My aunt didn't lose her teaching job due to budget cuts like she'd always claimed. Turns out she had never had a valid teaching license to begin with, regularly had affairs with the dads, and embezzled PTA money!
My parents got divorced when I was about 3 years old. I stayed in contact with my mother but my father got full custody, as mom apparently relinquished custody because of her financial situation and claimed she made the difficult decision of giving custody to my dad for the sake of us kids, because he could provide a better life for us. "The most difficult sacrifice she ever made". On several occasions my mother would also get drunk and lament her life and say something to the effect of, "I never should've left your father. He was a good guy, he didn't deserve that. We would've been happy."
I had heard variations on it a bunch of times, so one day I decided to share it with my dad. I was in my mid-20s at that point. My dad, who at no point in my life *ever* discussed the divorce or my mom, replied,
"She said that?"
Yeah.
"I left her because of her alcoholism and drug use and how she was always drunk during the pregnancy and while you were little. Kids deserve a safe home to grow up in."
I later got that verified from my maternal grandmother. Apparently everyone knew but never bothered to tell me that my dad was the one who left mom because she was a druggie and an alcoholic, and she didn't have to "make the difficult sacrifice of giving dad custody because he could provide a better life for us", the court straight up gave dad custody after a court battle where my mom was deemed unfit to be a parent because of said substance abuses.
For about 20 years, I'd thought my dad got dumped by my mom but turns out, he was just a really good parent and made the right choice for us kids.
>Never dumped dirt on the mother as well
That's what really stood out to me too. If a parent ever needed a reason to bad mouth an ex he certainly had it but didn't.
Also commendable that you made it to adulthood without him actively throwing your mom under the bus. Some parents would have been hammering that into your head even as a child, further damaging your perception of and relationship with your mom.
This happened to my sister in law.
Her sister is really her mother, and her parents are her grandparents.
The real mother had my sister in law at a young age, and so the mothers parents decided yo take care of the child instead. My sister in law always knew something was amiss, but got actual confirmation about 3 or 4 years ago. She is now close to being 40.
Also, it's helpful to know that many families are "screwed up". People compare their own family to a standard that is falsely perfect and can't understand why their family has deviated from the norm. The answer: amazing "irregularities" ARE the norm.
My great aunt was a nurse supervisor at a mental hospital in the 1920s. She fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated for a murder trial. She helped him escape and they went to Florida. But the police caught up with them. My aunt got off easy, but he got the electric chair. I found all this in a newspaper archives while working on family history. Showed it to my mom and she admitted it was all true.
Newspapers.com has uncovered some wild shit about the family. Scandals, murders, con men. They printed everything back then.
We think people post everything to social media? I could read what was said in a police investigation room
Heh.
My grandfather was a Postal Inspector (essential a cop who investigated postal crimes) in LA in the 50's.
I found several stories on Newspapers.com on the front page of the Los Angeles Times about arrests he made for things like stealing letters out of mail boxes, totally minor stuff that wouldn't even be noted in a local paper today. They not only described the crime and suspect in detail, they would they also print the suspect's full home address.
It was a different time apparently.
Yes, in the past the newspapers used to print names, addresses, names of relatives, etc. It is shocking to read an article and see all that information for everybody to see.
My sister and I found out in our mid/late-20s that we had a full-on brother. Our dad got our mom pregnant in high school and cause it was the 60s it was all hush-hush and she went to do her senior year “with family” and just quietly came back to town. They ended up getting together for real in college and no one knew - not their life-long friends or even my uncle. Our brother had a good childhood with his adoptive family, but he was always curious about his birth mother so he wrote her a letter. He sure was surprised to also come to meet his dad and two sisters. Crazy thing is he didn’t live too far away and we all look extremely alike. Would have been weird if we’d have bumped into each other otherwise.
This is what happened to my mother. She was adopted and a few years ago started looking into it. Teenagers got pregnant in high school, adopted out the baby, then ended up staying together and having some more children.
They'd never told their children, so awkward conversation when she matched with them on Ancestry.
My mother is kid #7 of 10. My aunt (kid #4) who was born in 1945 did her DNA and found out that she has a different father from everyone else. She was devastated. There was always rumor that there was an affair but nobody talked about it. She has so many questions but nobody's alive to answer her.
That's super common. Back in the early 90s when I was getting my anthropology degree, one of the professors talked about how when genetic testing would get cheaper, that this would be common.
My dad's mom was a piece of work. She left the oldest two kids with her husband and took off across the country for a better life. A week later she called him and told him to come pick up the younger ones, and he did.
After their divorce (for adultery) she remarried to a guy who thought she was a virgin, and had a couple of kids with him. She came home every year to visit her mom, and saw her kids too. After she started her new family, she made my dad and his sibs refer to her as auntie, and to her new kids as their cousins.
That secret finally came out when the new kids became adults as my aunt ratted her out. Her mom had the nerve to call her up and bitch her out for ruining her life.
My youngest aunt found through DNA testing that the man who raised her was not her dad. It's suspected that her next older brother is likely not his either, as he looks nothing like any of the other kids. My dad and his older sister could pass as twins.
I didn't know any of this until my presumed dad was found out not to be my dad through DNA testing, and I met the guy in this effed up family described above.
I raised my kids, I know who their dads are (married twice, and one of my kids is adopted) and we have no secrets. I'm done with that shit.
My great great grandfather was killed by my great great grandmother because she was having an affair with the sheriff and my GGgrandfather said he was going to kill the sheriff. My GGgrandmother shot him in the street and everyone assumed it was the sheriff. There was no proof and no "witnesses" so no-one was ever charged with his murder. My GGgrandmother told my great aunt on her deathbed. Also after all of her children had passed away. She said she still loved the sheriff. And would've done it again.
Side note. The sheriff died from a fall the next summer so after all that happened my GGgrandmother she spent the rest of her life unmarried. She was 102 when she died.
I love these stories. My husband is looking for his older half brother who was placed for adoption. His brother is biracial and his young mom was unmarried and living with her racist parents. It was her greatest regret.
My uncle was a cop. My father was a mid-level drug kingpin. He basically ran the marijuana & psychedelics trade in a small city.
When I was a kid my uncle died in the line of duty. There was a big funeral and everything.
Turns out he wasn't killed in the line of duty. The cops found out that my father was paying him for cop information. When he was accused, my uncle ate a gun in his squad car in a parking lot.
I found out 30 years later.
As you can guess, he was a terrible person. My mother divorced him after she came home to find him banging a prostitute in our living room. She remarried to a kind, intelligent, and compassionate man who became my dad (I'm very fortunate). I haven't seen my natural father in decades. No idea if he's even alive.
My mother was Catholic.
After eight kids she would "go visit family" when she got pregnant.
The Catholic church would take the baby and re-home it with a "barren" Catholic family.
I met a Greek Catholic brother. He looked like all of us but had a Greek name and Greek parents.
My mom worked as a United airlines stewardess, starting in the late 70s, but told me that up until the mid to late 60s, United (along with most airlines back then,) wanted stewardess to be single, without children.
So, they did the same thing as the catholic church. housed pregnant stews someplace, and put their children up for adoption after birth. My mom knew several women that happened to.
My Dad worked in a store during the 1950's. An unmarried sales girl got pregnant by a stock boy. Unmarried meant no pregnancy coverage on health insurance. Boss submitted it as Workers Comp! It went through!
Wait, wtf? United Airlines would house pregnant employees and then adopt the kids out to someone else? Like, the pregnant women were all like "screw having kids, I can't jeopardize this sweet gig as a flight attendant with United?"
It’s hard to believe it now because flight attendants are not considered prestigious, but even in the early 80s it was still considered a very desirable and glamorous job. Being a stewardess meant that you were very pretty, thin, hung out with rich people, lived in hotels. It was like being a model.
My maternal grandmother had two kids who were biologically my grandfather's kids, my mother and aunt. Then two boys who weren't my grandpa's bio kids. She never said who fathered the older of those two, and ancestry hasn't turned up anything for him. She then moved in with father of the younger boy, without getting a divorce, leaving all the other kids with grandpa. Cheated on that guy and had another boy, and was forced to give him up for adoption, because he refused to raise another man's child.
Years later she was scandalized when my sister got pregnant without being married, and when we pointed out that we were aware of her past, she was all "that's different, I was married." I guess in her mind it didn't matter if weren't married to the person you were having kids with, you just had to be married to someone.
My college boyfriend is a real POS and likes to drug women so he can rape their unconscious bodies when holding them down so he can rape them while conscious gets to be too hard/boring. He’s gotten at least four women I know of pregnant (no protection needed while they’re unconscious, right?) including myself. Three of us either miscarried or aborted and one has his child. I would be shocked if there weren’t more out there.
He’s currently awaiting trial, over 100 witnesses and over 15 victims have come forward spanning over 30 years.
I once served my kid my grandmas secret family recipe bean soup (Campbells from a can, just like my grandma made it), and she loved it and begged for the recipe. She was six so I don’t know what she thought she was going to do with it. I promised to tell her when she’s older.
I add my touch to bottled butter chicken sauce. I peel off the labels and hide the empty jars . No one knows. They all want my recipe but I don’t have one !
At age 43 I learned I had a half sister. My father had an affair and she was conceived after my brother was born, but before I was.
She reached out to me, and is a lovely human. We have been in contact ever since, have traveled together, and I have visited her several times.
Me too.
The day after I found out I sent my father a dozen pink carnations, and an It's a Girl balloon with the note- "Congratulations on the birth of your first daughter, in 1970. I would have liked to have known I had a sister!"
The florist was quite amused. I guarantee he tells that story too.
My junkle (junkie uncle) revealed the sheer amount of crime that him and his junkie mates would commit to help my dad and his business.
My dad had them steal from other competitors, stealing tools and wrecking their work sites.
They would steal documents relating to competitors who were bidding for their same jobs.
They would "steal" company cars and burn them so they could claim the insurance money.
The funniest was that my dad threw a tantrum on site since they all called him the fat controller. My uncle said "you pay me $50 a week and I'll fix that for you, since you want to be such a little bitch"
My dear mum, ignorant as hell, thought my dad was putting extra effort in to get healthy. Turns out my uncle was just making custom capsule tablets with tiny amounts of meth on them and my dad was losing weight faster than ever.
It's a drop in the ocean compared to some other comments, but my dad always portrays himself as some holier than thou authority. He's such a closet crook.
EDIT 1: I seriously thought this 1 small sliver of my family chaos would be ignored, but I wanted to list off some other random wild shit they get up to for your entertainment.
* There's no doubt my uncle had a terrible childhood, being spoiled as the youngest child and then institutionally abused as a child in boarding school.
His life spun into chaos and his drug dependence followed
* My immediate family started their adult lives and the amount of bridges burnt between either friend and/or working relationships is like Mr Incredible seeing the rolling list of supers killed by Syndromes robot. It's mind blowing that my family can even still show their face in public...
* My Dad would set up fake looking building firms and pretend that he was tendering for a huge job, getting all local builders and subcontractors to give him their prices as they were bidding for "massive jobs" really, he just wanted to get their prices to undercut them or have them think they can't take on other jobs (thinking they had a big amount of work in the pipeline)
* When my dad was in his late teens my grandparents offered him a world trip. He said no, and that he wanted to stay and look after the family farm, as he wanted to practise running everything. My grandparents then left a sizeable amount of money for the day-to-day items and left clear expectations (it was a very successful farm) and upon returning they found everything in complete and utter ruins, with all the money being spent on a huge V8 engine that was slapped into my dad's car. They had to deal with all the locals telling stories of my dad chasing prostitutes in his "loud death machine" while completely ignoring the farm.
* My dad was given $400,000 in the 90s to buy a very nice piece of land. That's worth almost 1 million adjusted for inflation. My dad has not payed back a cent. This one is hard because even with his silver spoon shoved up his ass, none of that was used to treat us kids, it all went into the land itself and his whimsical business ideas. Us kids had a family trust set up and I found paperwork not long ago showing all of it withdrawn through many legal loopholes and trips to the solicitor to have it withdrawn and used to bail him out of yet ANOTHER shit idea of his.
He's somehow snaked his way into obtaining other money from wills and none of it has been used to help his adult kids.
* I haven't even started on the shit my mum gets up to...... How they are still married is something that would break the minds of the world greatest Psychs.
My mother did 23 and me and found that she matched with an unknown niece who looked exactly like her older brother. Her brother had an extramarital affair and had a baby without his knowledge. He passed away some 30 years ago when the baby was around 10.
When my parents got married it was because my mom got pregnant with my brother. (That’s not the secret, everybody has always known that). Mom’s parents practically kicked her out of the house. My dad had already left for the air force (he had to fly back for a quickie wedding after basic). This was the early 1960’s so still a bit scandalous. Mom ended up moving in with her new in-laws so she could finish her last year of college before joining my dad in Texas and later Japan.
20- some years later, everyone was preparing for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. ( moms parents, the ones who kicked her out for getting pregnant without being married). My grandma got real upset and said, we can’t celebrate 50, we’ve only been married 49 years. This was a shock to everyone because my mom’s oldest brother was 50. Turns out if they had gotten married my grandpa would have been kicked out of high school, so they hid the pregnancy/baby until he graduated. After enough time had passed they just told everyone the earlier date.
Even though they did the exact same thing, they couldn’t bring themselves to show any sympathy for their own daughter in that situation.
We did an Ancestry DNA test, and found out my dad has a half sister. Turns out Grandpa had been seeing her mother on the side for probably more than a decade, and also had at least one other long-term affair.
My great great grandfather was a huge financial success in the 1920’s, owned a bunch of businesses, pillar of the community type, half the town worked for him. Built himself a huge mansion at the edge of town with all the modern conveniences. Lost everything in the stock market crash of the Great Depression, went out on his front porch, sat in a chair and blew his head off with a shotgun. Everybody was involved in covering it up, not just the family, but the local authorities and the newspapers too. His obituary even said that he had died of natural causes, though the whole town knew better. It was passed down as legend for generations that he had died young of natural causes, though no one ever mentioned why the family was suddenly poor. I found an entry in my great grandmother’s diary long after she had passed where she wrote about the whole episode.
Now you got me questioning my great grandfather who died young of natural causes lol
Heart condition? Dead before 30? In pictures hes a young, strong cowboy.
Now I wonder…
In fairness, there was also a lot of actually dying young of natural causes going on back then too. Medicine has come a real long way between then and now
My defacto uncle (he and my aunt never married but have been together since well before I was born, with a few hiccups) has a child with another woman. It became common knowledge when the girl was 6 and was starting to understand the situation.
At first it was a bit scandalous but she's been welcomed with open arms by my entire family, including her half-siblings' maternal grandparents, she's treated the same as all the other kids her age. Her half-sister (my cousin) has a daughter the same age and they're best friends, go to the same high school, totally inseparable, technically aunt and niece haha. She comes to all our family events and she's an awesome kid, we're all stoked to have her in our family!
Aw this one’s actually sweet. Imagine how cool it is for a six year old to suddenly have double the amount of loving people in their lives, once the initial confusion wears off.
One of my adult cousins killed herself last year, and in her suicide note accused her father of molesting her since she was a child.
And that's the start of the story.
My mom was having an affair with a schizophrenic dude she met in a bar, got pregnant and just let her husband believe I was his my whole life.
When she was sick in the hospital and looped out drugs she starting mumbling on about my dad not being my real dad. 23andMe test later and secrets out!
Both bio and raised me dads had been dead 20 years when I found out.
My mom, per her personality just shrugged and admitted it once I knew for sure (I connected with a second cousin on 23 and me who helped me narrow down who my father was).
It didn't really change anything for us it was already a strained relationship. I found out a couple weeks before covid so not really seeing my mom for the next couple years wasn't a big deal, we still talked on the phone.
I ended up meeting some cousins and bio dads brother, that's been cool.
I'm like 4 inches taller and traditionally better looking than my (half) siblings I grew up with so I guess thanks mom for the more attractive DNA?
Once I connected with his family they told me he was a diagnosed schizophrenic. I was terrified when I found out because I have 2 young kids. Drs have told me it's not totally hereditary but can increase chances.
I found one out myself. In My great great grandfather spent years in prison for volationing of the Comstock act. Anthony Comstock himself testified in 1904 at the trial that it was the largest collection of pornography he had ever seen.
Lol damn grandpa.
My FIL's dad had a massive porn collection, almost his whole basement. No one had been down there in decades because that was his area. His sons were so shocked when they saw it. They were in their late 60s at the time. We threw away two dumpsters of porn.
My great aunt was a prostitute. Her husband, my great uncle was a john.
I guess this wasn't super shocking to the older generation or her siblings. But to my age group, we just knew her as a sweet old lady and my uncle as a gruff but kindhearted old man, so that was sort of a strange thought.
My grt grandparents ran a brothel in lower Manhattan. I still have pictures of them standing in front of it, and my grandma has pictures of the inside and you can see pregnant women walking around in clothes that would’ve been considered scandalous at the time. It gave my grt aunt so much trauma that she became agoraphobic and died a hoarder in her apartment. So wild to me cause that area is now so insanely wealthy.
One of my great grampas and his brother killed their abusive stepdad, chopped him up with an axe, put him in weighted down coffee cans, and dumped him in a river.
It came out as a deathbed confession.
My brother was on a TV show called Top Cops. Real life police stories. Anyway, after it aired he got a phone call from a woman in California (we are Canadian) who recognized our unusual family name. She told him that she was the illegitimate daughter of my grandfather on my Dad's side. News to us. Anyway, my Dad had already passed as did his parents, but it was an interesting story.
My mom's family is Appalachian mountain folk. l have Native American features.
So l asked my mom. And got told vehemently that I'm 100% white.
So after my mom died l was going through stuff. Found out that not only was her grandmother (my great grandmother) Cherokee, but my biological father is also.
I found a wonderful picture of my tiny Cherokee ggm standing hand in hand with my incredibly tall Welsh ggp. I treasure that picture.
Family also from Appalachia (McCoy). I was always told growing up that my grandma was 1/2 Cherokee. Then, I did 23andMe and found out I have a decent amount from African descent. It was much more acceptable in my family to be Native American than Black.
The story was always that my two cousins were adopted and not related to each other even. People sometimes would ask them if they were twins. They would say "Nope, we're adopted."
Somehow it got out that their bio mom was their younger aunt. The older sister adopted and raised both girls as her own. Younger aunt/mom got married and started a family before all this came out too. It was a wild journey.
I have heard this is common in Catholic families. They hide the illegitimate pregnancy and someone in the family adopts the child or pretends it is an older married family member's child. This was in the early 80s so I guess it was possible to get away with it.
Not Catholic, but when I was born to my unwed teen mom, her family decided my aunt who couldn't have kids would raise me. My mom refused.
But your fam's situation was fairly common as a choice for unwed mothers.
Grandpa was a pedo. Mom waited until grandma was dead to share the news. I wasn't surprised as I always felt uncomfortable around him, and he was always a dick
Ugh this in my family except about my parents’ grandpa (my great-grandfather). The women in the family keep hush, waiting for Grandma to die because they can’t stand to tell her that her dad was molesting her own children all those years back. I just don’t get it, different times …but I don’t agree with protecting child molesters past or present. But I let it be.
My family too except it happened to me. Finally told my family when I was 15 and it mostly stopped. Twelve years later I find out the molester had also done it to my aunt before I was born, and that everyone knew. Yet they gave the bastard access to me and left me alone with him all the time. Completely blows my mind. The anger I have towards them for not keeping me away from him, knowing what he has already done, is soul crushing. I love my family, but I’ll never understand their thought process.
This makes me so incredibly angry on your behalf. I am so sorry you weren’t protected like you should have been. I know the conflicting feelings of still loving those that were supposed to keep you safe. I hope you’re doing okay now. Sending you love. ❤️
In 8th grade I had to do a family tree, which required that I call my grandparents who were 1,200 miles away to ask them about their parents. I got to have two great grandparents but I didn’t know much about the others. My grandmother told me that the man we all thought to be her dad was actually her stepfather. My dad and his siblings didn’t even know. She was conceived illegitimately and when her biological father found out, he moved to another state and got married. She never met him. She was born in 1928 and this conception and being fatherless was shameful.
Later in life, my grandma had dementia. She couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast but she talked about her horrible childhood. My grandma was in her 80s and a devout Catholic who didn’t talk about sex but she told me her stepfather raped her repeatedly. She wept and told me about what she had to tell my grandpa on their wedding night, to not expect blood. My grandpa was the sweetest man in the world and he told her it didn’t matter and the times with her stepfather didn’t count as far as he was concerned.
It was a little icky but more heartbreaking, and all these years I’ve wondered why she picked me to tell these things to. I’m the oldest of 13 grandchildren and she had five kids. I went on to become a therapist and my grandparents were married a few months shy of 70 years when my grandma died.
After he died, we found out my grandpa had an entire other family. He had married and fathered children, but had to keep going on "military leave," which is what he called living with my grandmother in a different state. He eventually left the first family entirely. (This was in the late 40s, early 50s.)
After he died in the late 80s, the first family contacted us and said they'd known about us this whole time, and had been keeping tabs.
I was only 2 at the time, but apparently it was pretty wild. My mother has a ton of siblings because of it. My go-to response when she says she has something exciting to tell me is "what, did you find another secret family member?'
Just found out my missing paternal grandfather was murdered back in the 80s.. he was a scumbag but I'd occasionally try to find out about him because I knew my dad needed closure. He'd been chased out of town by the mafia for running some fraud scheme. I thought it might have to do with that but it turns out he just pissed off some guy at a bar and took one too many bricks to the head.
Fyi.. it did not give my dad closure... He just graduated to feeling family shame... We're working on it..
My grandmother called the cops on my grandpa for domestic violence. He was arrested. During his trial, he was sentenced to either jail OR he could join the military.
He joined the Navy and was stationed in New York. While in New York, he met another woman, got married to her (while still being married to my grandma), and had an entirely new family.
After his discharge, he came back home and resumed life with my grandma, never to speak to the New York family again!
And as an added twist, when he got back home, he was surprised to find he had a new 2 year old daughter. This was a shock since he had been gone for around 5 years. As far as I know, my aunt's real father has remained a mystery.
(I don't know an exact timeline, but this was some time in the 40s, or possibly early 50s. My mom was born in '56 and, by then, all the dust had settled. She didn't know any of this story until she was an adult)
I found out I was adopted when I was 32 years old. My mom's cousin is my real dad. Apparently they tried to take me back when I was 3 years old, but my mom refused. Now my birth parents are both doctors, live in a mansion, and had six more kids. I grew up in poverty.
That the reason my dad joined the military was not because he was the oldest kid in a large family who wanted to get out and finance a college education. He joined the military as part of a plea deal. He got arrested as the getaway driver for an armed robbery. He was only 17 at the time. A deal was worked out that he to was plead guilty and serve a few months in jail, and then when he turned 18 he would join the military.
I also found out recently that the prison my dad served time in was basically the family prison. A handful of his cousins also served time there, and they had sentences that overlapped so they’d meet up in jail. At least one of them had been unaware that the others were in jail because he’d been told that they went away to college. Imagine his surprise when he had a family reunion.
The reason my aunt and uncle never had kids was because my grandparents pressured my aunt into have an abortion before she got married, *because* they weren’t married, and due to complications wound up sterile. Ah. So that explains the constant tension.
Lots of women had back room abortions and either had life long complications like this or died. It's why my grandmother and mom, who are both staunch Christian's, always vote democrat. They both know people who died because of those type of abortions.
Ha! My grandparents did this too. My aunt caught hell for getting pregnant in college. Years later she found Grandpa and Grandma's marriage certificate. Courthouse wedding 6 months before her birthday. Now we know why they never celebrated their anniversary.
What's even more amazing was that Grandma was a fashion model until she was 6 months along, and went back to it after! I have pictures of her in a crop top holding baby #6. (Sadly, I only got the mental illness genes from her line.)
My maternal grandmother was very well known in a community in California. She basically started soccer programs in the town when it was first starting. She died in a car accident with her best friend, they crashed into a haystack truck. My grandma left behind 4 children, I think her best friend left behind 5. There’s a soccer field named after her with a plaque describing how much she meant to the community.
One Thanksgiving my Grandpa and grandma(his next wife) told me that my grandpa knew the first officer on scene personally and he called him up immediately. Before anyone else got there, they removed the alcohol bottles out of the car before anyone else can see. Nobody from the other family knows they were shit faced when they died. A prevailing theory in my family is that they were lovers and committed suicide.
When I was a kid my Dad spent time in prison. I didn't find out why until he was arrested again. He was caught with CSAM on the work computer of the business he shared with his friend and got taken down, but he blamed his friend and got a reduced sentence.
The second time it was because he was basically running his own To Catch a Predator sting. He was going into chatrooms pretending to be a teenaged girl, sending ransomware to people who interacted with him, and blackmailing them to fund his trips to Thailand. One of the people caught in his sting went to the police and he got a few years in prison, and it turned out my father had CSAM on his computer again anyway.
I also found out more recently (and less horrifyingly) that my mom was adopted when she was a kid. She talked to her biological father a few times when I was a baby and tried to get in touch with her mom but she wanted nothing to do with it. She's now in contact with her older half-sister but they haven't met in person.
Edit: clarification
I had a second cousin whose wife had an affair with his dad. So, the kid he thought was his son was really his half-brother. This kid was born in the late 50s I think, but the truth was only revealed decades later.
I was born on my parents first anniversary. I always thought that it was a cool coincidence, and I'd never forget their anniversary.
On my 18th birthday we had some family over for a joint party. I said happy 19th anniversary to my folks. My sister (10 years older & different dad) said "Mom, when are you going to tell him the truth?" I looked at Mom and she just kind of looked down at the ground. Then my sister tells me that my parents got married on my 1st birthday. I asked my mom if it was true and she said yes. I asked her "why didn't you tell me this before?" She said that I had always just assumed that I was born on their anniversary and never corrected me. Now it's a funny little thing that my sister gives me shit about on my birthday.
About a month ago, my mother-in-law's 88 year old sister revealed on her death bed that her husband's best friend was actually the father of all 4 of her children. Her husband was an abusive grade A jerk by all accounts. While everyone was shocked, no one was saddened by this news.
My mom might not actually be my biological mother. I’m a surrogate baby and was told my entire life, even though my mom didn’t birth me, I am 100% biologically my parents kid. Well I’ve been wanting to get one of those 23 and me things done cause I thought learning more about my family could be cool but my mom was SUPER against it (she kept referencing the golden state killer as her argument for the government using my DNA against me or someone else in the family and I was like “??? Mom they caught a serial killer I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing??” Also she’s not a conspiracy nut in ANY OTHER WAY than specifically this, so I thought her reaction was very odd). Anyways, I was out grabbing a drink with my dad a few a weeks ago and I was like “hey btw why is mom so weird about me getting a 23 and me test??” And he explained that *actually* donor eggs were in the mix because my moms eggs weren’t taking so there’s about a 50/50 chance I am NOT in fact biologically related to my mom and my moms a bit freaked about me finding out.
I don’t actually care, my mom is my mom 100%, I’m just curious about my genealogy. I also wanna have kids eventually and would very much like to know if there’s anything I should be looking out for. Not a super dramatic thing (I mean I guess it is to my mom but not to me). I’m not traumatized by this, and actually it kinda makes sense cause I look exactly like my dad, but the few features that aren’t my dads aren’t my moms either. I don’t look like her side of the family at all. The only thing my mom and I have in common is that we’re both blonde but my dad is also blonde so.
Turns out my grandfather helped liberate a concentration camp in World War II and was later indicted for grain theft, avoiding prison only by turning states evidence on his bosses, two facts I uncovered doing family history research.
Gonna be fun this summer when I visit and present all this.
My boomer parents basically "came out" to me as being huge stoners, and I had no clue. Weed is legal in my state. A few years ago, I was in my late 20s, and casually mentioned to my mom that I buy weed edibles sometimes. She didn't really react at first. But later in the day she pulled me aside to have a "serious conversation" about weed. I was expecting some kind of anti-drug spiel, which would have surprised me since she didn't seem like someone who would care. Instead she tearfully confessed to me that she and my dad both love weed and they've been stoners for decades. They hid it from me and my sister, along with most of their friends and the rest of our family. It turns out that she and my dad were constantly sneaking off to the bathroom to smoke when I was a kid. It really did feel like she was "coming out" to me and she was genuinely worried that I'd judge her or think less of her.
I didn't care, I just thought it was funny.
That my dad cheated on my mom and almost missed my mom giving birth to me because he was with his affair partner when she went into labor. And he was trying to get my mom to meet the person he cheated on her with.
We found out after my grandpa died that he had another kid with a woman he met before my grandma. Idk if he ever knew he had a kid. The offspring showed up on one of those ancestry gene websites and said he was open to meeting family so some of the older cousins went out hunting with him.
All this was spilled to me at my cousins wedding two years ago and I guess people in the family had known for a few years. My parents never told me and they still don’t know that I know
After my Grandfather passed my mom told me all about his alcoholism and impulsive behavior. He would empty out the bank account and fly across the world and what not.
My only reaction was to ask why she never mentioned this when the various psychologists she brought me to throughout my childhood would ask about the family having a history of mental illness.
My uncle had a child he didn’t know about until his 80s. His daughter found him due to an ancestry check. It turns out the mom didn’t tell my uncle she was pregnant because they were cousins! And she was a single pregnant woman in the 60s. She gave the child up for adoption and never spoke of it again. She refused to even meet or acknowledge her daughter when she reached out. My uncle however was overjoyed, he never had children in his marriage and has invited his daughter and grandchildren into his life with joy.
I was always told that my mother’s father had “died in the war”. After my mother died my cousins found out that our grandfather was actually alive and had divorced my grandmother when my mom was young. My grandmother, being a good Irish Catholic, told the nuns at the school that she was a widow because the church wouldn’t let a divorced woman’s kids go to Catholic school.
My grandfather had remarried and had a whole other set of kids and grandchildren. My cousins tried to meet him but he wasn’t interested.
This just came out about a month ago when my sister did a 23 and me. My grandfather on my mother's side was supposedly born and raised on the reservation, 100% native american.
Well my sister did a 23 and me a while back and it had 0% native american in her results. She started doing a little digging, and found out our grandfather was not only born some place completely different than he said, but also 10 years earlier. This has left my family completely confused because neither my grandfather or grandmother are here to sort this out any longer, or explain why this dude shaved 10 whole years off of his life and lied about being raised on the reservation. He also had very native american features, some of which I've inherited, which also leaves me wondering a bit. lol
I did ask my mom (jokingly) if she brought the wrong baby home from the hospital when she brought my sister home, but she insists that is not the case. lol
That book set the stage for a lot of really questionable reading in my youth. I honestly doubt we would have the Lannisters or the variety of porn we currently have without VC Andrews
My Grandma always told a wonderful, romantic family legend: Her grandma was a beautiful teenaged peasant girl in Europe & a member of the Royal Family saw her as he was passing by. He instantly fell in love, got married, was disowned by his family for marrying a peasant, died tragically -- an amazing tale!
Alas, those bastards at 23andMe have shown that the story is 100% genetically impossible.
Grandma lied a lot, it seems.
My great-grandma was 3 years older than my great-grandpa and lied about her age in order to be married. He was underage and they had my grandma while still underage.
She was a hoot, apparently.
Edit: Forgot to add that my grandma was born in 1937. This would have been a **huge** scandal back then.
My Great Great Grandfather went to prison for murder. His son in law was very physically abusive, and when his daughter showed up on their door all beaten up, GG Gpa went and shot him.
This was the story passed down for about 100 years.
My aunt is very into our family history and was able to pull up a newspaper article about the murder. The family was having some big party and GG Gpa had been drinking a lot of wine. One of the kids grabs the son in law's hat, runs off, and won't give it back. The son in law finally wrestles the hat back from the kid, which pissed off GG Gpa enough for him to grab a knife and stab his son in law to death.
I found it and spilled it! It doesn't effect anything other than family history though.
Lets call my dad's family name LittleFly. It's the approximate english translation.
I was researching the LittleFly family history on Heritage. I knew we came from France, but that was it.
I followed back no problem until the early 1800's. Then, I found an anomoly.
There was a man and women who had children together. The man's last name was Bell (made up, can't remember), and the woman's name was LittleFly. Half the kids had the LittleFly last name and half had the Bell last name. What?
Turns out, Mr Bell was married to a completely different woman. They had no children together. Mr Bell and Ms LittleFly had like 5 or 6 kids together while the Bells were still married.
From what I can tell Ms LittleFly lived in the same house as the Bells. This wasn't a wealthy family, either. The best I could figure, they gathered reeds from the swamp for fires. Mr Bell may also have worked on the ferries? I'm not sure. It's all in French, I'm not French, and my Heritage subscription has run out.
So! Our family was borne of an affair! I now don't know if I should follow the Bell line or the LittleFly line.
Yeah, I have absolutely no idea if the wife knew about the couple or not. Again, it's early 1800's and in French. All the info I am getting is from Birth/death/marrage info and census. It's hard to get good tea from that stuff. (did I use that right?)
Probably both. There is a split there where part of your lineage comes from the LittleFly branch and some comes from the Bell branch. Both, however, are your history - and with that comes their histories as well. Affair or not, you are (I am making an assumption that you are able to confirm your information) an ancestor of Mr. Bell and Ms. LittleFly. Regardless of their civil relationship, there was apparently a physical one. Just because there may not have been a civil union (I.E., marriage) doesn't really change your ancestry....just adds a little spice to it :D
My dad probably isn't/might not be my dad. It slipped out when I was 28 years old. A lot made sense after that though and it helped me because I finally understood why his family treated me so poorly. There was nothing at all wrong with me and it wasn't my fault, they were awful people all along for treating a child that way. I wouldn't want people like that in my life anyway so now I'm all good. Oh, and he was my dad, maybe not by blood but definitely with his whole heart and soul.
Had a veteran's day project in school in the 4th grade. My mom told me that I could have a look at this box in the garage with my dad's old uniform in it. While I was looking through it I found a marriage certificate to some lady. Asked my dad about it at the dinner table and it turns out he got married he was 20 to some woman who cheated on him so he got a divorce a couple years later. During that marriage his best friend who he got drafted at the same time as him died. This opened up a pandora's box of memories for my dad that he had kept closed for over a decade and it caused him to go into severe depression immediately that has lasted for decades. My dad has since had a couple long discussions with me about his early life, being drafted, escorting his best friends body to the funeral and presenting the coffin and flag to his best friend's parents. Pretty deep shit and the beginning of a horrible time in our family since opening those doors really crushed my father who up until that point was a pretty well adjusted if not overly strict guy.
I’d suggest that your dad actually was NOT well-adjusted at all, he was barely holding it together and suppressing so much. Must’ve been so stressful for him and that spilled over into his parenting. If only he could’ve spoken with a therapist.
My mom has 2 sisters and a brother. After their mom died, they found a bunch of pictures of their mom, while still married to their dad, with some other guy who is definitely NOT my grandfather. They don't know who the guy was but my uncle looks exactly like him...
Through FB I discovered my grandpa Nick had an entire other family on the East Coast. He moved his first wife to the West coast claiming he wanted the sun. After he passed we found out there is an entire other family that thought they were his ONLY family. What a mess.
My dad was into finding out about family history so I began digging around. He always was told his mother died of “blood poisoning” well I got the death certificate and she died from a botched abortion in the 1920’s. I didn’t tell him because he would’ve been so sad. She died when he was 3-4 years old. Awful
The fundie great-aunt who tried to trick my dementia-ridden grandmother into signing their mother’s house over had a kid when she was 16 that she gave up for adoption. Found out when my aunt took a DNA test online. Said aunt technologically slammed the door in her granddaughter’s face (she took the test) when she reached out. Any tea or clarification is gone with the rest of my grandma’s memories. The SOLE bit of tea we got is my grandpa remembering when she was “sent away in high school to the farm.” According to him, “some girls just did that.” No sense of irony. He legitimately thinks this grand-niece is lying, and that auntie fundie never was pregnant. She just “went away for awhile.”
When my nanny (dads mom) died it turned out she had a baby at 16 and he died at 1 year and 1 day old. Also found out great Granny got tired of waiting for her husband to come back after he abandoned her and the kids so she stepped out on the regular. Your husband leaves and makes a new family (we confirmed he had two wives) then has the balls to go back to her like he's on vacation... yea she was like fuck that.
That my parents got DIVORCED in SECRET. Yet we all lived MISERABLY under the same roof my whole life and then EVENTUALLY they REMARRIED…ALSO in SECRET.
I found their re-marriage license.
Lol sorry idk why typing it out like that made it easier but 🙃🙃🙃🙃
I was raised as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian. What that meant is getting the full gamut of "everything's a sin" and "you have to be perfect or you'll go to hell" teaching (yes, there was forgiveness, but the only way you could get it is if you could repent by apologizing to God AND then never doing the sin again). The focal point of all the teachings in middle/high school was sex - you must be a virgin when you're married.
About 7 years ago maybe, my mom had a death scare. Her blood pressure dropped critically low, doctors couldn't find the problem right away, they had her on pretty heavy drugs, and I was spending time in the ER with her. While no one was in the room, she revealed to me that 10 years before I was born, she had had a child out of wedlock, and given the girl up for adoption. Mom was so loopy, I didn't know whether that was true or not.
Within a year, though, mom got a call from her sister. My aunt had taken a DNA test, and gotten a notification that someone might be related to her. My aunt knew that mom had had a child (maybe I was the only person left out of the loop on this), and connected the two of them. They started talking, and eventually wanted to meet.
At first, I was skeptical. How did we know that this random person was mom's long-lost daughter? And then we arrived at the meetup point and she got out of the car. Mom and this woman looked almost exactly alike, including choosing the same haircut. Mom didn't have any kind of online presence, there were no public photos of her at all, so there was no way this woman was trying to imitate her.
So, now I have a sister. Mom passed away about 2 years ago, but they had a chance to get to know each other in the final years of mom's life.
For me, it would've been super helpful to know that mom had had a daughter, because it would've taken some of the pressure off of me to be perfect. I still hold a lot of trauma from my religious upbringing.
I came home from my first semester at university, and told my mom on the way to Sam Goody that all of the people I'd recently met had really interesting family stories and skeletons in their closet, and that we were boring because we had none.
My mother, who grew up in the rural Southern US and was raised Catholic - who later married my Southern Baptist father - told me that if I wanted skeletons, she had a doozy for me.
I thought I was the youngest of the two of my mother's children - I thought I only had an older brother.
Turns out, in rural NC in the late 1950s, she became pregnant. Her boyfriend, Paul, wanted her to abort and offered to pay for it. I shudder to think about what that procedure would look like in that place and time.
She was sent to a home in Ohio for unwed mothers. Only her mother, her aunt, and her best friend knew why she went away.
She gave birth to a daughter, Paula, who she held for a few minutes before the baby was whisked away. She has never tried to find her first-born, the older sister I had, and remains unsure how she'd react if her daughter reached out to her.
My mother turned 80 late last year.
Could never figure out growing up why my cousin was my half-brother's half-sister and not his cousin too. Hit me randomly in my 20s that it was because my mom stole her sister's husband.
My great great uncle shot all 5 of his children and then himself. His oldest daughter ran 2 miles through muddy crop fields, barefoot and with two bullet wounds, to the nearest neighbor. She ended up dying 5 days later.
My aunt isn’t actually my aunt but my cousin. My older aunt had her at a young age and my grandma pretended it was her baby. Why they did that we’ll never know for sure since my older aunt and grandma are now deceased.
My great grandpa is Rios Montt a Guatemalan general, president and war criminal who committed genocide in Guatemala against Central American natives. I asked my uncle and aunts and they confirmed it. He was my mom's uncle. They don't really like bringing him up. I found cause I was watching a movie about him and my mom said Hes your great grandpa. Did not find out until 2022.
My great uncle had a secret second family. The crazy part is that he decided to share the secret with one of his sons, who was roughly 10 years old at the time. The son was taken back and forth between families, and was forced to keep it a secret his entire life. I have no idea how my great uncle managed to juggle that double life. Sadly enough, the son was always the odd one, he's had a rough life, lots of drug abuse, and no one could ever figure out why, but when we found out everyone was sort of like "ahhh yep make sense he's messed up"...poor guy.
My mother had a baby before she met my father. That baby was given up for adoption at birth. My mother knew her baby was a girl, but nothing more. That happened in 1948.
In 1974 that daughter found our family. Unfortunately my mom had passed away in 1971 so they never met. But at the time she made contact, there were only three people who even knew of this woman’s existence.
My stepmother tried to tell my younger siblings that this was her relative, but one of my sisters never bought it. She actually called me to ask if this was really stepmothers cousin or our sister.
I remember calling my dad to say that I thought lying was a very bad idea. I told him I’d be willing to tell my siblings who Anne really was. He realized the cat was out of the bag already and told them the truth.
The reason it didn’t fly was twofold. First, she and I looked a lot alike and when she came to visit, she asked a lot of questions about our mom which would have been odd for my stepmothers relative.
My aunt didn't lose her teaching job due to budget cuts like she'd always claimed. Turns out she had never had a valid teaching license to begin with, regularly had affairs with the dads, and embezzled PTA money!
See, if she did just one of those things, she'd still have a job. (Source: I'm a teacher)
Yeah the first two are fine, but fuck with the PTA's coffers? Buh-bye
Well that still ended better than I expected based on the first sentence.
My great grandpa raped his daughter & his sons killed him.
I like this one. Short and violent.
She got pregnant too! And the brothers were arrested but set free shortly afterwards.
What a heartbreaking event for the daughter Did she keep the baby?
That's a lot to unpack in one very short sentence.
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Damn!! That's a huge plot twist.
What happened? Was he still alive?
My parents got divorced when I was about 3 years old. I stayed in contact with my mother but my father got full custody, as mom apparently relinquished custody because of her financial situation and claimed she made the difficult decision of giving custody to my dad for the sake of us kids, because he could provide a better life for us. "The most difficult sacrifice she ever made". On several occasions my mother would also get drunk and lament her life and say something to the effect of, "I never should've left your father. He was a good guy, he didn't deserve that. We would've been happy." I had heard variations on it a bunch of times, so one day I decided to share it with my dad. I was in my mid-20s at that point. My dad, who at no point in my life *ever* discussed the divorce or my mom, replied, "She said that?" Yeah. "I left her because of her alcoholism and drug use and how she was always drunk during the pregnancy and while you were little. Kids deserve a safe home to grow up in." I later got that verified from my maternal grandmother. Apparently everyone knew but never bothered to tell me that my dad was the one who left mom because she was a druggie and an alcoholic, and she didn't have to "make the difficult sacrifice of giving dad custody because he could provide a better life for us", the court straight up gave dad custody after a court battle where my mom was deemed unfit to be a parent because of said substance abuses. For about 20 years, I'd thought my dad got dumped by my mom but turns out, he was just a really good parent and made the right choice for us kids.
Kudos to your dad.
Yeah. Stand up guy. Never dumped dirt on the mother as well
>Never dumped dirt on the mother as well That's what really stood out to me too. If a parent ever needed a reason to bad mouth an ex he certainly had it but didn't.
Also commendable that you made it to adulthood without him actively throwing your mom under the bus. Some parents would have been hammering that into your head even as a child, further damaging your perception of and relationship with your mom.
That is probably the best family secret reveal I’ve heard when these come up. I know it’s terrible but also your dad is an amazing person❤️
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That my dad's little sister wasn't really his little sister. It was his sister's baby, raised by his mom. The girl didn't know until she was 21.
This was really common, right? Teen pregnancy/unwed mothers very very frowned upon back in the day.
This happened to my sister in law. Her sister is really her mother, and her parents are her grandparents. The real mother had my sister in law at a young age, and so the mothers parents decided yo take care of the child instead. My sister in law always knew something was amiss, but got actual confirmation about 3 or 4 years ago. She is now close to being 40.
This happened to Jack Nicholson too.
Yup, we have that in our family. My grandma is her sisters daughter. We found out through genealogy.
Genealogy is really starting to fuck with families and exposing so much. Good or bad? Is there a balance?
I think its good. People should stop lying about stuff like this, its life ruining.
Also, it's helpful to know that many families are "screwed up". People compare their own family to a standard that is falsely perfect and can't understand why their family has deviated from the norm. The answer: amazing "irregularities" ARE the norm.
My great aunt was a nurse supervisor at a mental hospital in the 1920s. She fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated for a murder trial. She helped him escape and they went to Florida. But the police caught up with them. My aunt got off easy, but he got the electric chair. I found all this in a newspaper archives while working on family history. Showed it to my mom and she admitted it was all true.
Newspapers.com has uncovered some wild shit about the family. Scandals, murders, con men. They printed everything back then. We think people post everything to social media? I could read what was said in a police investigation room
Heh. My grandfather was a Postal Inspector (essential a cop who investigated postal crimes) in LA in the 50's. I found several stories on Newspapers.com on the front page of the Los Angeles Times about arrests he made for things like stealing letters out of mail boxes, totally minor stuff that wouldn't even be noted in a local paper today. They not only described the crime and suspect in detail, they would they also print the suspect's full home address. It was a different time apparently.
Imagine getting doxxed for stealing a newspaper lol
Yes, in the past the newspapers used to print names, addresses, names of relatives, etc. It is shocking to read an article and see all that information for everybody to see.
It's a real life Harley Quinn and The Joker situation, but The Joker dies. Quick, who was Batman?
the electric chair
My sister and I found out in our mid/late-20s that we had a full-on brother. Our dad got our mom pregnant in high school and cause it was the 60s it was all hush-hush and she went to do her senior year “with family” and just quietly came back to town. They ended up getting together for real in college and no one knew - not their life-long friends or even my uncle. Our brother had a good childhood with his adoptive family, but he was always curious about his birth mother so he wrote her a letter. He sure was surprised to also come to meet his dad and two sisters. Crazy thing is he didn’t live too far away and we all look extremely alike. Would have been weird if we’d have bumped into each other otherwise.
This is what happened to my mother. She was adopted and a few years ago started looking into it. Teenagers got pregnant in high school, adopted out the baby, then ended up staying together and having some more children. They'd never told their children, so awkward conversation when she matched with them on Ancestry.
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My mother is kid #7 of 10. My aunt (kid #4) who was born in 1945 did her DNA and found out that she has a different father from everyone else. She was devastated. There was always rumor that there was an affair but nobody talked about it. She has so many questions but nobody's alive to answer her.
Family tree just unlocked a secret level
That's super common. Back in the early 90s when I was getting my anthropology degree, one of the professors talked about how when genetic testing would get cheaper, that this would be common.
Same happened with my dad. Found out the guy that raised him was t his father at all. Actually a few of his siblings found out the same.
My dad's mom was a piece of work. She left the oldest two kids with her husband and took off across the country for a better life. A week later she called him and told him to come pick up the younger ones, and he did. After their divorce (for adultery) she remarried to a guy who thought she was a virgin, and had a couple of kids with him. She came home every year to visit her mom, and saw her kids too. After she started her new family, she made my dad and his sibs refer to her as auntie, and to her new kids as their cousins. That secret finally came out when the new kids became adults as my aunt ratted her out. Her mom had the nerve to call her up and bitch her out for ruining her life. My youngest aunt found through DNA testing that the man who raised her was not her dad. It's suspected that her next older brother is likely not his either, as he looks nothing like any of the other kids. My dad and his older sister could pass as twins. I didn't know any of this until my presumed dad was found out not to be my dad through DNA testing, and I met the guy in this effed up family described above. I raised my kids, I know who their dads are (married twice, and one of my kids is adopted) and we have no secrets. I'm done with that shit.
My great great grandfather was killed by my great great grandmother because she was having an affair with the sheriff and my GGgrandfather said he was going to kill the sheriff. My GGgrandmother shot him in the street and everyone assumed it was the sheriff. There was no proof and no "witnesses" so no-one was ever charged with his murder. My GGgrandmother told my great aunt on her deathbed. Also after all of her children had passed away. She said she still loved the sheriff. And would've done it again. Side note. The sheriff died from a fall the next summer so after all that happened my GGgrandmother she spent the rest of her life unmarried. She was 102 when she died.
But she did not kill the deputy…
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That’s awesome that he found y’all. Was his personality similar to your family’s?
I love these stories. My husband is looking for his older half brother who was placed for adoption. His brother is biracial and his young mom was unmarried and living with her racist parents. It was her greatest regret.
That’s actually heartbreaking
It is. My mother-in-law is the sweetest woman alive. She's in good health but getting older. We're hopeful a reunion might happen soon.
My uncle was a cop. My father was a mid-level drug kingpin. He basically ran the marijuana & psychedelics trade in a small city. When I was a kid my uncle died in the line of duty. There was a big funeral and everything. Turns out he wasn't killed in the line of duty. The cops found out that my father was paying him for cop information. When he was accused, my uncle ate a gun in his squad car in a parking lot. I found out 30 years later.
Do you still talk to your father?
As you can guess, he was a terrible person. My mother divorced him after she came home to find him banging a prostitute in our living room. She remarried to a kind, intelligent, and compassionate man who became my dad (I'm very fortunate). I haven't seen my natural father in decades. No idea if he's even alive.
Damn. I really thought you were gonna say your father is Heisenberg.
My mother was Catholic. After eight kids she would "go visit family" when she got pregnant. The Catholic church would take the baby and re-home it with a "barren" Catholic family. I met a Greek Catholic brother. He looked like all of us but had a Greek name and Greek parents.
My mom worked as a United airlines stewardess, starting in the late 70s, but told me that up until the mid to late 60s, United (along with most airlines back then,) wanted stewardess to be single, without children. So, they did the same thing as the catholic church. housed pregnant stews someplace, and put their children up for adoption after birth. My mom knew several women that happened to.
My Dad worked in a store during the 1950's. An unmarried sales girl got pregnant by a stock boy. Unmarried meant no pregnancy coverage on health insurance. Boss submitted it as Workers Comp! It went through!
> Boss submitted it as Workers Comp! It went through! Damn, that's lucky.
Wait, wtf? United Airlines would house pregnant employees and then adopt the kids out to someone else? Like, the pregnant women were all like "screw having kids, I can't jeopardize this sweet gig as a flight attendant with United?"
It’s hard to believe it now because flight attendants are not considered prestigious, but even in the early 80s it was still considered a very desirable and glamorous job. Being a stewardess meant that you were very pretty, thin, hung out with rich people, lived in hotels. It was like being a model.
Bless her, that sounds physically and emotionally devastating. It must have been a difficult thing for you to learn as well.
We found out after my grandfather died that none of his seven children with my grandmother were his, and that they all likely had different fathers
My maternal grandmother had two kids who were biologically my grandfather's kids, my mother and aunt. Then two boys who weren't my grandpa's bio kids. She never said who fathered the older of those two, and ancestry hasn't turned up anything for him. She then moved in with father of the younger boy, without getting a divorce, leaving all the other kids with grandpa. Cheated on that guy and had another boy, and was forced to give him up for adoption, because he refused to raise another man's child. Years later she was scandalized when my sister got pregnant without being married, and when we pointed out that we were aware of her past, she was all "that's different, I was married." I guess in her mind it didn't matter if weren't married to the person you were having kids with, you just had to be married to someone.
Yo I'd say *fuck* your grandma, but it sounds like everyone already did
My uncles are infamous criminals who killed multiple people. I thought they bred dogs.
People can do 2 things.
"you can do more than one thing!" - Daniel Tiger
Everyone focuses on the murders, the man brewed a great pilsner! /s
Everyone needs a hobby.
Even dog breeders.
My great-great-uncle was Charles Gargotta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Gargotta?wprov=sfla1
I have half brothers and sisters from the women my father raped. A survivors daughter told me some, Ancestry and 23andme did the rest.
My college boyfriend is a real POS and likes to drug women so he can rape their unconscious bodies when holding them down so he can rape them while conscious gets to be too hard/boring. He’s gotten at least four women I know of pregnant (no protection needed while they’re unconscious, right?) including myself. Three of us either miscarried or aborted and one has his child. I would be shocked if there weren’t more out there. He’s currently awaiting trial, over 100 witnesses and over 15 victims have come forward spanning over 30 years.
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I think about that frequently. I’ve never “been brave enough” to tell my dad many details because it isn’t worth him going to prison over.
Mine did the same except he was a college teacher. He preyed on his students.
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I once served my kid my grandmas secret family recipe bean soup (Campbells from a can, just like my grandma made it), and she loved it and begged for the recipe. She was six so I don’t know what she thought she was going to do with it. I promised to tell her when she’s older.
I laughed really hard at a 6 yr old asking for the recipe. That’s very funny.
I add my touch to bottled butter chicken sauce. I peel off the labels and hide the empty jars . No one knows. They all want my recipe but I don’t have one !
Please continue the lore and refuse to share the recipe except to your most beloved young person on your deathbed. It's our link to the past.
At age 43 I learned I had a half sister. My father had an affair and she was conceived after my brother was born, but before I was. She reached out to me, and is a lovely human. We have been in contact ever since, have traveled together, and I have visited her several times.
This story has a nice ending! Glad you got an awesome bonus sister
Me too. The day after I found out I sent my father a dozen pink carnations, and an It's a Girl balloon with the note- "Congratulations on the birth of your first daughter, in 1970. I would have liked to have known I had a sister!" The florist was quite amused. I guarantee he tells that story too.
Daaaamn. I found my half sister on 23 and me, and it never occurred to me to do something like this when confronting my dad. Hilarious!
My junkle (junkie uncle) revealed the sheer amount of crime that him and his junkie mates would commit to help my dad and his business. My dad had them steal from other competitors, stealing tools and wrecking their work sites. They would steal documents relating to competitors who were bidding for their same jobs. They would "steal" company cars and burn them so they could claim the insurance money. The funniest was that my dad threw a tantrum on site since they all called him the fat controller. My uncle said "you pay me $50 a week and I'll fix that for you, since you want to be such a little bitch" My dear mum, ignorant as hell, thought my dad was putting extra effort in to get healthy. Turns out my uncle was just making custom capsule tablets with tiny amounts of meth on them and my dad was losing weight faster than ever. It's a drop in the ocean compared to some other comments, but my dad always portrays himself as some holier than thou authority. He's such a closet crook. EDIT 1: I seriously thought this 1 small sliver of my family chaos would be ignored, but I wanted to list off some other random wild shit they get up to for your entertainment. * There's no doubt my uncle had a terrible childhood, being spoiled as the youngest child and then institutionally abused as a child in boarding school. His life spun into chaos and his drug dependence followed * My immediate family started their adult lives and the amount of bridges burnt between either friend and/or working relationships is like Mr Incredible seeing the rolling list of supers killed by Syndromes robot. It's mind blowing that my family can even still show their face in public... * My Dad would set up fake looking building firms and pretend that he was tendering for a huge job, getting all local builders and subcontractors to give him their prices as they were bidding for "massive jobs" really, he just wanted to get their prices to undercut them or have them think they can't take on other jobs (thinking they had a big amount of work in the pipeline) * When my dad was in his late teens my grandparents offered him a world trip. He said no, and that he wanted to stay and look after the family farm, as he wanted to practise running everything. My grandparents then left a sizeable amount of money for the day-to-day items and left clear expectations (it was a very successful farm) and upon returning they found everything in complete and utter ruins, with all the money being spent on a huge V8 engine that was slapped into my dad's car. They had to deal with all the locals telling stories of my dad chasing prostitutes in his "loud death machine" while completely ignoring the farm. * My dad was given $400,000 in the 90s to buy a very nice piece of land. That's worth almost 1 million adjusted for inflation. My dad has not payed back a cent. This one is hard because even with his silver spoon shoved up his ass, none of that was used to treat us kids, it all went into the land itself and his whimsical business ideas. Us kids had a family trust set up and I found paperwork not long ago showing all of it withdrawn through many legal loopholes and trips to the solicitor to have it withdrawn and used to bail him out of yet ANOTHER shit idea of his. He's somehow snaked his way into obtaining other money from wills and none of it has been used to help his adult kids. * I haven't even started on the shit my mum gets up to...... How they are still married is something that would break the minds of the world greatest Psychs.
This would make a good movie
My mother did 23 and me and found that she matched with an unknown niece who looked exactly like her older brother. Her brother had an extramarital affair and had a baby without his knowledge. He passed away some 30 years ago when the baby was around 10.
When my parents got married it was because my mom got pregnant with my brother. (That’s not the secret, everybody has always known that). Mom’s parents practically kicked her out of the house. My dad had already left for the air force (he had to fly back for a quickie wedding after basic). This was the early 1960’s so still a bit scandalous. Mom ended up moving in with her new in-laws so she could finish her last year of college before joining my dad in Texas and later Japan. 20- some years later, everyone was preparing for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. ( moms parents, the ones who kicked her out for getting pregnant without being married). My grandma got real upset and said, we can’t celebrate 50, we’ve only been married 49 years. This was a shock to everyone because my mom’s oldest brother was 50. Turns out if they had gotten married my grandpa would have been kicked out of high school, so they hid the pregnancy/baby until he graduated. After enough time had passed they just told everyone the earlier date. Even though they did the exact same thing, they couldn’t bring themselves to show any sympathy for their own daughter in that situation.
You should roast them every chance you get
We did an Ancestry DNA test, and found out my dad has a half sister. Turns out Grandpa had been seeing her mother on the side for probably more than a decade, and also had at least one other long-term affair.
My great great grandfather was a huge financial success in the 1920’s, owned a bunch of businesses, pillar of the community type, half the town worked for him. Built himself a huge mansion at the edge of town with all the modern conveniences. Lost everything in the stock market crash of the Great Depression, went out on his front porch, sat in a chair and blew his head off with a shotgun. Everybody was involved in covering it up, not just the family, but the local authorities and the newspapers too. His obituary even said that he had died of natural causes, though the whole town knew better. It was passed down as legend for generations that he had died young of natural causes, though no one ever mentioned why the family was suddenly poor. I found an entry in my great grandmother’s diary long after she had passed where she wrote about the whole episode.
Yeah I had one of those "died young natual causes" probably Consumption. Nah, he hung himself in his cow shed and left a wife and two sons.
Now you got me questioning my great grandfather who died young of natural causes lol Heart condition? Dead before 30? In pictures hes a young, strong cowboy. Now I wonder…
In fairness, there was also a lot of actually dying young of natural causes going on back then too. Medicine has come a real long way between then and now
My defacto uncle (he and my aunt never married but have been together since well before I was born, with a few hiccups) has a child with another woman. It became common knowledge when the girl was 6 and was starting to understand the situation. At first it was a bit scandalous but she's been welcomed with open arms by my entire family, including her half-siblings' maternal grandparents, she's treated the same as all the other kids her age. Her half-sister (my cousin) has a daughter the same age and they're best friends, go to the same high school, totally inseparable, technically aunt and niece haha. She comes to all our family events and she's an awesome kid, we're all stoked to have her in our family!
Aw this one’s actually sweet. Imagine how cool it is for a six year old to suddenly have double the amount of loving people in their lives, once the initial confusion wears off.
The good ending.
One of my adult cousins killed herself last year, and in her suicide note accused her father of molesting her since she was a child. And that's the start of the story.
The wrong person died. How tragic and horrible.
Now that is incredibly sad. I'm sorry.
My mom was having an affair with a schizophrenic dude she met in a bar, got pregnant and just let her husband believe I was his my whole life. When she was sick in the hospital and looped out drugs she starting mumbling on about my dad not being my real dad. 23andMe test later and secrets out!
How did you and your dad take the news? Did it chance anything between the two of you or the two of you with your mom?
Both bio and raised me dads had been dead 20 years when I found out. My mom, per her personality just shrugged and admitted it once I knew for sure (I connected with a second cousin on 23 and me who helped me narrow down who my father was). It didn't really change anything for us it was already a strained relationship. I found out a couple weeks before covid so not really seeing my mom for the next couple years wasn't a big deal, we still talked on the phone. I ended up meeting some cousins and bio dads brother, that's been cool. I'm like 4 inches taller and traditionally better looking than my (half) siblings I grew up with so I guess thanks mom for the more attractive DNA?
How’d you know he’s schizophrenic? Is that hereditary?
Once I connected with his family they told me he was a diagnosed schizophrenic. I was terrified when I found out because I have 2 young kids. Drs have told me it's not totally hereditary but can increase chances.
I found one out myself. In My great great grandfather spent years in prison for volationing of the Comstock act. Anthony Comstock himself testified in 1904 at the trial that it was the largest collection of pornography he had ever seen. Lol damn grandpa.
Of course, now a days, the average 15 year old has access to far, far more.
Honestly I'd kind of be impressed
My FIL's dad had a massive porn collection, almost his whole basement. No one had been down there in decades because that was his area. His sons were so shocked when they saw it. They were in their late 60s at the time. We threw away two dumpsters of porn.
My great aunt was a prostitute. Her husband, my great uncle was a john. I guess this wasn't super shocking to the older generation or her siblings. But to my age group, we just knew her as a sweet old lady and my uncle as a gruff but kindhearted old man, so that was sort of a strange thought.
My grt grandparents ran a brothel in lower Manhattan. I still have pictures of them standing in front of it, and my grandma has pictures of the inside and you can see pregnant women walking around in clothes that would’ve been considered scandalous at the time. It gave my grt aunt so much trauma that she became agoraphobic and died a hoarder in her apartment. So wild to me cause that area is now so insanely wealthy.
One of my great grampas and his brother killed their abusive stepdad, chopped him up with an axe, put him in weighted down coffee cans, and dumped him in a river. It came out as a deathbed confession.
My brother was on a TV show called Top Cops. Real life police stories. Anyway, after it aired he got a phone call from a woman in California (we are Canadian) who recognized our unusual family name. She told him that she was the illegitimate daughter of my grandfather on my Dad's side. News to us. Anyway, my Dad had already passed as did his parents, but it was an interesting story.
My mom's family is Appalachian mountain folk. l have Native American features. So l asked my mom. And got told vehemently that I'm 100% white. So after my mom died l was going through stuff. Found out that not only was her grandmother (my great grandmother) Cherokee, but my biological father is also. I found a wonderful picture of my tiny Cherokee ggm standing hand in hand with my incredibly tall Welsh ggp. I treasure that picture.
Family also from Appalachia (McCoy). I was always told growing up that my grandma was 1/2 Cherokee. Then, I did 23andMe and found out I have a decent amount from African descent. It was much more acceptable in my family to be Native American than Black.
The story was always that my two cousins were adopted and not related to each other even. People sometimes would ask them if they were twins. They would say "Nope, we're adopted." Somehow it got out that their bio mom was their younger aunt. The older sister adopted and raised both girls as her own. Younger aunt/mom got married and started a family before all this came out too. It was a wild journey. I have heard this is common in Catholic families. They hide the illegitimate pregnancy and someone in the family adopts the child or pretends it is an older married family member's child. This was in the early 80s so I guess it was possible to get away with it.
Not Catholic, but when I was born to my unwed teen mom, her family decided my aunt who couldn't have kids would raise me. My mom refused. But your fam's situation was fairly common as a choice for unwed mothers.
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I hope you have pictures from the all star funeral
Grandpa was a pedo. Mom waited until grandma was dead to share the news. I wasn't surprised as I always felt uncomfortable around him, and he was always a dick
Ugh this in my family except about my parents’ grandpa (my great-grandfather). The women in the family keep hush, waiting for Grandma to die because they can’t stand to tell her that her dad was molesting her own children all those years back. I just don’t get it, different times …but I don’t agree with protecting child molesters past or present. But I let it be.
My family too except it happened to me. Finally told my family when I was 15 and it mostly stopped. Twelve years later I find out the molester had also done it to my aunt before I was born, and that everyone knew. Yet they gave the bastard access to me and left me alone with him all the time. Completely blows my mind. The anger I have towards them for not keeping me away from him, knowing what he has already done, is soul crushing. I love my family, but I’ll never understand their thought process.
This makes me so incredibly angry on your behalf. I am so sorry you weren’t protected like you should have been. I know the conflicting feelings of still loving those that were supposed to keep you safe. I hope you’re doing okay now. Sending you love. ❤️
When my dad's mom was on her death bed she confessed that 4 of the 12 kids bio dad was actually their uncle!
In 8th grade I had to do a family tree, which required that I call my grandparents who were 1,200 miles away to ask them about their parents. I got to have two great grandparents but I didn’t know much about the others. My grandmother told me that the man we all thought to be her dad was actually her stepfather. My dad and his siblings didn’t even know. She was conceived illegitimately and when her biological father found out, he moved to another state and got married. She never met him. She was born in 1928 and this conception and being fatherless was shameful. Later in life, my grandma had dementia. She couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast but she talked about her horrible childhood. My grandma was in her 80s and a devout Catholic who didn’t talk about sex but she told me her stepfather raped her repeatedly. She wept and told me about what she had to tell my grandpa on their wedding night, to not expect blood. My grandpa was the sweetest man in the world and he told her it didn’t matter and the times with her stepfather didn’t count as far as he was concerned. It was a little icky but more heartbreaking, and all these years I’ve wondered why she picked me to tell these things to. I’m the oldest of 13 grandchildren and she had five kids. I went on to become a therapist and my grandparents were married a few months shy of 70 years when my grandma died.
Your grandpa was a true gem - what a sweet person.
After he died, we found out my grandpa had an entire other family. He had married and fathered children, but had to keep going on "military leave," which is what he called living with my grandmother in a different state. He eventually left the first family entirely. (This was in the late 40s, early 50s.) After he died in the late 80s, the first family contacted us and said they'd known about us this whole time, and had been keeping tabs. I was only 2 at the time, but apparently it was pretty wild. My mother has a ton of siblings because of it. My go-to response when she says she has something exciting to tell me is "what, did you find another secret family member?'
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Did your uncle go to prison?
Just found out my missing paternal grandfather was murdered back in the 80s.. he was a scumbag but I'd occasionally try to find out about him because I knew my dad needed closure. He'd been chased out of town by the mafia for running some fraud scheme. I thought it might have to do with that but it turns out he just pissed off some guy at a bar and took one too many bricks to the head. Fyi.. it did not give my dad closure... He just graduated to feeling family shame... We're working on it..
My grandmother called the cops on my grandpa for domestic violence. He was arrested. During his trial, he was sentenced to either jail OR he could join the military. He joined the Navy and was stationed in New York. While in New York, he met another woman, got married to her (while still being married to my grandma), and had an entirely new family. After his discharge, he came back home and resumed life with my grandma, never to speak to the New York family again! And as an added twist, when he got back home, he was surprised to find he had a new 2 year old daughter. This was a shock since he had been gone for around 5 years. As far as I know, my aunt's real father has remained a mystery. (I don't know an exact timeline, but this was some time in the 40s, or possibly early 50s. My mom was born in '56 and, by then, all the dust had settled. She didn't know any of this story until she was an adult)
My grandfather did this too but kept it in the same city! My dad sat behind his half sister in homeroom.
I found out I was adopted when I was 32 years old. My mom's cousin is my real dad. Apparently they tried to take me back when I was 3 years old, but my mom refused. Now my birth parents are both doctors, live in a mansion, and had six more kids. I grew up in poverty.
That the reason my dad joined the military was not because he was the oldest kid in a large family who wanted to get out and finance a college education. He joined the military as part of a plea deal. He got arrested as the getaway driver for an armed robbery. He was only 17 at the time. A deal was worked out that he to was plead guilty and serve a few months in jail, and then when he turned 18 he would join the military. I also found out recently that the prison my dad served time in was basically the family prison. A handful of his cousins also served time there, and they had sentences that overlapped so they’d meet up in jail. At least one of them had been unaware that the others were in jail because he’d been told that they went away to college. Imagine his surprise when he had a family reunion.
The reason my aunt and uncle never had kids was because my grandparents pressured my aunt into have an abortion before she got married, *because* they weren’t married, and due to complications wound up sterile. Ah. So that explains the constant tension.
Same thing happened to my aunt and uncle
Lots of women had back room abortions and either had life long complications like this or died. It's why my grandmother and mom, who are both staunch Christian's, always vote democrat. They both know people who died because of those type of abortions.
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Ha! My grandparents did this too. My aunt caught hell for getting pregnant in college. Years later she found Grandpa and Grandma's marriage certificate. Courthouse wedding 6 months before her birthday. Now we know why they never celebrated their anniversary.
That first baby can come at any time!
What's even more amazing was that Grandma was a fashion model until she was 6 months along, and went back to it after! I have pictures of her in a crop top holding baby #6. (Sadly, I only got the mental illness genes from her line.)
You played the genetic lottery and got the consolation prize.
My maternal grandmother was very well known in a community in California. She basically started soccer programs in the town when it was first starting. She died in a car accident with her best friend, they crashed into a haystack truck. My grandma left behind 4 children, I think her best friend left behind 5. There’s a soccer field named after her with a plaque describing how much she meant to the community. One Thanksgiving my Grandpa and grandma(his next wife) told me that my grandpa knew the first officer on scene personally and he called him up immediately. Before anyone else got there, they removed the alcohol bottles out of the car before anyone else can see. Nobody from the other family knows they were shit faced when they died. A prevailing theory in my family is that they were lovers and committed suicide.
When I was a kid my Dad spent time in prison. I didn't find out why until he was arrested again. He was caught with CSAM on the work computer of the business he shared with his friend and got taken down, but he blamed his friend and got a reduced sentence. The second time it was because he was basically running his own To Catch a Predator sting. He was going into chatrooms pretending to be a teenaged girl, sending ransomware to people who interacted with him, and blackmailing them to fund his trips to Thailand. One of the people caught in his sting went to the police and he got a few years in prison, and it turned out my father had CSAM on his computer again anyway. I also found out more recently (and less horrifyingly) that my mom was adopted when she was a kid. She talked to her biological father a few times when I was a baby and tried to get in touch with her mom but she wanted nothing to do with it. She's now in contact with her older half-sister but they haven't met in person. Edit: clarification
I had a second cousin whose wife had an affair with his dad. So, the kid he thought was his son was really his half-brother. This kid was born in the late 50s I think, but the truth was only revealed decades later.
I was born on my parents first anniversary. I always thought that it was a cool coincidence, and I'd never forget their anniversary. On my 18th birthday we had some family over for a joint party. I said happy 19th anniversary to my folks. My sister (10 years older & different dad) said "Mom, when are you going to tell him the truth?" I looked at Mom and she just kind of looked down at the ground. Then my sister tells me that my parents got married on my 1st birthday. I asked my mom if it was true and she said yes. I asked her "why didn't you tell me this before?" She said that I had always just assumed that I was born on their anniversary and never corrected me. Now it's a funny little thing that my sister gives me shit about on my birthday.
About a month ago, my mother-in-law's 88 year old sister revealed on her death bed that her husband's best friend was actually the father of all 4 of her children. Her husband was an abusive grade A jerk by all accounts. While everyone was shocked, no one was saddened by this news.
My mom might not actually be my biological mother. I’m a surrogate baby and was told my entire life, even though my mom didn’t birth me, I am 100% biologically my parents kid. Well I’ve been wanting to get one of those 23 and me things done cause I thought learning more about my family could be cool but my mom was SUPER against it (she kept referencing the golden state killer as her argument for the government using my DNA against me or someone else in the family and I was like “??? Mom they caught a serial killer I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing??” Also she’s not a conspiracy nut in ANY OTHER WAY than specifically this, so I thought her reaction was very odd). Anyways, I was out grabbing a drink with my dad a few a weeks ago and I was like “hey btw why is mom so weird about me getting a 23 and me test??” And he explained that *actually* donor eggs were in the mix because my moms eggs weren’t taking so there’s about a 50/50 chance I am NOT in fact biologically related to my mom and my moms a bit freaked about me finding out. I don’t actually care, my mom is my mom 100%, I’m just curious about my genealogy. I also wanna have kids eventually and would very much like to know if there’s anything I should be looking out for. Not a super dramatic thing (I mean I guess it is to my mom but not to me). I’m not traumatized by this, and actually it kinda makes sense cause I look exactly like my dad, but the few features that aren’t my dads aren’t my moms either. I don’t look like her side of the family at all. The only thing my mom and I have in common is that we’re both blonde but my dad is also blonde so.
Consider the fact that she also may not want to find out if you are or aren’t biologically hers. Keep that in mind.
Turns out my grandfather helped liberate a concentration camp in World War II and was later indicted for grain theft, avoiding prison only by turning states evidence on his bosses, two facts I uncovered doing family history research. Gonna be fun this summer when I visit and present all this.
My boomer parents basically "came out" to me as being huge stoners, and I had no clue. Weed is legal in my state. A few years ago, I was in my late 20s, and casually mentioned to my mom that I buy weed edibles sometimes. She didn't really react at first. But later in the day she pulled me aside to have a "serious conversation" about weed. I was expecting some kind of anti-drug spiel, which would have surprised me since she didn't seem like someone who would care. Instead she tearfully confessed to me that she and my dad both love weed and they've been stoners for decades. They hid it from me and my sister, along with most of their friends and the rest of our family. It turns out that she and my dad were constantly sneaking off to the bathroom to smoke when I was a kid. It really did feel like she was "coming out" to me and she was genuinely worried that I'd judge her or think less of her. I didn't care, I just thought it was funny.
That my dad cheated on my mom and almost missed my mom giving birth to me because he was with his affair partner when she went into labor. And he was trying to get my mom to meet the person he cheated on her with.
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Please tell me what kinds of plants she grew in her garden. Russian witch shit is next level
you can't just say she's a witch and not provide context
We found out after my grandpa died that he had another kid with a woman he met before my grandma. Idk if he ever knew he had a kid. The offspring showed up on one of those ancestry gene websites and said he was open to meeting family so some of the older cousins went out hunting with him. All this was spilled to me at my cousins wedding two years ago and I guess people in the family had known for a few years. My parents never told me and they still don’t know that I know
After my Grandfather passed my mom told me all about his alcoholism and impulsive behavior. He would empty out the bank account and fly across the world and what not. My only reaction was to ask why she never mentioned this when the various psychologists she brought me to throughout my childhood would ask about the family having a history of mental illness.
My uncle had a child he didn’t know about until his 80s. His daughter found him due to an ancestry check. It turns out the mom didn’t tell my uncle she was pregnant because they were cousins! And she was a single pregnant woman in the 60s. She gave the child up for adoption and never spoke of it again. She refused to even meet or acknowledge her daughter when she reached out. My uncle however was overjoyed, he never had children in his marriage and has invited his daughter and grandchildren into his life with joy.
I was always told that my mother’s father had “died in the war”. After my mother died my cousins found out that our grandfather was actually alive and had divorced my grandmother when my mom was young. My grandmother, being a good Irish Catholic, told the nuns at the school that she was a widow because the church wouldn’t let a divorced woman’s kids go to Catholic school. My grandfather had remarried and had a whole other set of kids and grandchildren. My cousins tried to meet him but he wasn’t interested.
This just came out about a month ago when my sister did a 23 and me. My grandfather on my mother's side was supposedly born and raised on the reservation, 100% native american. Well my sister did a 23 and me a while back and it had 0% native american in her results. She started doing a little digging, and found out our grandfather was not only born some place completely different than he said, but also 10 years earlier. This has left my family completely confused because neither my grandfather or grandmother are here to sort this out any longer, or explain why this dude shaved 10 whole years off of his life and lied about being raised on the reservation. He also had very native american features, some of which I've inherited, which also leaves me wondering a bit. lol I did ask my mom (jokingly) if she brought the wrong baby home from the hospital when she brought my sister home, but she insists that is not the case. lol
Native results are often not very reliable on genetic testing websites, but I would trust any research you've done.
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So what happened when the secret got out?
Were they ever locked in an attic?
That book set the stage for a lot of really questionable reading in my youth. I honestly doubt we would have the Lannisters or the variety of porn we currently have without VC Andrews
Now I’m curious, what happened it was discovered if u don’t mind me asking
My Grandma always told a wonderful, romantic family legend: Her grandma was a beautiful teenaged peasant girl in Europe & a member of the Royal Family saw her as he was passing by. He instantly fell in love, got married, was disowned by his family for marrying a peasant, died tragically -- an amazing tale! Alas, those bastards at 23andMe have shown that the story is 100% genetically impossible. Grandma lied a lot, it seems.
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My great-grandma was 3 years older than my great-grandpa and lied about her age in order to be married. He was underage and they had my grandma while still underage. She was a hoot, apparently. Edit: Forgot to add that my grandma was born in 1937. This would have been a **huge** scandal back then.
My Great Great Grandfather went to prison for murder. His son in law was very physically abusive, and when his daughter showed up on their door all beaten up, GG Gpa went and shot him. This was the story passed down for about 100 years. My aunt is very into our family history and was able to pull up a newspaper article about the murder. The family was having some big party and GG Gpa had been drinking a lot of wine. One of the kids grabs the son in law's hat, runs off, and won't give it back. The son in law finally wrestles the hat back from the kid, which pissed off GG Gpa enough for him to grab a knife and stab his son in law to death.
We discovered Grandma's 'secret recipe' was just a pinch of love and a whole lot of takeout menus hidden in the pantry.
I found it and spilled it! It doesn't effect anything other than family history though. Lets call my dad's family name LittleFly. It's the approximate english translation. I was researching the LittleFly family history on Heritage. I knew we came from France, but that was it. I followed back no problem until the early 1800's. Then, I found an anomoly. There was a man and women who had children together. The man's last name was Bell (made up, can't remember), and the woman's name was LittleFly. Half the kids had the LittleFly last name and half had the Bell last name. What? Turns out, Mr Bell was married to a completely different woman. They had no children together. Mr Bell and Ms LittleFly had like 5 or 6 kids together while the Bells were still married. From what I can tell Ms LittleFly lived in the same house as the Bells. This wasn't a wealthy family, either. The best I could figure, they gathered reeds from the swamp for fires. Mr Bell may also have worked on the ferries? I'm not sure. It's all in French, I'm not French, and my Heritage subscription has run out. So! Our family was borne of an affair! I now don't know if I should follow the Bell line or the LittleFly line.
It sounds more like a throuple than an affair to me
Yeah, I have absolutely no idea if the wife knew about the couple or not. Again, it's early 1800's and in French. All the info I am getting is from Birth/death/marrage info and census. It's hard to get good tea from that stuff. (did I use that right?)
I can't but feel that Mrs. Bell may have noticed that the babies were coming out of someone else though.
Probably both. There is a split there where part of your lineage comes from the LittleFly branch and some comes from the Bell branch. Both, however, are your history - and with that comes their histories as well. Affair or not, you are (I am making an assumption that you are able to confirm your information) an ancestor of Mr. Bell and Ms. LittleFly. Regardless of their civil relationship, there was apparently a physical one. Just because there may not have been a civil union (I.E., marriage) doesn't really change your ancestry....just adds a little spice to it :D
My dad probably isn't/might not be my dad. It slipped out when I was 28 years old. A lot made sense after that though and it helped me because I finally understood why his family treated me so poorly. There was nothing at all wrong with me and it wasn't my fault, they were awful people all along for treating a child that way. I wouldn't want people like that in my life anyway so now I'm all good. Oh, and he was my dad, maybe not by blood but definitely with his whole heart and soul.
My dad wasn’t my dad! 👍
Had a veteran's day project in school in the 4th grade. My mom told me that I could have a look at this box in the garage with my dad's old uniform in it. While I was looking through it I found a marriage certificate to some lady. Asked my dad about it at the dinner table and it turns out he got married he was 20 to some woman who cheated on him so he got a divorce a couple years later. During that marriage his best friend who he got drafted at the same time as him died. This opened up a pandora's box of memories for my dad that he had kept closed for over a decade and it caused him to go into severe depression immediately that has lasted for decades. My dad has since had a couple long discussions with me about his early life, being drafted, escorting his best friends body to the funeral and presenting the coffin and flag to his best friend's parents. Pretty deep shit and the beginning of a horrible time in our family since opening those doors really crushed my father who up until that point was a pretty well adjusted if not overly strict guy.
I’d suggest that your dad actually was NOT well-adjusted at all, he was barely holding it together and suppressing so much. Must’ve been so stressful for him and that spilled over into his parenting. If only he could’ve spoken with a therapist.
My mom has 2 sisters and a brother. After their mom died, they found a bunch of pictures of their mom, while still married to their dad, with some other guy who is definitely NOT my grandfather. They don't know who the guy was but my uncle looks exactly like him...
Through FB I discovered my grandpa Nick had an entire other family on the East Coast. He moved his first wife to the West coast claiming he wanted the sun. After he passed we found out there is an entire other family that thought they were his ONLY family. What a mess.
My dad was into finding out about family history so I began digging around. He always was told his mother died of “blood poisoning” well I got the death certificate and she died from a botched abortion in the 1920’s. I didn’t tell him because he would’ve been so sad. She died when he was 3-4 years old. Awful
He isn’t totally wrong… the cause of death after an abortion back then was often from septicaemia
23 and Me told me that my biological father is not the man who raised me. I went from being 1 of 3 to being 1 of 11.
The fundie great-aunt who tried to trick my dementia-ridden grandmother into signing their mother’s house over had a kid when she was 16 that she gave up for adoption. Found out when my aunt took a DNA test online. Said aunt technologically slammed the door in her granddaughter’s face (she took the test) when she reached out. Any tea or clarification is gone with the rest of my grandma’s memories. The SOLE bit of tea we got is my grandpa remembering when she was “sent away in high school to the farm.” According to him, “some girls just did that.” No sense of irony. He legitimately thinks this grand-niece is lying, and that auntie fundie never was pregnant. She just “went away for awhile.”
That my mother was adopted by her family and that her real father molested her. Found this all out after she died.
When my nanny (dads mom) died it turned out she had a baby at 16 and he died at 1 year and 1 day old. Also found out great Granny got tired of waiting for her husband to come back after he abandoned her and the kids so she stepped out on the regular. Your husband leaves and makes a new family (we confirmed he had two wives) then has the balls to go back to her like he's on vacation... yea she was like fuck that.
That my parents got DIVORCED in SECRET. Yet we all lived MISERABLY under the same roof my whole life and then EVENTUALLY they REMARRIED…ALSO in SECRET. I found their re-marriage license. Lol sorry idk why typing it out like that made it easier but 🙃🙃🙃🙃
I was raised as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian. What that meant is getting the full gamut of "everything's a sin" and "you have to be perfect or you'll go to hell" teaching (yes, there was forgiveness, but the only way you could get it is if you could repent by apologizing to God AND then never doing the sin again). The focal point of all the teachings in middle/high school was sex - you must be a virgin when you're married. About 7 years ago maybe, my mom had a death scare. Her blood pressure dropped critically low, doctors couldn't find the problem right away, they had her on pretty heavy drugs, and I was spending time in the ER with her. While no one was in the room, she revealed to me that 10 years before I was born, she had had a child out of wedlock, and given the girl up for adoption. Mom was so loopy, I didn't know whether that was true or not. Within a year, though, mom got a call from her sister. My aunt had taken a DNA test, and gotten a notification that someone might be related to her. My aunt knew that mom had had a child (maybe I was the only person left out of the loop on this), and connected the two of them. They started talking, and eventually wanted to meet. At first, I was skeptical. How did we know that this random person was mom's long-lost daughter? And then we arrived at the meetup point and she got out of the car. Mom and this woman looked almost exactly alike, including choosing the same haircut. Mom didn't have any kind of online presence, there were no public photos of her at all, so there was no way this woman was trying to imitate her. So, now I have a sister. Mom passed away about 2 years ago, but they had a chance to get to know each other in the final years of mom's life. For me, it would've been super helpful to know that mom had had a daughter, because it would've taken some of the pressure off of me to be perfect. I still hold a lot of trauma from my religious upbringing.
I came home from my first semester at university, and told my mom on the way to Sam Goody that all of the people I'd recently met had really interesting family stories and skeletons in their closet, and that we were boring because we had none. My mother, who grew up in the rural Southern US and was raised Catholic - who later married my Southern Baptist father - told me that if I wanted skeletons, she had a doozy for me. I thought I was the youngest of the two of my mother's children - I thought I only had an older brother. Turns out, in rural NC in the late 1950s, she became pregnant. Her boyfriend, Paul, wanted her to abort and offered to pay for it. I shudder to think about what that procedure would look like in that place and time. She was sent to a home in Ohio for unwed mothers. Only her mother, her aunt, and her best friend knew why she went away. She gave birth to a daughter, Paula, who she held for a few minutes before the baby was whisked away. She has never tried to find her first-born, the older sister I had, and remains unsure how she'd react if her daughter reached out to her. My mother turned 80 late last year.
Could never figure out growing up why my cousin was my half-brother's half-sister and not his cousin too. Hit me randomly in my 20s that it was because my mom stole her sister's husband.
My parents have been married 1 year less than they claim. In hospice, grandma spilled ALL the tea. ;)
My grandfather had a second family in England during the war
My great great uncle shot all 5 of his children and then himself. His oldest daughter ran 2 miles through muddy crop fields, barefoot and with two bullet wounds, to the nearest neighbor. She ended up dying 5 days later.
My aunt isn’t actually my aunt but my cousin. My older aunt had her at a young age and my grandma pretended it was her baby. Why they did that we’ll never know for sure since my older aunt and grandma are now deceased.
My great grandpa is Rios Montt a Guatemalan general, president and war criminal who committed genocide in Guatemala against Central American natives. I asked my uncle and aunts and they confirmed it. He was my mom's uncle. They don't really like bringing him up. I found cause I was watching a movie about him and my mom said Hes your great grandpa. Did not find out until 2022.
My great uncle had a secret second family. The crazy part is that he decided to share the secret with one of his sons, who was roughly 10 years old at the time. The son was taken back and forth between families, and was forced to keep it a secret his entire life. I have no idea how my great uncle managed to juggle that double life. Sadly enough, the son was always the odd one, he's had a rough life, lots of drug abuse, and no one could ever figure out why, but when we found out everyone was sort of like "ahhh yep make sense he's messed up"...poor guy.
My mother had a baby before she met my father. That baby was given up for adoption at birth. My mother knew her baby was a girl, but nothing more. That happened in 1948. In 1974 that daughter found our family. Unfortunately my mom had passed away in 1971 so they never met. But at the time she made contact, there were only three people who even knew of this woman’s existence. My stepmother tried to tell my younger siblings that this was her relative, but one of my sisters never bought it. She actually called me to ask if this was really stepmothers cousin or our sister. I remember calling my dad to say that I thought lying was a very bad idea. I told him I’d be willing to tell my siblings who Anne really was. He realized the cat was out of the bag already and told them the truth. The reason it didn’t fly was twofold. First, she and I looked a lot alike and when she came to visit, she asked a lot of questions about our mom which would have been odd for my stepmothers relative.