Crimes of your ancestors and their relatives

That was a pretty fascinating read. We don't know whether he was in prison when he died, I guess.

eugenecists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fairfield_Osborn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Osborn

confederate general:

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

x-post -- Not offhand. I'm going to take advantage of a family vacation coming up to ask for any more details, but my mom's been researching this for some years and it's pretty much a blank spot in the family history beyond those two stories and the obit notice from 1901 -- for all I know this gap was extremely intentional, above and beyond the records loss in the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Not exactly a crime, but the Charge of the Light Brigade.

my grandfather was a strongman for the irish mob in pre-war boston, i'm sure there are some skeletons in that closet.

my grandfather and his brother threw a violently racist hungarian officer off a cliff way back in the day. not joking.

great great grandaddy had some slaves n shit, be illegal these days. guess that's why my family are millionaires now and my dad's a lord or whatever.

seriously though, this is one of those threads where a bunch of middle class americans talk about how ethnically diverse and poor their ancestors were right?

"ah'm haff eye-talian and a quarter irish an a quarter alsatian an grandaddy made moonshine in the bafftub and granny was a whore, but i go to an ivy league cawlledge now and my dad's a stockbroker, crazy, huh?"

No, we actually use this thread to talk about chinless inbred limeys.

Cor! Once again, the velvet glove of Raggett is cast aside to stunning effect. I approve.

My dad told me, when I was nine, that he found a bunch of baby birds a nest when he was a little kid. He hung them on nooses, then threw gasoline on them, lit them on fire and hit them wih baseball bats. I didn't talk to my dad for like a month after I finished all the fucking crying.

My ancestors were generally too poor/backwoods or too religious to do anything noteworthy. I doubt that my Mennonite preacher great-grandfather was in on anything cool.

max r is strung out dudes.

I only know of one relative who was sent to Australia as a convict, and it is v v lame story: He stole a handkerchief.

I've met numerous relatives of my gf who were imprisoned in the early 80s for trying to import a heap of marijuana into Australia from Lebanon.

Also, my old man used to associate with some mobsterish dudes, I don't really know any details, it was when i was little but whenever it's brought up my mum gets pretty angry. And I know one of the guys is now a "wealthy industrialist in Perth" or something.

Because I am protected by the anonymity that comes with psuedonymity, I shall share a story that is not precisely about an ancestral crime, but something that caused such shame that it was concealed by my grandmother until she was on her deathbed.

My (paternal) grandfather, it seems, shot his own sister to death, accidentally, when he was about ten years old. His sister was about twelve at the time. This was so traumatic that he was sent to spend several months in North Dakota with relatives. After he returned from this semi-exile, no one in the family ever mentioned it again for over 70 years. My grandmother knew of it, because she had known the sister, long before she married my grandfather.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/your-family-past-present-and-future.html

The simplest way to think about it is that every stranger in the world is a cousin of yours, and the only question is how distant a cousin they are. The degree of cousin (first, second, etc.) is just a way of referring to how far you have to go back before you get to a common ancestor. For first cousins, you only have to go back two generations to hit your common grandparents. For second cousins, you have to go back three generations to your common great-grandparents. For fifth cousins, you’d have to go back six generations until you arrive at your common pair of great-great-great-great-grandparents.

well then

My stock response wrt this topic is the Seventh of March Speech.

Apparently the most recent common human ancestor might be only a few thousand years old.

The simplest way to think about it

where were these guys when i needed them

not my ancestors but top trolling to cascade down the generations:

Many Turks only got surnames in 1934 as part of Atatürk's reforms. Great-grandfathers with a sense of humour called themselves things like Aptal (stupid), Donsuz (no underwear) and Tasak (testicle) - names their descendants now hate.

— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) October 3, 2018

Cheapshot at dmac

dmürk call him by his ancestral name

My paternal grandfather's family was partially responsible for the devastating mining that essentially ruined much of Devonshire, in UK. Apparently, however, he was also a communist sympathizer, and harboured a Russian spy for some time under the auspices of helping the spy sell his very good (and now somewhat collectable) pottery. The potter-spy and my grandfather allegedly fell out when it was revealed that the Russian man was a homosexual.

Devon largely unruined by mining as far as I know (I grew up there and know it pretty well), so don't feel too bad.

possibly the future ancestors of 2nd-homesters in the region will have a case to answer tho.

Quite so (in both cases I think Cornwall has had it worse).

Still a couple of dirty great big china clay pits down in West Devon, of course, but pits (current or past)are probably not in the top hundred things that come to mind when people think of Devon.

I have a Confederate Colonel on my dad's side of the family:

"John Davis Chattin b. 1807
Bought land in Rhea County, TN. Received a commission in the Tennessee Militia in 1842. He served as a colonel in the Confederacy during the war. Census data from 1860 shows his real estate worth $17,000; personal property worth $10,000. After the war real estate valued at $6,000, personal property at $500."

in my family's defense we also had ancestors on the Union side

two of my uncles, who were working-class jack the lad wheeler dealers in the east of glasgow as young men, were done for fraud in the their late teens/early 20s and spent a year or so in jail. my mum, bless her bourgeois heart, kept this from me and i didn't hear about it until i was about 20, and I've never heard the full story.

they later both moved to legitimate businesses, the one who passed away about 15 years ago owned a market stall he won in a card game, rented out skips to people, took antique slate from roofs of houses that were going to be pulled down and then roofed people's homes with them with high material costs etc. and the one who is still alive had a small construction firm and later got into property development and is a landlord (who was the real criminal the teenage fraudster or the current property owner? #trenchant) with a large portfolio of very cheap flats in the east of glasgow, a few of which i am going to inherit (the only property ill ever own).

my grandad once was cautioned for shooting a shotgun in the air over the heads of some kids who liked to throw rocks at his house. he built a house in the garrowhill area of glasgow which is a nice working class area in the far east end of glasgow, but which neighbours barlanark which is a relatively rough area. the kids would periodically come over and throw shit at my grandad and his neighbors' houses and one day my grandad lost it and went out with his gun and shot one off in the air. the kids didn't come back but the police were called by a neighbour (obviously) and he got in a spot of bother.

I'm descended from spanish colonists of chile. i don't know what they got up to but it sure wasn't anything too good

my irish ancestors were horse thieves in donegal in the 19th century (allegedly)

my dad (a political prisoner and torture survivorunder pinochet) had a cousin in the chilean secret police, the DINA. he was indicted on charges of drug smuggling, torture, and murder and died of cancer before he could come to trial.

these kinds of stories make me want to dig back into my own past but the mormonism of everyone feels too heavy to deal with right now. hopefully some day it won't bother me so much.

I found out at my uncle’s funeral a couple of years back that, during his army service, he was either responsible for or just took it upon himself to expose gays who were serving in secret during the 70s/80s.

I would never say so to either my dad or my aunt, lovely people both, but I always thought he was kind of an ass anyway (a sentiment I’m pretty certain my mother shares).

My grandmother had a ceramics shop that burned down just before I was born, found out many years later that my parents were pretty sure she had committed arson because it was going under.

Dutch side of my family has some dark shit going on. One of them was a judge in NYC in the 19th century, and was part of a kidnapping club where they'd kidnap free black children and sell them into slavery south of the Maxon Dixon line.

That side of my family is still a real laugh riot, let me tell you.

The gist I get here is ILX people have some fucked up ancestry.

Well, yeah, because anyone laying claim to an unblemished ancestry is full of shit.

Oh, I only posted about my dad's side. Apparently Joan Plowright is my second cousin, which makes Laurence Olivier my second-cousin-in-law.

My maternal grandfather was a Conservative MP, who was Party Whip under John Diefenbaker. Apparently he was tipped to be Party President (whatever the equivalent of Reince Priebus is/was (I don't follow American politics any more)), but was denied. He represented the riding that contained the present-day Toronto Airport (at the time, the riding was called Dixie, I think). He was instrumental in the shutting down of the Avro plant, which was an aeronautics joint that made an object called the Avro Arrow, and the shutting down of said plant cost many Toronto-adjacent residents their jobs. My grandfather was portrayed by an actor in a CBC documentary about the Avro Arrow. (My uncles wrote letters to the CBC about how poor the representation of him was-- "he wasn't a weak man! he wasn't a doormat!" etc.)

I am under the impression that consensus is that he was the "fall guy" for the entire Avro scandal, but who knows. He ended up getting embroiled in a cronyism deal-i-o with the construction of Lester B. Pearson airport (YYZ). I think he hired some friends to make it? Anyway he wasn't re-elected. By all accounts he was a very popular politician in his day. He died of an aneurysm while on a hunting trip. He smoked a pipe and had wavy hair.

His wife, my grandmother, was the first woman to be admitted to the University Of Toronto music program. She sang in the chorus of the Canadian Opera Company for many years. When she ended up having five children, and her husband became a politician, she kind of stopped that. I remember reading a Ramona book when I was a kid, and the Quimbys are having an argument. The father (or maybe the mother) shouts at the mother (or maybe the father): "As I recall, all your mother ever did was gad around and play bridge!" I read that and thought... that's my grandma. She gads around and plays bridge. She was also a golfer.

She's 97 now and still plays bridge. This year, I learned bridge specifically so I could play with her. She is a very competitive player and I fucked up last week because I didn't understand the meaning of her slam-cue and we underbid a perfect slam. She was very angry even though she still made 12 tricks without the bid she wanted.

Wow, that's a lot of Toronto history. Do you mean the CBC miniseries that aired in the 90s? I remember that slightly.

Between all these stories, fgti, I choose to believe that means you are fated to be an intergalactic casino owner who sells out the Earth to be strip mined while running lasers to gay aliens. I mean, embrace your fate.

my ancestors* were all nice, that's why i revived this thread via some prankish turkish ancestors unrelated to me (who tbh probably belong on a another thread abt funny surnames)

*i only know anything about them back to my grandparents' generation**
**roald dahl is my dad's mum's sister's husband's brother -- he was an arsehole afaict so i just abt dodge the old lunch judgment

The reason I have a French-sounding surname is apparently that my ancestor was a deserter from the German army during the Danish-German war of 1848-50, and he changed his name slightly to make it sound less obviously German. Other than that, I don't know that much.

There was this joke in my family that my grandfather was in the resistance but didn't do much, and he volunteered to do a very very dangerous mission on the 9th of May, but only because he kinda figured the Germans would surrender before that (which they did). Turns out that just family badmouthing, he was on the run and risked his and my grandmothers life several times, he just never wanted to talk about what he had done. I think for that reason I've always thought that the resistance was something every young man signed up for in May 45, but I talked with a couple of my friends about it a few months back and they just went 'No, my grandfather was a nazi' 'Yeah, mine too'

damn, until i heard about y'all i thought my family was fairly interesting. our dark secrets suck - we're just a bunch of lunatics and alcoholics.

mind you that's just the family history i can vouch for. i've heard some great stories, but they're from relatives who are known fabulists. last time i talked to my dad (the only person i knew from his side of the family after the age of seven) he'd fabricated several more wives and extended a two week vacation in australia into three years.

I really only have detailed info about my mother's mother's family because they've maintained a pretty meticulous family tree for the past several centuries. All of my other family lines are a total mystery to me.

apparently i didnt have enough opportunities for procrastination so i caved a few months back & signed up to a "research yr family tree" app

despise me as you will (and must) but it has paid off bcz currently my earliest so-far-known ancestor was called GALLANT BOOTY

My ancestor's seditious adventures:

On 10 October 1715, Lancelot and his nephew Mark Errington visited the castle on Lindisfarne. Some sources say that Lancelot asked the Master Gunner, who also served as the unit's barber, for a shave. While inside it became clear that most of the garrison were away. Later that day he returned with Mark, and claimed that he had lost the key to his watch. They were allowed in, overpowered the three soldiers present, and claimed the castle for the Jacobites. Some sources say that he gave brandy to the soldiers in order to incapacitate them.

Reinforcements did not arrive to support the Erringtons, so when a detachment of 100 men arrived from Berwick to retake the castle they were only able to hold out for one day, before being captured.

Later life
Lancelot, along with his nephew, was able to tunnel out of Berwick Tolbooth and escape. A pardon was issued and he was able to live out the rest of his life as a publican in Newcastle upon Tyne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot_Errington

My dad's aunt was a fence. I remember visiting her house down in Blackpool a few times when we were on family holidays and marvelling at some of the stuff she had in it - now I know where it came from! Her sons were housebreakers and thieves and one of them died on a railway line while being pursued by the police. Apparently one of them, when my parents were not long married, tried to get my mother to "look after" some items for them and my paternal grandfather found out and went absolutely ballistic.