It's rather odd, but apparently EVERYONE in the family during that time period knew about this. And even though gr-uncle Bert was killed in 1909 and dad was not born until 1916, he obviously knew all about it.
It's hard to explain, but grandda had 11 siblings. Of course all of them knew of it - it was their own brother. And Bert's children obviously knew it - they were there.
But as near as we can gather, other than Bert's children, no other children of any of the brothers and sisters knew about it - except for my dad. And now as we think about it, my aunts and uncles had to have known it, too.
How dad knew it - we are unclear on this. Dad swore that the entire family had died off long before he was born.
And yet, we have discovered that dad not only knew of his aunts and uncles, but some of them came to visit a time or two. And this information we ended up discovering through my grandmother's first husband's family, of all places!
No one in the family today can figure out why my dad was trying to make very sure that we would believe we had no living family at all. This goes off the topic a little, but it still adds to the family history and mystery of the whole bunch.
If I were to take what the census records show concerning all of grandda's family - in 1900, they all show their parents born in Ireland. In 1910, a couple of them (living in the same house with others) showed parents born in Northern Ireland. In 1920, more of them showed N. Ire.
Throughout these census records, my grandda always put Ireland. And grandda moved his family out of Minneapolis in 1915, and went to Iowa. And in 1930, ALL of the living siblings of grandda listed Northern Ireland as birthplace of the parents. Grandda put Irish Free State. AND, he had moved his family to Colorado by 1930, which TOTALLY separated the family forever.
Plus, by making this notation on the census records, unless a person knew for a fact that they were looking at the right person on the 1930 census record, and knew where he was located in 1930, they would NEVER connect the families together. Which in effect, separated them even further.
The family listing place of birth for their parents, and there being such a major discrepancy here - this tells me that the family as a whole may have split apart as they basically took sides concerning the war in Ireland.
When you would try to get dad to talk about his family history - he would say things like - my family was all hung for stealing sheep in Ireland; or they're all dead now, we're the last of the line; or the whole d**n bunch was no good, I never knew any of them.
When we tried to ask mom about what she knew (after dad had passed away) mom would say things such as - you don't want to be digging into THAT family. You'd be finding some skeletons in the closet you'd wish you'd NEVER found. One of her more "dire" remarks would be - they were all a bunch of no good killers, don't be trying to find ANY of that bunch!
So, it was precisely BECAUSE of these remarks that I went searching for my family. Which led to the discoveries in the census records of how the family split apart over Irish politics and affairs, and ultimately led to finding the story of gr-uncle Bert.
Patty Quinn
