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Growing up, I learned that my father’s family had Native American heritage – but it was not to be discussed, as it was a family secret!<\/p>\n
When I asked my paternal relatives about it – I got told, “We don’t talk about that!”<\/p>\n
end. of. conversation.<\/p>\n
I may not have asked more questions of them – but the topic sure stayed in my head. And no I have not done much genealogical research – but I do poke around the web seeking information.<\/p>\n
Then my mother’s family – always a mystery. Her paternal relatives did not like the woman their son married so there was little interaction [or so I was told.] Her father died when my mom was young and my grandmother would never speak of her spouse’s family so that too was an<\/p>\n
end. of. conversation.<\/p>\n
But – as it turned out – my father’s family had yet another secret!<\/p>\n
My cousins and I knew our grandmother had a sister – we called her Aunt Sadie. As she lived near my grandparents, she was at all the family functions – and as far as we knew, she was the only sibling.<\/p>\n
But not that many years ago I learned that her family included even more siblings!<\/p>\n
My grandmother had another sister who lived and died in relatively close physical proximity to my her! Some of us, her children and grandchildren, sort of knew there was a relative who was married to a wealthy man but the exact “relation” was one of those family secrets.<\/p>\n
Only after this woman died, and without a will, did we get to know the exact relationship. She was my grandmother’s and Aunt Sadie’s sister! We knew this only because as she died without a will, we, the grandchildren, stood to inherit her estate.<\/p>\n
We had to prove we were related to her and that there were no other relatives in closer gemological proximity. To that end, our attorney hired a genealogist who researched my grandmother’s family.<\/p>\n
Wow! Sitting in that Manhattan courtroom listening to the genealogist was funny and sad – at the same time. <\/p>\n
I’m not going into all of it here as there are many many hours of her testimony, but the one I do want to mention is that my grandmother had at least 8 siblings!<\/p>\n
I will always wonder what happened to those relatives – the records are spotty and incomplete – but my psychology head has a wild time imagining all the possible whys that led this family to get so secretive.<\/p>\n
What other secrets were there that kept siblings living near each other but not in contact? What kept the remaining NYC sister from seeking out her sister’s grandchildren?<\/p>\n
Many questions…but no answers……<\/p>\n
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Family secrets: a topic I have had in my head for decades. Growing up, I learned that my father’s family had Native American heritage – but it was not to be discussed, as it was a family secret! When I asked my paternal relatives about it – I got told, “We don’t talk about that!” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[122,170,174,173,61,14,117,171,172],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-family-2","tag-family-secrets","tag-genealogist","tag-genealogy","tag-human-interest","tag-lynn-dorman","tag-psychology-2","tag-secrets","tag-siblings","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.graywolfproductions.com\/graywolfproductions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}