Tuesday, July 12, 2016

When the Family's Story
Doesn't End Happily Ever After


There are times, when we follow the ancestral trails of our family's history, that we encounter some stories that don't turn out as well as we'd hoped. That "happily ever after" can't possibly ring true in every case of family history, but in some episodes we stumble across, the account might even be chilling.

As I've worked through my project to catalog all the descendants of my mother in law's ancestors, John and Mary Duke Gordon, the other day I ran across an account so horrific, I hardly could bring myself to even acknowledge its place in the family tree. This is the kind of thing that surely only happens to others. But what do you do when the story does, in fact, belong to your own people?

Every family faces some hardships. Sometimes, it is in how families overcome their adversities that they become strengthened. For those stories, there is that redeeming feature that allows the family to be brave enough to divulge those initial difficulties. Those difficulties become a prelude leading up to a better resolution.

This, however, is not the kind of problem I'm talking about here. An episode like this, when it does happen, causes a shocked response. It's something people won't forget.

Long before acts of terrorism became part of our lexicon, these were the type of activity that one hoped would never occurbut once they did occur, could never be forgotten. An example of such a memory from my own childhood years would be the tower shooting at the University of Texas at Austin.

When tragic events such as this occurred, people clung to every news report, not only to hear who had fallenand who had survivedbut, in the aftermath, to hear some consolation that this devastation would never happen again. That this was not simply some sub-human monster who perpetrated all this, but that there was a reason why things went wrong.

I'm sure that was the type of response people had when they opened their newspapers, from New York to Missouri, as the year of 1894 drew to a close. Surely, in the news report they faced, this was a "madman" who had just perpetrated a heinous crime. That's how the newspapers portrayed him. And yet, only a few hours earlier, he was the gentlest of fathers whose only complaint was a nagging headache.

What do you do when you find such a storyand then realize it fits right into a slot in your own family tree? Do you doubt it and search for the "real" story to replace the family's "myth"? Do you keep looking for the reason why it really wasn't that way? Do you ignore the whole episode, and simply plug in name, dates of birth, marriage and death, and hope the rest gets forgotten in time? Or do you let your quest to uncover roots lead you to uncover the roots of what happened here, as well as what happened in the constant litany of generations? It is, after all, part of the family history. And sometimes, we just have to let history be history. And let it be told.



Above: "The Bay," 1901 oil on canvas by Swedish painter, Carl Wilhelmson; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

16 comments:

  1. Jacqi, I hope you'll share more...whatever this horrific event was, it surely shaped the lives of your mother-in-law's family in a profound way.

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    1. Yes, Marian, I certainly will. It won't be easy, of course, simply because of the nature of the event. Although it wasn't something that affected my mother in law, herself--the relationship was much more distant than that--it was such a gruesome occurrence that I find it hard to read the newspaper reports, even over a century later.

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  2. Sometimes the situation calls for dialogue but long ago some things were never talked about.

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    1. I've found some generations couldn't bring themselves to even mention difficult parts of their lives. And that isn't just concerning situations from long, long ago. As recently as the World War II generation, people have observed how powerful some of those traumatic experiences were to those who lived through them--and yet, those very difficult times were often never talked about afterwards. Yet, you know the effect felt from these experiences were devastating. Too hard to even talk about.

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  3. A gggf was killed by a son. Newspapers reported the death, the accusations, the testimony in the Coroner's Inquest, the trial. The son was sent away to serve his sentence, but a cloud followed the rest of the family in unspoken parenthetical remarks for decades. Not "fair," but real life and community opinion often does not hinge on fairness.

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    1. Those are the type of episodes that make me wonder, when discovering an ancestor who "disappeared," or moved far away, or irrevocably cut off ties with the rest of the family. Was there a story like this, hidden behind the "unexplained" separation?

      What a tragic occurrence you bring up, Geolover, but also what a clear demonstration of the need to read between the lines as we coax out the true strands of our families' stories.

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  4. There is a horrible story in my family too, but the horrible part has remained a secret although the outcome has been uncovered. No court records to research because my ancestor ran away. What did he do? I know his descendants would welcome the story, whatever it is.

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    1. It's frustrating to discover that the "secret"--likely shared in the town's gossip while it unfolded--was sealed shut to future generations simply by virtue of lack of any written records. In one way, it's probably for the best that details of some of these tragedies aren't made explicit. But in our quest to understand the mysterious quirks of our own family history, sometimes understanding these details helps uncloud the circumstances.

      Those disappearing siblings in a family--I often wonder about those. Sometimes too glibly dismissed as "oh, he headed west to the gold rush" or "oh, he went away to war, and was never heard from again," they become suspicious by virtue of their murky presentation.

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  5. when researching my aunt's family who had always been told her grandfather had accidently killed her grandmother, I found the facts very disheartening...he had shot her in a drunken rage right between the eyes....when he got out of prison no one but one child would have anyhting to do with him....he hung himself in their shed....I HATED telling them the truth, but after the initial shock they were all grateful that the truth came out....

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    1. This is one of the examples that always make us wonder, when they are part of our family's story. Thanks for sharing that, Sandy. It must, indeed, have been difficult to reveal that discovery to your aunt's family. The human drama is indeed very real--and always leaves the family wondering, especially in cases such as that grandfather, what really happened...and could something have been done differently?

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    1. Oh, believe me, I am in no hurry to cut to the chase. The details are quite gruesome, and I'm finding myself struggling over this story--and it isn't even my relative!

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  7. There is a horrific story in my husband's family (1968) where the husband of his cousin killed his family (3 sons), his wife and himself. Because my father-in-law was very close to the situation (first family member called to the house), we know more of the backstory than what was even in the newspapers (which I found on microfilm). I have the story written down for posterity (?) but won't blog about it for a looong time (if ever).

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    1. That's so understandable, Elizabeth. There is no explaining how difficult these experiences can be for family. Worse, just relying on newspaper accounts can be misleading, as I've discovered from other tragic family stories I've unearthed. It's probably a good thing you have preserved your father in law's story for future generations, but totally understandable if you need to keep it private for a while longer--especially as it involves people still living who may, more properly, need to be in agreement before the story is shared.

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  8. Jacqi,

    I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2016/07/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-july-15-2016.html

    Have a great weekend!

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    1. Thank you, Jana! I appreciate what you do with your weekly roundup!

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