispers suggested the daughter of my grandmother's brother was a prostitute in Kansas City. Not that there's anything wrong with that (being a prostitute, that is - not the Kansas City part!)

[+ poolboy48220]

Sounds like you had an Auntie Mame in your family :-)

[mike carey]

Family whispers suggested the daughter of my grandmother's brother was a prostitute in Kansas City. Not that there's anything wrong with that (being a prostitute, that is - not the Kansas City part!)

Can't be too careful about Kansas City. Oh, no offence @bigjoey.

[+ honcho]

I've heard it said that a cousin of my maternal grandfather was an accountant for the Chicago mafia (likely mid 1920's)

[EZEtoGRU]

My father’s old German aunt and her husband ran a whorehouse out of their home in downtown Detroit in the 20’s and 30’s. My dad remembers going to the house as a child and being asked to take bottles of wine up to the rooms of the guests. He really didn’t understand what it was all about until later.

 

The same old aunt ran a blind pig in Detroit and supposedly shot one customer dead cause he was causing problems. Sounds like she was a tough old broad.

 

Interestingly, my dad recalled that during the depths of the depression, this old aunt was the only one that had any money. If food was tight, she would turn up with a basket of food at the house. My dad remembered several Christmases where the only presents came from the old aunt.

 

Rather than being considered a black sheep, she was considered the eccentric old aunt that often saved the day for the rest of the family.

[+ Charlie]

My mother’s two you younger brother’s married two sisters. Both of my aunts were a bit prudish but very nice. Their mother, however, was a real rip. She was all of 4’11” tall, was drop dead gorgeous, always wore platform high heel shoes, a long mink coat and smoked with a gold cigarette holder. Nana, as she insisted on being called, would always come to family summer Sunday barbeques, at my parent’s home, with a different young stud (think 25 to 30 when she was probably 55+) in tow. One time one of my aunts stopped by her home unannounced and found her in bed with one of her studs. Nana’s only response was to tell her daughter that if she called first she might not walk in and see things she didn’t want to see.

 

By the time I was in college Nana had slowed down considerably. I used to visit her, when I was home from school. I would go over to her place for dinner, she was an excellent cook, and we would spend the evening playing cribbage. On one visit she patted my hand and informed me that while she was finishing her trip along the road of life I was just beginning mine. She said that during her journey she had seen the left side of the road, the center of the road and the right side of the road, you name it and she had done it, none of it had killed her and she had one hell of a lot of fun. She then insisted that it was now my turn and that I was to go for it.

 

Nana died at 89 in her sleep much loved and adored by the whole family. It’s interesting that as traditional as my family was EVERYBODY accepted Nana on her own terms. I will always treasure my memories of that exciting, adventurous, interesting woman. I’m not even sure that most members of my family considered her a black sheep BUT she sure as shit was unique.

I had a very similar Nana, my maternal grandmother. She was the youngest of 13 children. Her father died when she was 3, and her mother had to put her and two of her brothers in an orphanage for a while, but later sent her to live with her step-grandmother and two older sisters in Bermuda. She scandalized them by having an affair with a much older married man in her teens, so they shipped her back to NYC, where she met and immediately married my grandfather when she was 17 (he was 30). She was still quite attractive when she was widowed at 42, and proceeded to have numerous affairs, which scandalized her own six children. She became a housekeeper to an elderly widower, and married him, to the displeasure of his grown children. When she was widowed again, she resumed affairs with younger men, until she was almost 80. Many proper family members considered her a black sheep, but I never thought of her that way.

 

I loved her. I often spent summer vacations with her when I was a child, so I was aware of her relations with various men--my mother would never have allowed me to stay with her if she had known what went on while I was there. She liked racy literature, and it was through reading one of her books when I was 12 that I first realized that I was gay. Interestingly, my spouse also had a very strong, independent widowed grandmother with whom he used to spend summer vacations when he was a child. I wonder if there is any connection between being gay and being exposed to that kind of grandmother figure.

[gallahadesquire]

After founding Lynn, Massachusetts, a relative (who had a boat) started running food to Southampton, New York (long Island), which he also helped found.

 

"Did they come to America to escape religious prosecution?"

"Hell, no, they came to America to make a buck."

[gallahadesquire]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zyN592SZW2Y/T9IovfYWUlI/AAAAAAAACzI/G0WBFSU3hM0/s640/warren-miller-we-re-for-calling-it-hampton-but-they-want-to-call-it-the-hamptons-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg

[+ ArVaGuy]

Apparently, my maternal grandfather was not able to produce the bill of sale for a horse in his possession. The dispute escalated from there and may have involved other items of questionable ownership. He left Sicily rather abruptly around 1889 for the United States.

[amused1]

My family tree is fairly crooked. Bootlegging, mafia ties, union "activity", and a few other colorful episodes. The one that really effected me was my gay great grand uncle who was put through hell by my family's attempts to fix him. Imagine electo shock, injections of God knows what, institutionalization, you name it. He ended up killing himself.

[Rudynate]

Mother's family were supposed to have been French aristocrats who emigrated to Canada fleeing the French Revolution.

 

Father's family were Germans from Russia. They farmed wheat on the steppe in Southern Russia. Emigrated to the US and farmed wheat on the Kansas plains.

[+ honcho]

 

I wish the Facebook crying icon were available here; so dismally sad.

[+ sniper]

My maternal grandmother was one of 11 most of whom if not all were involved in the IRA in the early 1900s. I found a glowing obituary of her mother in an Irish newspaper citing a prison break she had assisted in.