If I'm asked to keep a secret, I do. It's important to me that my friends know that I can be trusted. I have found that the majority of secrets find their way to daylight, no matter how hard people try to keep them.
My Family, especially my Grandmother tried to keep lots of things quiet. Some I understand, others, I wasn't sure why she made the effort. Her father was a drunk, who fooled around on his wife, my Great-Grandmother, and had his son-in-laws join in on the 'fun'. It seems he was married once before he married my great-grandma, and then divorced her to marry a prostitute. (What a class act huh?) She wasn't a pretty, heart of gold one either. Think fat drunken slob....
On the other side of the family, mental illness was covered up, ignored. Stupid, but understandable in that day.
My father's only sister was know to have affairs with young priests in the Catholic Church.
An email was recently sent to my father, from the Azores. There are people trying to do some genealogy, and are checking to see if the, J.M. "Smith" (false name there, my great-grandfather), is the same one who emigrated to the San Jose, CA, area, because he had fathered an illegitimate child in the Azores? Here it is 100-150 years later, and secrets come to light. (My father has no idea, but, is going to see what he can find out.)
I just find it really interesting. BIG HUGS, Steph
6 comments:
Keeping secrets is important to me also. I usually sabotage my own, though. Too careless, or not quite as devious as I think I am.
As for family secrets: have found many in my own family, thanks to an uncle who took on the genealogy search. a couple of murders, several in the Oklahoma Land Rush, California Gold Rush, and the building of Fort Worth. Not sure about illegitimacy, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Was he able to find out the reasons behind them? Did they kill someone they knew, (like a partner or neighbor) or a stranger? My 'roots' don't go back that far in US history, but that sounds like it would make a great book. I'd read it!
Yeah as far as the illegitimacy thing goes, people were the same then as they are now, we certainly didn't invent sex, so I imagine there are a lot of people who's 'daddy' wasn't their daddy.
My relatives were too busy growing potatoes and drinking alcohol to have any adventures. *Sigh*
Ahhh but Indi, what were they doing AFTER they drank??? That's when most of the good stuff was happening! LOL Steph
My mama (grandma) was a homewrecker. She was my papa's babysitter. Papa's first wife took her kids to Washington and papa had 4 more kids with mama. Mama's dad was a magician and played calyope on paddle boats. He disappeared. Dad says he always said, "Good magicians never die; they just disappear." When an aunt started genealogy, she'd get close to finding him and someone would die.
I was told that my granddad left England 2 weeks earlier than he had planned (he was initially scheduled for the Titanic) because he found out he "had a girl in trouble"
yeah - there's some of that 'class' in every family
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