Family Histories

Do you guys have interesting written or other accounts of family history stuff? I recently was introduced to this piece that my great-grandfather dictated to my great-aunt not long before he died. It begins like this below, and includes trolley accidents, begging for food, a leg amputation, and ends with "God Bless America". My goodness.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/4898573390_c68f62089e_z.jpg

I have a 250+ page bound copy of my grandfather's memoirs

xp Wow that's amazing. Can we see some more?

As for my family, everyone either a) won't talk about anything, or b) is dead. Exception: grandfather recently dropped some interesting snippets about Eastern Europe and a family name change prior to WW2. Unfortunately my dad is too much of a dick to inquire further.

les cent, that sucks. maybe you could bug your grandfather about it? in my family, it seems like my one aunt has taken the initiative to delve into this stuff. i sometimes wish my mom had made more of a habit of indulging the same curiosity. my dad has told me some crazy stuff about name-changes involving child born out of wedlock, father from the rich side of town

speaking for myself, i don't have big family roots sentiments to speak of whatsoever. i assume that when i die "i" will be reincarnated on some other planet or will evaporate forever, but, family history is still interesting to me

I have a 250+ page bound copy of my grandfather's memoirs

how cool!

xp Wow that's amazing. Can we see some more?

sure, i will post some more, with the caveat that my mom, when she read it, seemed to be inclined to think that there were a few embellishments within

in my family, it seems like my one aunt has taken the initiative to delve into this stuff.

in my personal experience, this is always how it is. one surviving sibling takes it on themselves to be the curator of the family legacy - I am pretty sure that in my generation's case (at least when it comes to my dad's side of the family) this is going to be me... since I am currently in the process of digitally archiving thousands of my grandfather's slides (dating from the early 50s up through the early 80s). Luckily, my grandfather was a very diligent historian/scientist type, so he left detailed handwritten notes of what is in every set of slides.

I'm that person too, but with the proviso that I'm a writer and my sister's a bit meh about the really interesting, historical stuff because it's from my dad's side of the family. I have a bound document prepared by a genealogist in 1938 for my grandmother's cousin which is all about their Huguenot family fleeing from near La Rochelle, founding Staten Island, bringing the first postal carriages to America and turning over every last horse and wagon they had to Washington, for whom three brothers spied throughout the Revolutionary War. Great stories about 500 guineas reward for the capture of each of the spies, one brother (my ancestor) with Washington at Trenton who destroyed British retreat boats - a simple act that changed the whole war - and the other brother who was in charge of British prisoners, which went well until one he harbored at home took off with his wife, never to be seen again.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4099/4898174669_2368c5cd4c_z.jpgp

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4099/4898174669_2368c5cd4c_z.jpg

whoah crazy old school Revolutionary War stories suzy! yeah my dad's side goes back to around then too, and there's a bound geneaology book of the Babcocks but I think my aunt has it.

am currently in the process of digitally archiving thousands of my grandfather's slides (dating from the early 50s up through the early 80s).

that's so cool

so basically it's true that everyone who stayed in europe a couple centuries back is pretty sane, and the rest of us are fucked in the head. right? RIGHT???

My dad wrote a memoir of his life from his birth to his marriage. It covers both the Great Depression (in northern Wisconsin) and WWII (west coast naval duty, Saipan, Okinawa and postwar garrison in Nagasaki). He knew how to tell a story and it is lively reading.

My mom did a lot of digging into geneology and compiled a whole bunch of volumes of stuff, with outlines of every fact she could unearth about family members back to roughly the mid-1800s. Mostly it is mighty dry reading and mainly exists as an ornament glued to the shelf.

However, among the stuff she transcribed and gave out to me and my sibs was a memoir by "Uncle Calvin", about his experiences migrating to Colorado from the midwest, just after the Civil War. He mined gold, had his horse stolen by a native american and generally batted around in the wilderness. It, too, is a lively read.

Moral: if you write a memoir, no one willread it unless you make it a ripping tale. Factual accuracy and "important" dates are much less important.

x/p No, as far as I can tell the Huguenots were running for their lives. The volume also tells the story of one ancestor, a French captain, son of a general under Louis XIV, who passed three priests one evening, and greeted them with 'good evening, gents' which pissed them off because that was how Huguenots dissed those everyone else called 'father' - my ancestor told them his Father was in Heaven. So they stupidly drew swords on my ancestor, who defended himself by killing one, wounding the second, and making the last run away sharpish. It did not surprise me that there was such smartarsery in my family tree. What *did* surprise me was a claim that the Drake in there is from Francis Drake's immediate family (there's a Depression-era scam where tons of Midwesterners were convinced their descent qualified them as Drake's heirs and engaged a swindler to find his will, but nothing to do with my ancestor, who was also the daughter of a Rev War colonel).

Shakey, I had to email the DAR for *research purposes* and got a reply in like five seconds which was basically like 'where have you BEEN?' The Revolutionary War guys were given massive land grants in upstate NY and I've seen the letters Washington wrote to them and vice-versa - the brother in charge of prisoners lost the contest to be New York's first senator by one vote. My great-great grandmother's tree ties me to various vice presidents, generals, NYC mayors and de Witt Clinton (it's her engagement ring my grandmother left me, I think).

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4121/4898283131_11d74d63fd_z.jpg

caveat: after my mom read this entire account, she said something along the lines of, "well, he was really shrewd". I don't know if she was thinking of this passage in particular, but, just sayin'.

like, was "falling off the trolley car" a common scam back in the day?

Not quite as common as falling off the turnip wagon.

freaking out b/c that happened to me just before noon today!

Family legend has it that my paternal grandmother, who was a Samson, was a descendant of Mayflower passenger Henry Samson, but I don't think anyone has ever done the research to officially connect us. Her mother's family were supposed to have come from money in Boston but lost it on Black Tuesday. No one talks about this stuff so there are no details.

I really shouldn't post much more about something I'm supposed to be writing about for realz elsewhere, but I'm especially keen to get grandmother's cousin's diaries - lots of frothy socialite stuff in LA from the mid-'20s to the '50s - her housekeeper's sister has them and told me there's reports of my cousin getting The Vapors and a cocaine prescription to combat same. Currently combing through wills written when women couldn't own property or vote, so the dying rich dude had to leave complicated provisions for his surviving female relations.

so basically it's true that everyone who stayed in europe a couple centuries back is pretty sane, and the rest of us are fucked in the head. right? RIGHT???

My experience tallies with the first bit - one side of the family lived on a farm in a small village for generations, the other side lived in a larger town seemingly without doing anything worthy of a story either. My girlfriend's family, on the other hand, is full of crazy tales about colonisation, decolonisation and kidnapping; I'm always a bit jealous of this.

My dad's grandpa wrote a short memoir-type thing, about 50 pages, for the family. The highlight is when great-grandpa meets Satan riding on a horse through the woods of Idaho. Satan basically looks like sasquatch, and is hairy and clearly full of self-loathing. He says, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" and the hairy guy runs away.

My great-gran wrote this book: http://antiqbook.co.uk/boox/bow/16696.shtml

I have found myself becoming more interested in family history as I get older, but I think it's less the progression of age and more just that I've found out about some cool and crazy people (experimental composers! Psychics!).

I wish my dad had written some kind of memoir before he died - between his combat experiences in the korean war and 20+ years in the sugar business traveling thru asia africa & the caribbean in the 60s & 70s there were a LOT of untold adventures. I suspect.

sounds pretty sweet