Interesting Article:"When Genealogy Digs Up Unwanted Secrets" Oh My!

[Designer Jeans]

Some secrets are easier to come to terms with than others.

My gt grandmother died when she was 30 for the want of antibiotics (cellulitis of the tongue) leaving six children under ten years of age.  My grandmother, who was five at the time, was sent to live with an aunt (alcoholic) and uncle who were childless, where she was abused by said uncle.  Eventually she became pregnant.  Fortunately, by this time she was courting grandad and managed to get him to the registry office just 10 days before the baby was born.

Nanna didn't tell anyone until after grandad had passed away and she was 99.

[myluck!]

People and their reactions are almost as interesting as researching family history!

Many are not aware of actual history and their reactions therefore to family history are tainted by this lack of knowledge in some cases.

What I have come across are the people who are proved wrong for having set notions; especially around religious belief, politics, diseases, etc.

What I wonder about is when did the secret become a secret? some you can realise started day one but others may just have stopped being talked about as I have sometimes had a reaction such as "do you what I had forgotten about him"

I always try to pass on information in a historic context to help people accept what they perceive to be unpalatable.

My OH's aunt was horrified that her father was arrested for stealing a feather bed, it seems to have been his only ever crime and it was within a week of his mother's death. My sincere feeling is that it was a dispute/misunderstanding over property but anyway........

[Wred]

I like to think we are more understanding of people and the circumstances of their lives in the past. Illegitimacy, my family had more than their fair share but how would we feel about our ancestors committing more serious crimes.

A second cousin of my great grandfather probably killed her 5 year old son  (strange tale - she was convicted but body was not her son who had disappeared). One of hubbies relations was charged but acquitted of similar crime, while other single mothers ( at the time and area) were known to have thrown their new born babies into the sea in a horrible act of desperation. Such crimes still shock and others like ggg-grandfathers's cousin who was sent for trial but discharged over a child rape can be appalling.
As an individual living a very different world I treat these as facts of my family's history, something that cannot be changed and are no reflection on me . I started researching my family to out about their lives and must take on the good and the bad.

[drodgers34]

Stalking the dead I like to call it

If theres something the person wouldnt have liked published, do you publish ?

Considering they dont get the right of reply, which our current open mindedness would want to give them if they were alive

I often think of this when wdytya gets into slavery etc.

[myluck!]

I met a lady recently, interestingly as I was entering the GRO offices,
she was not there for the purpose of family history.
As I had to sign-in and state my business she started to speak to me,
and rather surprising to me she was furious at anyone "prying into the past";
she quite angrily told me what she thought of it all to both my surprise and that of the receptionist
and finished by saying and "my grandson had the nerve to put a photograph of my parents on a computer"!
I didn't stay to discuss, in fact I probably abandoned the receptionist to her if I'm honest!

To each his own but it makes you realise that it doesn't need to be as serious as murder to upset some people!

[aelfric]

I'm with Voltaire on this (no doubt he's really pleased about that) - "To the living we owe respect: to the dead we owe only truth."

My ancestors seem to have been either pillars of virtue or good at covering up, which is rather boring, but my wife is convinced I relish the teenage pregnancies, toyboys, suicide and syphilis in her family in Victorian times.  She's right.

On the other hand my ancestors can be traced in several lines back to Norwich at least as far as Elizabeth I.  That is about halfway back to the affair of St William of Norwich, when the good citizens kicked off the rumours which developed into the Blood Libel.  Chances are reasonable that I've got that in the tree somewhere.

Another, rough, quote: Felipe Armanez-Ernesto said something like "the only reasonable response for anyone to the history of their country, whatever the country, is shame"