Have you opened a Pandora's box?

[Gaille]

hmmmm well I have:

My dads cousins son who was adopted by an aunt as a baby after his mother died, and dad was away in WW2................ after the war he was brought up and adopted by his aunt, his birth father re-married and the children of the 2nd marriage do not know this son is their half brother not their cousin (so my tree is 'edited' slightly so I dont cause a family upset!)

I have a young child brought up as the child of a father who isnt his father, but he doesnt know this yet.

A police hero, with a brother who served time for the murder of his wife (which had it happened recently he would never have been convicted for)

lol and ........... well I can do maths with birth and marriage details - even if some of my family cant!
hehe my nana was SO anti 'children before marriage' it was untrue - I discovered her mum n dad married 6 weeks before her eldest borther was born - lol admittedly he DOES seem to be a genuine premie birth, i have 'crisom' baptism cert dated the day he was born.................... her father was illigitimate son of a woman whos entire family do not seem to have married until after the 1st child was born to the parents!

what else? well ................. it would seem that despite my nana believing her dad had no living family he had his mother, 4 half brothers and their families and a half sister all alive until well after nana was born ................ but as of yet I have no idea why he lied and said they were all dead!
(ohhh and his father wasnt the one he named on his marriage cert - but he had his name as a middle name - and HE was also alive and re-married with a whole load of children who would be gt-grandads half siblings!)
One day I WILL crack why gt-grandad lied so much about his past!

I am still trying to work out what nana would have made out of my findings about her dads family had she still been with us to hear it - i think I am actually glad I dont have to tell her tho!


Gaille

[rotosis]

Eveyone seems to have a few family secrets.

In 2005 i found out that a reletive of my mothers was illigitamate and i was certaint hat his parents didn't marry until he was about 4, she never believed me until i proved it in front of her in 2008 with a baptism certificate for him under his mothers maiden name, the alos married out of county as was the tradition in those days.

My husbands side...............well, that was a shocker.

With his great grandmotherwe started out with 3 children and ended up with 12.  On top of that his grandfathers was pronounced illigitamte on his birth certificate, and he left her, she then went on to have 7 more children to someone else, married him before number 7 arrived bigimus marriage at that.  Got back togther with her husband and had another son.  On top of all that when her actual husband died in the paper it said " Loved husband of"  yeah right.  My husbands grandfather was not illigitamate, we have since found out.  He looks to much like his fathers family, and his son was the splitting imaged of his great uncle.

Another story that is actually in print is the husband who murdered his wife in a fit of artistic insanity and ended up in a mental institute for the rest of his life.




Nothing else right now....................still searching

[turramurra]

Have 3 convicts and still searching
They all married and had useful lives in Australia ... one ended up quite well off.

But the upheaval in my box of stories is  my great grandfather.
 Grimshaw PICKUP who married in Lancashire .
 After 7 children his wife died and Grimshaw just left !! and began again with a marriage and fathered 5 more offspring in Melbourne, Australia.

A can of worms we have discovered. a shame as all the people who could have shared this are long since gone
The family name was changed around 1910 so perhaps they had a hint of a host of step brothers and sisters in that far off Lancashire town.
I wish I knew  the story !
Turramurra

[Lydart]

Just think how BORING this hobby of ours would be if everyone in the past had children more than nine months after the wedding; fathered children with the woman they were married to; all children were registered with full and correct names, which later appeared correctly on censuses; they lived 'clean' lives, and ultimately died quietly in bed at the ripe old age of ??

Its the scandals, crimes, disappearances which make this all so interesting !

[MarieC]

You are spot on, Lydart!! 

MarieC

[Annie65115]

Oh goodness - I have today discovered that this one seems to be one of mine, so to speak!

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRtidd.htm

further internet trawling has brought up seom , ahem "lively" details of the execution 

[coombs]

And just think how boring our trees would be if we found all our ancestors at the flick of a button. Waiting and getting the triumph after the wait is part of the fun. And yes we need a Pandora's Box to fruit up our trees.

[snaptoo]

Hi!

Am really only just starting on FH, so have not had a chance to open Pandors's box yet, but...................................!

Must be 35 years or so ago Pandora's box opened itself   My father received a letter from someone who we had never heard of - let us call him 'David' for these purposes! He explained that he had been adopted by a couple, and after his adoptive parents had died, he was going through his adoptive mother's papers and found a letter with our address on it! It was addressed to the person who he had always known as his 'Auntie'.

That letter was from my father to his sister. She had obviously passed it on to 'David's adoptive mother for some reason - cannot remember why after all this time!

'David' asked if we would agree to meet him, which we did of course - on neutral territory! After that first meeting, we kept in regular contact with both him and his wife for a few years. They visited us at home and we visited them at their home, even after my father died - a year or two after that first meeting.  Then, sadly, 'David' suddenly closed the lid  on  Pandora's box, and we never heard from them again!   So sad, as we are his only family.
His 'Auntie', was of course, his birth mother, and of course my Auntie!

I would dearly love to see him again. I often think about him!

Snaptoo

[Zen rabbit]

Speaking of Pandora's boxes this scene flashed through my head.....
"What do you mean Dad? Clark Kent isn't your real name??!"
Imagine trying to find the GRO for Krypton