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!

Most of my female ancestors died in childbirth. Most of my male ancestors were priests.
I am an atheist, and I'm not procreating. I'm such a disappointment.

Most of my ancestors were stillborn or sterile.

MANWHORE!

Prolific bastard wasn't he? ;)

That would make you my sister in law or something.

:scratches head:

There is a vague story about a Baron in my family being ousted for a dalliance with a scullery maid. Jinx is skeptical.

My grandfather on my mother's side help found the Hebrew Butcher's Union in New York. His son, my Uncle was president of it for awhile.

You know that red unicorn logo for Mobil gas? My grandfather designed it.


That's about as far back as my genealogy knowledge goes, because I find it all terribly boring.

Um wasn't that a Pegasus?

Here's an interesting family tree story:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/30/ann...ex.html?hpt=C1

Only because the horn never worked.

:D

One January, the fate of the dried up chirstmas tree was being decided by my mother.

She figures that the best thing would be to burn it up in the chimney, and knowing full well that dry pine fires get a little out of control, she handed each my sister and I a water atomizer.

Chopping up the tree would take too long and make a mess, so she just shoved the whole tree into the small living room chimney, trusting that if anything got out of hand, we always had the atomizers, which work great controlling the average chimney fire.

Needless to say, the atomizers were no match and the whole thing was consumed in a few minutes. Luckily the houses were we lived are all made out of obsidian and stone, so all we had to suffer through was a charred and unsightly ceiling. It was quite ironic seeing as that in my family, she's the only one with any common sense.

1) I was told that one of my ancestors was Daniel Boone's brother, Squire Boone. I have been unable to trace this, but it's entirely plausible. Right people and place.

2) My great grandfather was hit by a train--three times. The last time it took him several days to die.

3) A cautionary tale told at every Christmastime. When my father was a boy, in Kentucky in the early 19teens, he wanted a new saddle for Christmas. He wanted it bad. One day before Christmas, he was snooping around in the barn where he wasn't supposed to and there it was--a brand new saddle, just his size. Too bad his folks found out--he never received it. Made quite an impression on me, because the pain and disappointment in his voice 50 years later were still there.

4) Whenever there were odd noises or little things missing around the house, I was always told "Mr. Nelson" did it. "Mr. Nelson" was an imaginary person who lived in the attic. It wasn't until years later I realized that Nelson was a family name, and there might have been a real Mr. Nelson back in the day when they hid retarded/crazy people -- up in the attics.

5) Oh, yeah. And we're "Orangemen." No matter that we'd been emigrated from the Old Country for over 300 years. (rolls eyes)

"2) My great grandfather was hit by a train--three times. The last time it took him several days to die."

How many days did it take him to die the first two times?

:eek:

I think they just made him deaf and stiff. So, he couldn't turn his head the last time to see the train coming, or hear the whistle!

(that's part of the story, too)

You need to check out the brain of clodfobble thread.

Clearly, only she was pure enough of heart or brain to see the unicorn. To everyone else it looked like Pegasus. OR the Sinclair dinosaur. (me)

Sure, sure, that's what I meant. I never met the man, but I'm sure he wouldn't design no pansy-ass unicorn.

Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, was beheaded on 9 April 1747, aged 80, on Tower Hill in London, becoming the last man to die in this manner.

<Yes, I'm Scottish>

The story probably sounds better with only partial information. I assume his relationship with alcohol, God, and reality resembles his descendants'. He was supposed to have failed as a farmer as well. His youngest son was a semi-famous writer/Irish Nationalist turned Christian Brother so our official family history, like probable emigration from Wales at some point, may have been cleaned up a bit for public consumption to support changing political agendas. I'd like to do a serious records search on them because there are some really tantalizing bits a information, like the writer's relationship with a married Quaker woman (Mary Leadbeater's daughter) and Yeats. There are a lot more google hits today than there used to be so if I procrastinate today...

George A. Corey, on my mother's side of the family. Civil War -- fought with a Massachusetts regiment in about a dozen battles from New Bern NC on. Captured by Confederates at Cold Harbor, IIRC, and fetched up in Andersonville for half a year. The experience permanently affected his attitude towards leftovers -- throwing food out just wasn't allowed. "I'll eat it tomorrow for breakfast," family legend quotes Grampa Corey. And he would too, all his life. At the end of the war after convalescing from Andersonville for several months he got in fairly serious trouble by mishandling his leave time but apparently was acquitted of the charge of desertion, more or less on the grounds of no harm, no foul. Seems they concluded his absence was owing to his never having gotten leave before and flubbing it up by inexperience -- and they were demobilizing most of the Army anyway at the time.

civil war ancestors are teh best!

I've got some served in some Pa. regiment.

Maybe the Company E, 127th Infantry Pennsylvania Volunteers? With my great-great-great-great-great grandpa!

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com...0004photo.html

he got in trouble for mishandling his leave after Andersonville? That's just wrong

Apparently I'm related to Sam Houston on my Dad's side... but that's the only one I know of that's interesting at all.

edit:
Except for the Hunkapillar branch of the family, my mother's maternal grandparents'... Including Nonnie Hunkapillar, Bug Hunkapillar, Dot Hunkapillar, Boy Hunkapillar (apparently not his real name - he didn't have one. He was always just "Boy".)... Apparently the Hungerbieler clan came over from Germany. Before they used the name Hunkapillar, for one or two generations it was Hungerpillar, and before that it was Hungerbieler, specifically Johann Conrad Hungerbieler, who came to the US in 1752 from Dossenheim, Germany.

On my mother's dad's side, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (that's nine "great"s), Thomas Dunn, arrived on the ship Temperance in Virginia in 1620, as a 14 year-old, as a servant to Sir George Yeardley, the governor of Virginia, having been born in 1606 outside Yorkshire, England.

So, your family is from TX, Ibram? Well that would explain the Dweller NSFW pics. Everything is bigger in TX. :p:

This is the account of my second cousin 3 times removed and how he died. He was the uncle of George Bernard Shaw who penned this memory of him. Although a very distant relative it's a rather wierd story!

William Bernard Shaw (Uncle Barney) smoked and drank, gave up alcohol after age 50, played the ophicleide (obsolete wind instrument), At age 60, he renounced the instrument and married a lady of great piety and fell silent. He died Dr. Eustice's mental asylum in North Dublin in a most peculiar way.

Being "impatient for heaven", he discovered an absolutely original method of suicide. It was irresistibly amusing and no one had ever thought of it, involving as it did, an empty carpet bag. However, in the act of placing the bag over his head, Uncle Barney jammed the mechanism of his heart in a paroxysm of laughter-which the merest recollection of his suicidal technique never failed to promote among the Shaws-and the result was he died a second before he killed himself.

The coroner's court described the death as being "from natural causes".

Nah, my folks are from Alabama.

Nope, you're from Yorkshire.
That's God's Own County.
They grow them big up there too!

My great grandmother hung herself after spending the week in an insane asylum...my great uncle hung himself...lots of drunks and Ladies of the (Early) Evening on my mom's side - one great aunt used to sit in bars waiting for "gentlemen" to buy her drinks.

See? It's in the blood.

They say that patience is a virtue.

Doctors say, patients are a virtue.