Best Family Story
 

Griff's comment about one of his ancestors being a failed brewer in Ireland (how? How???) and said ancestor being a 'fox in the henhouse,' sounds like the beginning of a good family story.

The best family story I've been able to uncover involves a great-uncle on my dad's side (Scot-Irish, Presbyterian, transplanted to western Penn.) This guy had a coconut he wanted to eat. How to get to the yummy center of that formidable nut? He got a bright idea! He used the butt of his gun to crack the shell! Naturally, the gun was loaded. He banged the butt of the gun on the coconut shell and it discharged a bullet to his gullet. He died a few days later. Death by Coconut!

That's a good family story.

What's yours?

Well, a great, great, great (etc) aunt on my Mum's side was a well to do young lady, from a respectable family (lower gentry) who ended up being disinherited for running off with the stablehand...Very Mills and Boon :P

My mother.

But I don't have time to get into it now.

She was deported from Crete with a medical assistant accompanying her on the flight on the grounds of being batshit insane, though.

Tracing my Mother's tree, in New England from the 1600s, was mostly from church records, deeds, and wills. There was Jebediahs, Hezekiahs, Ezekiels, and suddenly 200 years ago, a Willie Freeman. Staunch abolitionists, they had probably taken a runaway slave into the family, and named him in the will.

One of my ancestors was hung as a witch, not in Salem but another Massachusetts town.

One of my ancestors a Baroness, was descended from the mongols, and traced back to the Khan clan.

One of my ancestors fell out of the Mayflower during a storm while crossing the Atlantic. The story goes that there was a rope dangling from one of the sails in the water and he grabbed it and held on. It's only because he got pulled back into the boat that I'm here today.

Unfortunately, Sarah Palin can say the same thing. He's also her ancestor. She and I are related. *shudder*

My mother claims we're descendants of Jesus.

The America show on History channel said that more than 1 in 10 americans can trace their roots back to the Mayflower. Much more than I thought...

I don't have any family stories, there's only like 12 of us... :sniff:

Oh glatt, say it ain't so!

My grandpa told me one of my Shawnee ancestors was a scout for the Union army, knowing the land so well and all. I would say he was talking about my great great grandpa but I don't really know, don't know if it's true, don't know if the timing even works out. Unfortunately, there isn't really anyone left to ask.

I understand that this one Mayflower ancestor that Sarah and I share has millions of other descendants. Exact number is unknown.

A trading post owned by one of my ancestors was attacked by a force of nearly a thousand Creek, Cherokee, and Shawnee Indians (John Sevier pissed 'em off. BIG time.). A boy was about to be tomahawked, but, was claimed as a captive by a Cherokee. (Only survivor, btw.) He was later sold back to other relatives.

All of us (on that side anyway) came from him.

I saw something on History, Discovery, whichever, that said one out of two hundred people world-wide can be traced to Genghis Khan.

My mom is really into this stuff so I've benefited from the research she's done.

Another branch of the family came over from Holland about 20 years after the Mayflower and became real bigwigs in New Amsterdam. There's still a major street in Brooklyn that carries our family name. And there's a playground in a nasty neighborhood there too named after us. One guy had a mansion near the waterfront in Brooklyn and the British took it over during the Revolutionary War to use as a hospital. It was later torn down and there's a historic church on the site now.

I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating.
No details because it's recent - within the last 50 years anyway.

A male member of my family got a 15yo girl pregnant. He wasn't much older himself. But she was the daughter of a prostitute and a Chinese sailor. She was hidden in the back room of the family house until her 16th birthday, when she was smuggled out to marry said family member, all swaddled up to prevent her condition being known.

They're still married, I've met them a couple of times and she's a smart, funny and successful woman and a grandmother now.

And another member of my family spent part of WWII "in the glass house." He was a batman who robbed the officer he was serving in order to get home to his girl. He was caught and imprisoned but was allowed to marry when said lady found herself up the stick.

These are probably commonplace stories in many families, but until seven years ago was led to believe I was the only black sheep in the family because I'd gone and got divorced. Grandad's 80th birthday party was a real eye-opener I can tell you!