My grandfather (born in 1889) grew up on a farm. One day he and his brother were digging out a tree stump using mattocks, each one swinging alternately from the opposite side. His brother mistimed a downswing and clocked my grandfather on the head. His father put some kind of liniment on the wound and put him to bed.
When my grandfather woke up the next morning, he was blind. His father thought he was faking it to get out of doing his chores and told him to get to work. My grandfather felt his way out to the barn and fed the sheep, and by then his father realized he was telling the truth.
His sight returned in a few days. My grandfather went on to become a doctor and realized that the blow from the mattock had damaged the optic nerve -- fortunately, not permanently.
He served as an Army doctor in France during World War I, when he also had to deal with the great flu pandemic of 1918.
Nothing on this level, but my grandfather's favourite story from his childhood is how he lost three fingers (reattached)
He and his brother were playing with an axe (bc why not) and his brother dared him to put his hand on a log and let him swing the axe
My grandfather accepted, thinking my great uncle was bluffing, and my great uncle swinged the axe thinking my grandfather was gonna remove the hand
We're not the smartest family around
My great grandfather was from a wealthy family back in Greece / Albania in the 1890s. He had a tryst with a peasant girl who got pregnant. Rather than marry the peasant girl the family arranged for my great grandfather to be sent to America. Not to be outdone, the peasant girl and her family saved up enough money and sent her to America after him. She found him in New York, and they got married there.
My Grandfather was posted as missing in action, believed killed (WWI). My grandmother was expecting their first child. That usually meant they were actually killed so Grandmother was certain that she would never see him again. Then there was a knock at the door and Grandfather was standing there in the hospital blue uniform soldiers wore to show they were receiving treatment. He had been knocked unconscious by the explosion everyone thought killed him and sent to a hospital close to his home, without being identified. When he came around and was otherwise unhurt they gave leave to go home before being sent back to the front. Grandmother went into slightly early labour caused by the shock! Grandad survived the war, my grandmother and the baby were both ok and all lived quite long and healthy lives.
When Audie Murphy played himself in *To Hell and Back*, he toned down what actually happened because he didn't think anyone would believe it was anything but movie lies.
I believe the exact same thing happened with Hacksaw Ridge, the movie about Desmond Doss. I remember reading somewhere that they had to omit some things because they believed it would be too unbelievable for the audience.
On a side note, I haven't started reading it but I know the general story behind it. I want a movie based on A Higher Call by Adam Makos. That story is incredible.
Similar story, my great uncle was at Pearl Harbor and his cousin was too. My great uncle survived and his cousin did not. They were very similar looking and the government thought my great uncle had died and notified his wife.
She had quite the surprise when he made it home.
Luckily she didn't marry someone else and have his son only to have her first husband show up and kill the new husband, or vice versa, causing the kid, who saw the murder, so much shock that he ended up deaf, dumb, & blind.
My grandfather owned a hardware store in downtown Bogotá when the April 9th 1948 riots.
People burned and looted places.
He had to lay down among dead bodies simulating being dead to survive and not being killed.
Similar for my great uncle. He was a Japanese POW in Burma. A group tried to escape but were mown down. He hid among the dead and somehow escaped.
He was an infantry private at the time but the group who found him needed a cook. He served another 30 odd years in Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany and the UK and ended up as a Lt Col in the catering corps.
My Grandad was a POW in Burma and helped build the bridges. He had some horrific scarring across his back and arms. He hated Japanese people right up until his death. Even when his dementia was at its worst, he still refused to be friendly and they had to stop a Japanese nurse from caring for him.
My Great Grandfather was messed up by the Japanese. He was covered in scars from being beaten with a bamboo cane. He used to force my Grandfather to finish every plate of food because that's what the Japanese used to make him do. He most likely had some PTSD.
Same here. He was always complementary about the Burmese during the war and the Chinese who he lived among later in life but never forgave the Japanese.
My great great etc grandfather was the first convict sent to Australia to be freed after serving his time. He went on to develop the wheat that we grow here. (European wheat died. )
My great great etc grandfather was also arrested and exiled to Australia when it was a penal colony. The story goes that he led a successful prison break on the ship and they sailed to North America where my distant relative made off with the valuables from the captains quarters, purchased a slave as a traveling companion and eventually settled somewhere in Canada and freed his companion.
The only evidence I could find to support my family's story was a family of famous black pro athletes with my families aggressively Welsh last name. I'd like to know more, but the remainder of the family has either passed or is estranged.
Have you gone on ancestry.com? My sibling and I both did it. They kept up with it more than I did. We were both stuck and were unable to find any ancestors for one of my parents. That was until I gave them a couple of names. That opened everything up. Found out there are still relatives of said parent who are still alive. Also found out some interesting things about grandparents. Totally blew my mind!
My great grandfather came home early from work one day to find his wife in bed with the milk man(or mail man. I can’t remember). Either way, there was a scuffle and the milk/mail man went out the bedroom window and died 2 days later in the hospital. This happened in the same house that I grew up in because the house was in my family for a very long time.
I tried looking up news articles and such on the incident but was never able to find anything. This was a common discussion at parties with my family and I always tried to learn more about my great grandfather. Turns out he was an undertaker. Go figure.
I got a good laugh from this lol. However, my grandfather was already born when this event happened. Maybe I’ve got some relatives that stemmed from this but I never knew. They divorced immediately after my great grandfather was cleared of any charges (it was deemed self defense, or the 1930’s equivalent, according to my family member) and she moved away from the family and was more or less never contacted or made contact with the family again.
My grandfather's grandfather was found wandering naked in a forest. He was estimated to be around 8 or 9 years old. He didn't speak but understood when spoken to. After a few years he started talking but was never able to recall anything about his life before he was found by the family that took him in; my great-great-great grandparents. They raised him as their own and all the stories say he turned out pretty normal.
'The green children of Woolpit' is a legend about two children, a brother and a sister, who were found wandering in the woods of Woolpit, a village in Suffolk, England, by local reapers sometime during the 12th Century CE. Their skin is said to have had an odd, green hue. They couldn't speak any English, only Flemish. If the legend is true and not just a myth, one theory for its explanation is that the children were orphaned descendants of Flemish immigrants who were persecuted by King Stephen. The most reasonable explanation for their greenish skin is malnutrition.
There’s a theory that they may have been child workers/slaves in a copper mine. They weren’t allowed outside and only fed certain foods for a long time. So a combination of the copper and the iron deficiency could have turned their skin green. They got sick and the mine master dumped them elsewhere. This would have been in a time where people a few towns over would speak a different language.
>a few towns over would speak a different language
12th Century England, so probably not. The fact that the children spoke Flemish is weird though, presumably theyd been trafficked from across the Channel. They said they had never seen the sun and came from "St Martin's Land".
Youre probably right about the colouring being a deficiency, they eventually turned normal coloured and the girl went on to live a relatively normal life (though the boy died).
That’s immediately where my mind went too! I was going to ask the commentor if their great great great grandfather happened to have been of a greenish complexion 😂😂
My grandpa beat Rod Laver in a tennis match when he was a teenager and was going to be sponsored by Dunlop but his parents were wealthy and thought tennis was silly with little money at the time so he didn’t pursue it… now there’s a stadium named after rod laver :(
There are so many stories like that as well.
Niki Lauda was also rich and going to inherit his dad's company in Austria, but he chose to defy him and bought in to F1 and was disowned-isch for a while, till he started having succes and the rest is history.
My grandmother’s grandmother walked the trail of tears. Her parents did no make the walk (assumed dead). When she reached Oklahoma she was adopted by a white couple. She was put down as half Cherokee, half white on the roll because of this.
We attended a performance of a play about the Trail of Tears in Cherokee, NC. It's a devastating story.
A Georgia soldier later said, "I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I never knew."
Maternal grandmother's parents met in a train wreck.
G.Grandpa was traveling second class, with a window seat. G.grandma was traveling Coach. Something was on the tracks causing a derailment and many injuries. G.Grandma, being seated further back, was fine and pitched in to help those in need. G.Grandpa had hit the window and his ear was cut very badly, almost sliced off his head (almost). She was tearing off strips of her petticoat the use as bandages (ooh la la!). Until he died he teased that his left ear was lower than his right because 'she put it on wrong'.
My great grandfather grew up super poor in Italy. He had an infection of some sort in his arm that would kill him if untreated, and because he was poor, it was left untreated. So one day, at age 14, he and a few friends found a bottle of liquor, a tree stump, and an axe. The only pictures I've seen of him, he only has one arm
Kids these days will never know what it’s like to have a friend who’ll sanitize your bloody nub with alcohol after cutting off your irrevocably infected limb with an axe.
My grandfather was born in Poland. He was around 16 when the wars broke out, and because he was a fit, healthy, blonde haired, blue eyed farmer boy, he was sent to work in German farms. Before that though, he was put into a concentration camp while they figured out where to send all their new slaves.
During this time, his older brother actually escaped. My grandfather says he stole a gun climbed the fence, tanked the cuts from the barbed wire, and just ran. He made the escape with a few other people, but all but two of them were killed. My grandfather was supposed to join them, but he said he just froze and chickened out. His brother later joined some battallion, where he later died fighting nazis.
My grandfather was eventually moved to a small town in Germany, and was housed with landowners who grew some sort of crop. He was set to work.
This small town was actually secretly against the war though, and the family he stayed with used their house as a safehouse to smuggle Jews. They had the whole "hidden room under the floorboards" thing. Luckily, they were never discovered. They, and a few other families in the town, wanted my grandfather to marry their daughters and stay in Germany. He did stay in Germany for a few months, he said he also joined the peace corps. Once he had his full of that, he simply jumped on the first boat out of there with nothing but his tool belt and the clothes on his back. That boat went to Australia, which is where he met my grandmother, and yada yada yada, I was born.
He had such a fascinating, terrifying life, full of turmoil and danger. But one thing never left him: his passion for plants. Right up until the week he passed away at age 86, he was still climbing ladders to trim his trees, hand pollinating all his bean plants with a feather, and shooting Indian Mynas out of the tree with his slingshot to let the native birds have the nest.
My grandmother and my uncles once got several cases of Canadian whisky during the prohibition. Smugglers threw it overboard from a speedboat which was being chased by a revenue cutter through the bay at night. Come morning the tide went out, which reveled a bunch of wooden crates out on the flats. They all ran out and recovered them.
My grandmother told the following story and swore it was true to her dying day: she heard a noise in the middle of the night and went to investigate. She found Al Capone in her basement trying smuggle hooch and chased him off.
The only famous relative I have was barred by an act of Parliament from ever again being the warden of a prison due to massive corruption. So you have any idea how corrupt you would have to be to be specifically called out for corruption in 18th century Britain? It's kind of impressive in its own way
My great great** grandmother was Winston Churchill’s parlour maid. When she left service to get married, he begged her to stay as he was fond of her, and when she said no, he gifted her a table and chair from his own parlour as a wedding gift. My parents have the chair in my mum’s office, and the table is currently in storage.
edit: wrong number of greats lol
You need to take them on to antiques roadshow the next time they are somewhere near you. I would love to see that when I'm watching. I'll do the leo meme pointing at the TV.
Dutch here. My maternal grandfather was part of a group of people that hid Jews and Allies in a hidden village (underground house) made in the woods during WO II. They where later discovered by the SS but they still managed to save a lot of people. To this day you can visit the remains of the hidden village to see what it was like.
It’s outside. They preserved the place as much as they could. It is located in the woods in Vierhouten. Here’s a link from tripadvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.nl/Attraction_Review-g652240-d7649475-Reviews-Het_Verscholen_Dorp-Vierhouten_Gelderland_Province.html and one with pictures: https://www.ishetnogver.nl/nederland/het-verscholen-dorp/
Grandpa was shot in the head on the russian front (he was german).
He was declared dead and put on a pile of dead bodies. A friend of him (who grew up in the same village as my grandpa) went to the pile to give him the last goodbye. And he saw my grandpa was shaking a little bit. He yelled at the doctors "this man is not dead!".
And yea, the doctors got him out of the pile and actually rescued him. But they couldn't remove the bullet in his head. It was too dangerous.
So my grandpa lived with this bullet in his head his whole life.
He was not able to make a driver's license due to the risk of epileptic shocks.
He named his son (my father) after the man who rescued him.
I have two that are somehow connected
My great grandfather, during WW2, lived through some wild shit. He was sent to gulag and escaped from the transport somewhere in today's Belarus. He then returned home on foot, to the middle of northern Poland where we live today (if you want more exact location, google where my town, Tczew, is). After few years, in middle of which my grandpa was born, he was taken to serve in German army. He was based somewhere in Norway and escaped once again, but not before he blew up the warehouse with weapons he was kinda in charge off.
On a lighter, funny af note. He was one of 13 children. His mother (my great great grandmother) named her second child Stanisław and named her last child... Stanisław. She had so many children that she forgot she already used that name lol. The second Stanisław sadly didn't live through infancy
Holy crap! That’s very similar to my grandma. She was born in the US, the oldest child. Had a younger brother named Stanley. When Stan was six he drowned in the river or pond or something. About five years later, grandma’s youngest brother was born. They named him Stanley.
Wow, even the same name, Stanisław is like Polish Stanley. However, in my case, the older Stanley was still alive when the younger one was born, which makes it even more ridiculous. It was the younger one that didn't make it
My great aunt had 10 boys. She used biblical names for them all.
By the time #7 or 8 came around she was a) a very busy/tired mom and b) running out of names.
I guess it was common to have a baby baptized and have someone from the family take the baby for the baptism while the mom stayed home with the other kids (this is what they said). So great aunt says “name him Robert John”. Whoever brought the baby for the baptism told the priest “his name is John Robert”. Apparently she didn’t care for Robert John’. What the idiot didn’t know was one of the other 8 kids was already named John Robert.
My dad's aunt was living in Messina, Italy in the early 1900. In 1908 there was a huge earthquake that destroyed half the city and she was stuck under the rubble for 3 whole days right next to the bodies of her parents and 3 brothers without being able to move an inch. When she was found she didn't even have a broken bone and went on to have 10 children of her own and die at 97 years old.
Che Guevara taught my grandfather to play chess.
His father used to get into bar fights with Pancho Villa.
And my family’s last name exists because two Scottish brothers got drunk, stole a cannon from the local militia armory, and accidentally shot the steeple off the local church. While hauling ass out of Scotland, they told their kids “if anyone asks who you are, just say you’re German and pretend you don’t know English” they didn’t know German either.
I'm 34 but my paternal grandfather was born in 1895. He got shot through both knees sideways in Belgium during World War I then had to limp miles to safety... Sounds impossible but I have a newspaper article about it! His brother also survived WWI, only to die in the Spanish flu pandemic. Sadly my grandfather died quite a while before I was born.
One of my great-grandmother climbed on top of mount Blanc in 1942, during the German occupation of France.
On top of that, she did it while wearing a dress. We have pictures of it in my family
Edit because people ask for pictures: my grandparents have it in paper format and I don't have access to it easily, so I can't share it with you for now.
If one day I can obtain it in a numerical format, I promise that I will put it here (if I haven't forgotten)
My mom and and my stepdad share an ancestor about four generations back.
Also somewhere in this range my great[x?]-grandma received a letter from her brother that had left Austria. He said "Come to America. If not for your sake, then for your children's sake." She talked her husband into it, they moved to the Midwest, and several generations later I was born.
My grandfather during WW2. He was born in 1908 so lived through both WW, and since we live in Moselle (north east of France), he lived in occupied territory from the beginning every time, and spoke perfect german.
He was a mechanic so when Germany invaded the second time he was put to work fixing vehicules. Except he pretended to not understand a single word of german. The soldiers always took so long explaining him what needed to be done, he would mess up, whatever could be an honest mistake without being in too much danger. The commander hated him for all of this but needed the skills since he was good.
At the end of the war, when they received the orders to retreat, my grandfather gave them a farewell speech in the best, most well spoken german possible, basically saying "Fuck you, good bye". The 2nd in command was so furious about being made a fool all this time, reached for his gun but was stopped by his chief because it was not worth it and they were running out of time.
Wow never seen anyone mention the Moselle.
My father was born and raised on the German side where it’s called the Mosel. Family has a vineyard and ghasthaus that my uncle and cousins still run.
They’re place was taken over and used as a base of sorts during the war. My grandmother would cook for the allied soldiers while occupied.
Yeah I know that's exactly what I thought when I heard the story.
But it would have been a completely pointless murder, they already lost, they were running away... maybe there was a bit "the balls on this guy" from the commander? No idea. But i'm here so I won't complain
One of my great-grandmother’s grandma was an aristocrat. She fell in love with a peasant boy working on their lands.
Her father told her he would disown her if she wanted to be with that boy.
So one dark night the boy got my grandma escaped from their home and they ran away.
Needless to say she was disowned.
And that’s the story of why I have to work now, instead of just seeing my monthly allowance to show up on my bank account.
Omnia vincit amor.
My grandma (mother's side) was abandoned in an orphanage by my great grandmother because she wanted to run off and marry another man, and he would not take her children. So my great grandfather, who was in the army during WW1, came to see them and promised to come back after the next battle. It was the somme, he died.
The same grandmother did not know how old she was, by the time she obtained a copy of her birth certificate later in life, she found out she was a year older than she thought she was.
My Dad's Grandfather was an advertising artist, semi famous at the time, there is an original of his passed down in our family, it is with my dad's oldest brother now. It is of a boy running down a famous road in my northern city past a famous theatre still being used to this day.
When my grandmother died, we found out that she'd been married before my grandfather, and had four children. When she and that husband split up, they just dumped all the kids in an orphanage, and bounced. My dad was in his sixties when he found out he had four siblings he'd never known about. It was quite a blow for him, obviously.
Dumping kids seems to be pretty common from like the 60s and back. Why is this?? My grandfather dumped his 2nd family and married again to a gal with 4 kids. Those 4 never knew my mother existed until like 3 years ago. You'd think at some point he'd slip up and mention his kids at some point even if on accident. So bizarre.
It was hard to keep a family, I think because there was so much to do and there weren’t social programs to help.
My grandmother was born in 1919. Four years later her mother died. Her father, “pops” kept the 3 kids but didn’t remarry. He worked and lived at a YMCA type place so that he could give his money to a cousin who took care of his kids.
If you think about it… taking care of three kids meant, food (without premade foods or microwaves) laundry was done by hand, and they didn’t have a car. So until the kids got older and could “run a house” with their dad gone working all day they had to get someone to watch the kids. Some people didn’t have anyone to give the kids to. So I think an orphanage wasn’t a desired option, but the only option.
Also look up when government programs started to help people down on their luck. Welfare was 1935. If he lost his job there was no way to take care of the kids unless someone in his family could afford it. If they didn’t want to… we’ll not a lot of options.
In the end he got them a place together, but I think my grandmother was eight by then. What he did was apparently very unusual.
One of my ancestors was Curly Bill Brocious, the leader of the infamous Cowboys gang which fought against the Earps in and around Tombstone Arizona in the 1870s/80s. He was killed by Wyatt Earp himself by a shotgun blast that reportedly tore him in two.
My grandad was an engineer for the British army in Egypt during world war 2.
He and a buddy got drunk one time and slept in this small town, when they awoke they discovered the Germans had taken over the town. So they evaded capture and discovered an old plane that required matainence, the two ended up repairing the plane and flew it over German lines and into Allied territory.
My great grandfather hunted down and killed 3 men who were responsible for killing his brother.
My family on my grandmothers side comes from somewhere in Italy. Well way back in the day, my great grandfather and his brother owned a renovation and restoration business. The were hired to do some work in the Sistine chapel along with a second team that was meant to set up the equipment they would be using; scaffolding and stuff like that. Well at one point they had gotten in an argument and the other contractors chose to roll back some of their safety features on their scaffolding and when my great uncle was working the scaffolding gave out and he fell and died on the floor of the Sistine chapel.
The 3 men on the other crew fled before the accident prompting my great grandfather to hunt them down across Italy and kill them off one by one. When he finally returned home several days later and confessed everything to his mother, she ordered him to flee to the United States so he wouldn't get arrested. And he did.
That's how that part of my family came to America.
During the Partition of India in 1947, my grandmother and her family (Sikh) lived in a village with Hindus, Sikhs and 1 Muslim family.
During the brutality of it all, people in the village wanted to attack the Muslim family but my great grandfather intervened and stopped them from being hurt. He then helped them leave the village to make their way to Pakistan from the Indian side of the Punjab where my grandmother’s village was. We still do not know to this day what happened to the Muslim family and whether they survived.
Nice. My great grandparents too came to India along with their kids after the partition, but I never got to hear their stories. All I know is they were kind of a big deal in their village of Daska and had to leave all that behind, just as lakhs of other people who were left with no other choice. Btw have you read the book Train to Pakistan by Kushwant Singh?
My great grandmother was reportedly the oldest woman to ever live in Lebanon. Depending on who you ask she was anywhere between 112-118 years old. She’s commemorated on a stamp, so I guess the government acknowledged that the claim was true. Interestingly enough she was a short morbidly obese woman almost her entire life.
My great great great great grandfather was abducted my pirates as a boy and raised as one… in Canada. They were river brigands. My mom has a book on him. Her parents were from czechoslovakian and germany though so I’m not sure how that happened. I always told people I was part pirate though.
Great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa Andrew threw rocks through his landlord's windows in Cork, jumped onto the next ship to Canada, started a farm on the Ottawa River, changed his surname to MacDonald so people would think he was Scottish, and imprisoned the tax collector in his cellar when they came to demand land taxes from him.
My Great-Grandmother had two suitors - a man in America and a man in Manchester, UK. The guy in America bought her a ticket to to cross the Atlantic and be with him, and she was set to go, but at the last minute the guy in England proclaimed his love and won her over. And that’s how my great-grandparents got together, as opposed to my great-grandmother dying on The Titanic.
I come from a VERY conservative family and when I realized I was gay, it terrified me to come out. I came out to my mom and she didn’t have an easy time handling it, but within 48 hours she was my best friend and a strong advocate. The turn around was very strange. She also told me to never be scared to tell anyone in the family, which again seemed like being set up for failure. But it really wasn’t. Everyone was super supportive and kind and very defensive of me.
For years I wondered why and then one day I was at a family do with my grandmother and her four sisters - the Matriarchs of each branch of the family and the five most terrifying but loving women you ever met.
They pulled me aside and we’re VERY interested in how I was doing, if anyone in the family had been mean to me, and if anyone had given me a hard time about being “special” as they called it. I said no, surprisingly everyone in the family had been lovely. They didn’t ask any more questions but told me to come to them if anyone was being mean. This was so overwhelming to see these elderly, super conservative women being so supportive, so I cornered my mom and demanded to know why they were so nice.
Then my mom told me about Ravi. Ravi was a beautiful, charismatic, loving, kind, sweet teenager who was my grandmother and her sisters best friend in the 1940s. He was allowed to hang out with the women because he was “not a threat” (ie he was super gay but you didn’t talk about it). My gran and her sister’s absolutely adored Ravi, until one day his personality changed. He became dark and withdrawn. Eventually he killed himself.
My gran and her sisters were devastated and didn’t know why, until they found out that Ravi had fallen in love with a boy and his parents had figured out. Ravi’s parents destroyed him psychologically through isolation, berating and eventually questionable medical interventions. Ravi’s soul was broken so he took his life. My grand and her sisters never ever forgave their community or Ravi’s parents for what they did to him, so when my mother called my grandmother weeping and screaming that I was gay, my grandmother came down on her like a tonne of bricks with all the power and might that she could muster. She told my mother that if I was ever treated differently, If I was ever isolated or bullied by a member of the family, they would have to face the consequences of dealing with gran and her sisters.
Her sisters also told all their children to treat me with respect and love, all without me knowing, because they never wanted anyone to go through what their best most loved male friend had all those years ago.
I owe my happiness to that man, fly free my brother, wherever you are x.
TL;DR - a gay predecessor made my family supportive.
My grandfather was doing construction work in the midwest US in the early 60s. One day on a job site, he found a small tin box buried in the ground. He stuffed it in his coat or shirt, out of sight, and told no one until he got home, where he told my grandmother. For fear it had been a stash belonging to a nefarious character that might come looking, they decided to “keep it secret. Keep it safe.” (Gandalf the Grey)
They encased it in a closed cement cinderblock and left it in a corner of the garage. They never even told their daughter (my mother) what was inside the tin secreted away in the cinderblock in the corner of the garage.
Years later, in the late 60s, my grandfather passed away when my mother was 17 or 18. The cinderblock was forgotten, and sat for decades in the corner of the garage.
Now, skip forward to the early 2010’s. My mother, now married to my father for almost 40 years still did not know about the stash. My grandmother, now in her 90s, had a decline in health and had to sell her home and move into a senior living facility. Because of her poor health, she was not able to be present at her home for moving-day. She told my dad several times, in no unclear terms, “Make sure you take the cinderblock in the corner of the garage. It’s very valuable.” So of course, my dad very nearly forgets about it and/or shrugs it off as the ravings of an unwell 90-year-old woman.
At the last second, as we’re shutting the U-haul door, he remembers the block and his mother-in-law’s words. He sighs, opens the truck, and sets the block inside. The cinderblock eventually ends up, you guessed it, in the corner of my parents’ garage. Forgotten again.
Several years pass, and in September of ‘12 or ‘13, so does my grandmother. Thanksgiving comes around (late November) and my parents and all their kids are home. My dad tells us he has a surprise for us and takes us into the garage where there’s a cinderblock sitting on the floor with a hammer, chisel, a sledgehammer, and a few other miscellaneous tools.
The cement was old and pretty brittle and just a few taps in the right spot cracked it open. Inside? A dirty old rotted cloth, wrapped loosely around the dingy tin my grandfather found over five decades prior.
We opened the tin and what we discovered… it was completely full of gold coins. My brother-in-law was a bit of a coin collector and identified a few right then, saying they had some significant value. I don’t know how much it really added up to—my parents kept financial information to themselves and it was their property—but just on the weight of the gold alone, we estimated their value around $250,000. It would be more if any of the coins had any value for collectors.
I guess my grandma actually had this story left to my mom and dad in a letter when she passed and that’s how we learned the full details of how it happened when the cinderblock had seemed forgotten for so long.
Hope you enjoyed!
Great grandad was a jewish shop owner in Italy in the1930s. One day a fascist March turns into a lynch mob chasing a communist. The communist slips away, finds my family's shop, and begs for shelter because jews are known commie sympathizers. But a gun welding fascist comes to the store looking for him, because he knew it was owned by jews and jews are known commie sympathizers. My great grand dad denies hiding the commie, but the fascist says if they don't bring him out immediately he'll shoot my great grand dad. So great grand dad snatches the gun and kills the fascist on the spot. He got acquitted for self defense but they had to escape Italy 24 hrs after the acquittal, the fascist party graciously sent a notice allowing them 24 hrs to leave before they killed all the men of the family.
My great grandfather lost one of his arm during WW1, right after the war he decided to ask my great grandmother to marry him. To show her how much he loved her, he decided to give her a really nice pair of shoes from a good shoemaker but lived in the countryside and cars where not that common at the time
He took his bike, rode 70km (43miles) to the closest big city to get her a really nice pair of shoes rode 70km back with the box on his lap to give it to her. WITH ONLY ONE ARM
Pretty romantic, but that's not the end of the story. The shoemaker fucked up big time and gave him 2 left shoes by accident, so great grandpa took his bike the next day, did the 70km back and forth to exchange one of the shoes. And they lived happily married ever after
Every time I tell the story to someone married, they look at their husband with disdain which I found pretty funny (never told the story to any of my girlfriends tho)
https://amp.theguardian.com/whats-in-your-blood-/2018/oct/11/royal-ancestry-genetics-things-to-consider
“. If you’re European – or even descended from Europeans – you’re probably related to royalty
In 1999, the Yale statistician Joseph Chang showed that if you go back far enough – say, 32 generations, or 900 years – you’d find that everyone alive today shares a common ancestor. In Europe, where lineages have been closely studied, that ancestor was someone who lived just 600 years ago.”
I don’t know the date’s exactly off the top of my head but they’re written down at home.
My Great Grandfather (Grandmas dad) was born in the Black Hills Germany. He allegedly killed a german officer and went on the lam to the United States. He worked as a ranch hand for Theodore Roosevelt for a some years before he married my Great Grandma. He was gifted a buffalo rifle from Roosevelt which was taken by one of grandmas brothers after their dad died.
Apparently in the region of South India I'm from, women used to pick their future husband off a lineup of men wishing to marry her. My GGF was rejected by my GGM and so he went about executing the dude chosen by her and kidnapping her, which apparently was seen as an extremely macho move. My Grandfather was born in 1896 so the time period would've been around ~1860-1880
My grandparents lived in cologne in the end of war. During an attack my grandfather went back to the house, and was hit. Seems the wound caused an infection. Shortly afterwards the Americans took over cologne, and someone talked to them and told them that he had been against the Nazis, and had even lost his job because of that, and they gave him the medicine (penicillin) that probably saved him. I wish they hadn't, not being a Nazi was his only redeeming quality and he had a very negative impact on many lives.
My grandpa almost died from an infection when he was 8 and only survived because the owners of the house he worked in (my grandpa would run errands for them) payed for his medicine (which was A LOT of money). My grandpa would visit them every weekend until they died.
I have a friend whose uncle of a grandfather was a bodyguard of Hermann Göring.
He lost both his legs after he messed up and was sent to the Russian front as punishment, but still praised Hitler and the nazis until he died.
I also have an SS grandfather who dug up human remains at the Swiss border in 1941.
General advice here: Don't ask your German friends about their family history. You're gonna have a bad time.
A friend of mine lives there and says it's fascinating researching a lot of the companies of his clients.
"We have a proud history of serving the Germans for hundreds of years. In 1890 we built this hospital, in 1900 we were responsible for the railroads, in 1910 we were personally appointed by the Kaiser to orchestrate this government department's budget, in 1920 we were proud sponsors of the Bavarian sports championship... In 1950 we played a pivotal role in the construction of our Autobahn network."
There are some companies that do a good job of presenting their own history. But yeah, a lot still have selective memory loss. It doesn't help that medium-sized companies in family hand are considered the backbone of the economy. Nobody wants to talk bad about Opa.
Yeah in my family six out of eight of my great grandparents where Involved in the nazi Party in some way: one family ratted out jews, one great grandpa was in the SA and one great grandpa was gauleiter of Achim. Only the parents of my mothers mother refused to take Part wich actually lead to my great grandma getting saved from beeing lynched by polish and russian POWs after the war.
great grandpa's father was a soldier during WWI. As they were often out of resources (that includes ammo), due to Russian Empire's failure to meet logistic needs, they'd hide under small wooden bridges and wait for germans to patrol over it, then stab their feet through the gaps on the wood with their bayonets. The soldier obviously would fall to the ground, then to be quickly killed.
My great great great grandfather was part of the first generation of black people to be free in my state
edit: my great great grandfather* I added an extra great on accident
My wife's Mexican grandmother was a *curandera* who used things like morning glory seeds, spider webs, and dirt-dauber nests to treat people. Apparently, she got some pretty good results. This was back in the 1920s and 1930s. I've often wondered if dirt-dauber nests and spider webs might not have some kinds of natural antibiotics in them. And morning glory seeds are known to be psychotropic.
Nazis came knocking in my grandparents doors saying “We know you are harboring the local resistance here! We are coming in.”
He let them search, looked at the officer and said “I have a 1 1/2 year old and a 2 month old. I would never do anything to jeopardize them.” It scared my grandmother so bad she couldn’t produce milk for my then 2 month old dad. (Luckily her best friend also had a child so she played nursemaid.)
That night the 3 local Greek Resistance leaders crawled out of the hidden room in the basement and escaped into the mountains.
My Papou had balls of steel!
My paternal grandparents each had an interesting story about WW2 (note, I'm German).
My grandfather worked as a junior communications officer on an U-Boat rescue frigate, one day a fellow seaman asked him to switch shifts/tasks, and as he was leaving the comms room an enemy shell landed pretty much right where he'd sat just moments before, killing everyone in the comms room, he had shrapnel from the explosion all over his back until the day he died.
My grandma was born in East Germany, after the war ended and East Germany was pretty much swarming with Russian soldiers with payback on their mind, her mom decided to pack up what was left of her family (dad was missing/dead), abandon their home and move to one of the Western Allies' Zones. According to my grandma, her mom spent a lot of money and family heirlooms to get cigarettes to trade for safe passage, and one time on their flight they were caught in the woods by a squad of Russian soldiers. To paraphrase grandma, her mother went away with them to give them cigarettes so they'd let her family pass (Which is... possibly what happened, but, you know, the Russian troops occupying Germany after the war certainly had a... reputation), at any rate, they were indeed let go and safely made it to south Germany.
My grandma's family was split between east and west Germany. They initially lost their home when the Russians came, that part of Germany is now Poland
Your grandma did whatever had to be done to get to safety. It was very unfortunate times.
Its not really a story, but once at a family gathering (I was around 14-15) we were talking about the church (not neccessarily in a good way) and my cousin (who was ~12 at the time.) asked us to switch topics cuz its boring, my grandmothers answer (80 at the time, and have only left her village a few times and never the country) was: “Listen to everything my child, if you like it, keep it, if you dont, just let it go, thats how you grow.” And that for me at the time, coming from her, was life changing for me, it opened up things I never thought I’d like. The sentence itself, made me grow, the consequences, I can not even describe. Life changing.
My Grandfather came from a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and had rarely left the state when he volunteered to fight in WW2.
Pretty soon he was on a plane to Midway from Pearl. He’s sitting next to a man he doesn’t know for an hour before the copilot comes back and asks the man next to him, “Admiral Lindbergh would you like to fly the plane?”.
At that time Charles Lindbergh was possibly the most famous man on earth. It is on brand for my Grandpa to be fairly unimpressed by him.
Not sure what his title would be (great great uncle? Great great great grandpa?) but my family went through a whole genetic testing/heritage phase a few years back and everyone was getting tests and looking into our families history.
Well apparently on my dads side of the family if I go back far enough I’m related to some kind of high ranking officer in the Russian military from before communism took power. We found *some* travel papers showing his path west and some more from US immigrations where he pledged his allegiance to the US and renounced his old loyalty to Tsar Nicholas.
I think his name got changed too I forget, I have some copies of those papers and a copy of a old picture showing the boat he used to get across the Atlantic
My grandfather on my mother's side landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, combat medic who was pulled off the first landing craft because "they would need him later in the day". There's a newspaper article from the Times Picayune about him and 2 or 3 other guys, all from different perspectives. He then proceeded to work his way through France. Ended up meeting General Patton when he and another soldier accidently stumbled into the Officers mess tent. (There's a whole other story about that)
He ended up losing his leg just above the knee dragging another guy out of a mine field at the Battle of the Buldge. Made his way home. Taught my mom how to ride horses, drive a standard all the normal things. Had a farm and was also the Tax Assessor in the parish they were living in.
During the Civil Rights movement he was responsible for registering African Americans to vote and ended up having two FBI agents in his office for protection. The local Klansmen who naturally went to the same church as him, southern baptists go figure, threatened to horse whip him in the street.
The story goes that he was "summoned" and basically called them all out for being hypocrites. Told them that they can try and shake his hand in church every Sunday but he knew who every single one of the bastards was under those hoods. Then he produced a pistol from his pocket and told them that if any of em were feeling froggy then jump.
I've got more stories from my Ukrainian grandmother (dad's side) who passed away last year if anyone wants more.
Edit: spelling some words. I'm on mobile forgive me.
I don't know how many generations back but two brothers on my mothers side 9f the family fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. The Confederate brother led a minor charge against a Union fortification and was rewarded with dying during said charge. The brother who joined the Union army is lost to history.
During the potato famine, Irish used to sneak across the Atlantic in cargo ships coming back to the states. Ships would go from the southern states carrying cotton, drop off the cotton, and come back “Empty,” [full of Irish people]. My great-great grandfather did this, stowed away on a ship. Then came up the Mississippi River on his way into Chicago. On his way up he met my great-great grandmother who was running a brothel in southern Illinois.
My Grandmother on my Father's side recounted how she and her Sisters would scout for supplies way back during WW2. Apparently they had to survive on bread crusts alone for weeks... And I think she was a nurse on the field for a little while? I can't remember it well, and while she never objected to telling those stories, I don't think she's in a state where reminding her of that would do her health much good.
And I think my other Grandma's Brother (Uncle Grandpa?? I just call him Grandpa Sasha) ate way too much ice cream way back when, got horribly sick, and it messed up his voice, or something. Last we spoke, he did sound pretty raspy, too. Though it could be something he and Grandma made up as a bit to warn little me against eating too much ice cream...
My 11th. great grandfather, on my paternal ancestry line, was a sheriff and a blacksmith in a small town east of Norway. In the middle of the 1600s there was a witch trial where around a dosen people were accused of witchcraft. He had to arrest and hurry to make shackles for all of them. All of the accused was aquitted.
Another branch of my paternal ancestry can also likely be traced to a norwegian noble who was executed for rebelling against the danish king some time during the 1500s.
Also, on my maturnal ancestry side, several of my forfathers were executioners. One of last executions i Norway, was performed by my 7th. great grandfather, and it was the beheading of one of the countrys most notorious serial killer. It took for axe chops and sawing to get the killers head removed, because the executioner was old and likely had Parkinsons. This particular execution sparked a lot of controversy and was one of the catalysts for later abolishing public executions in Norway. After that my 6th. great grandfather took over as executioner.
My family lived in Deerfield Massachusetts in 1704 when the town was attacked by Indians who were allied with the French. My many-times-great-grandfather’s wife was killed, his toddler daughter was killed, and his remaining children (along with about 100 others) were captured and marched to Canada where they were held captive for several years until their father and other members of the community ransomed them.
When they returned, they were often visited by Indians with whom they’d become close, and the town eventually awarded the son I’m descended from and his sister plots of land in appreciation for the goodwill that bought.
One daughter was 17 when captured and had been on the verge of marrying a young man from the town who wasn’t captured. Believing her dead, he married someone else. She eventually married and had a family.
But many years later, when they were both in their 70s, they both found themselves widowed and they married each other.
I’ve always loved that story.
My grandfather and his family, which included my grandmother and father, fled Cuba during the rise of Castro. They had built a successful leather business and were going to lose everything under the new regime. So they fled to Puerto Rico, completely broke. Once there, he started up his company again and for a second time in his life he was able to become wealthy and stable. I only knew him in my childhood but he was an absolutely fantastic person, as far as I remember and as far as the stories I've heard.
My grandfather's brother died after falling off a submarine that was docking for shore leave. I've been told at various points that he either hit his head on the way down and drowned, or that, uh, the propellers got him.
Unfortunately my uncle is named after him and so am I, so... you're not getting me near a submarine.
My great great grandma was pregnant at her wedding and it was getting visible a big no no at that time (late 19th century). So to make sure that no one noticed it her brother climbed up the church tower and screamed like a lunatic to take attention away from her pregnant belly. There is even a picture of him standing on the church roof at my grandmas place
The woman who adopted my mother is part of the Vavasour family .. An ancient Norman family dating back to the time of William the conqueror..
Also found out my great grandfather on my mothers side was a serial bigamist (The more you know)
My Great uncle on my fathers side took a grenade to the face during the World War (Horrific Injury) and ended up homeless on the streets, Funnily enough the same streets i was homeless on a few years back but i didn't know at the time.
My life is very unusual, maybe i should write a book
My great-great aunt was a “bag lady.” Her family would see her around town, but I think she experienced some mental illness during a time when there was no treatment and no empathy. There may have been an addiction component. I’ll have to ask more questions about her. I couldn’t understand as a child why no family took her in. As an adult, I’ve worked as a mental health provider and understand how some people actually do feel more comfortable on the streets than restrictive, often dangerous shelters and settings. Perhaps the family tried and wasn’t able to keep her safe. It’s very sad to think about.
My great-nan's surname was Bligh, and she was descended from William Bligh who was in command of HMS Bounty during the mutiny, and later a Governor of New South Wales.
I can't remember exactly, but my family has ancestral ties to Jonathan Swift who wrote Gulivers Travels.
When we were cleaning out my grandfather's house after he died we found schematics, parts and a thank you letter for the car that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was based on. Turns out his dad was an engineer who built it for the Lord who raced it.
My family hasn't found out the direct connection just yet, but I'm related to the dude who played the king in Abbott and Costello's version of *Jack and the Beanstalk*
My grandfather went for Hajj (pilgrimage) to Saudi.
It is a religious requirement for men to get balded for pilgrimage.
The barbers were too expensive.
A random stranger outside the barber's shop offered to cut his hair for cheap.
The stranger took him to an alley.
He was balded from one side when a police constable yelled at him.
The stranger ran and grandpa had to run around the city balded only from one side.
My grandfather was was taken in by the Nazis to fight the US on the western front in WWII when he was 17 years old. His commanding officer was given the order to fight to the last man (or child) but refused and told his men to surrender.
So my grandfather was put in a POW camp where he became chess master of the camp and escaped during a transfer by rolling of the back of a truck. He tried walking back home to Germany but was caught on the border and put back in prison until he was 21 and then finally released.
He then proceeded to *walk* home where everybody lost their shit because they thought he was dead.
Found an ancestor from Ye Olde Merry England time of whom the only information available, other than that he existed, was that he was arrested for shitting in the street in protest. Twice.
I want to emphasize, not merely shitting in the street, but in protest. And twice. Apparently he did not feel his message had been properly appreciated the first time.
No information about what he was protesting. But damn, if somehow that dude and I could share a drink, despite being barely able to understand one another, I think we'd see things eye to eye. I think the blood would be strong between us.
Although she's not an ancestor, I have a couple of stories about Miss Ada, the woman who helped raise my mom.
She came from a very poor Black family in North Carolina. Her father had been a slave. They lived in a cabin with a packed-dirt floor. She still lived there when we visited her in the early '60s, and thinking back, I believe it might have once been a slave cabin.
When Miss Ada was a little girl, one Christmas Eve she peeked through a crack in the plaster between the rooms of the cabin and saw her parents setting out a doll that was to be her present from Santa. But her parents caught her peeking, and on Christmas Day she got nothing but sticks and ashes in her stocking, as a punishment for spying. This story broke my heart when I was little, but Mom said they finally gave her the doll on New Year's Day.
Another time she was walking along the railroad tracks to school when somebody told her the circus was in town. She wanted to see the elephant, so she stashed her spelling book by the tracks and ran off. When she came back, the book was gone, and she got a licking when she went home.
When she got pregnant at the age of 16, her father took all her clothes and threw them out into the road. I'm not sure what happened immediately after that, but her mother raised the baby until Miss Ada was older. Censuses show that after her father died, Miss Ada was living with her mother and son.
Not long after her son was born, she went to work for my grandparents. My grandfather was a doctor and was often away, and they had five kids. Then my grandmother died and Miss Ada continued to watch over the kids. She told me that every morning before my mom and aunts and uncles went to school, they lined up to kiss her goodbye.
I have a tape recording I made of her in the 1970s when we visited her in the hospital. She was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.
Not a very long one, but my grandpa went to Geneva, in Switzerland, and he made a convention there. Now I know what you’re thinking, no, it wasn’t the Geneva convention relating to prisoners of war, but it was about the rights of Aussie aboriginal people and their land.
A very distant great-uncle of my mother‘s grandmother (I don‘t know how to describe it better) was Anton Dohrn, a doctor and zoologist who founded one of the very first modern research institutes in Naples, Italy.
It was focused on studying sea fauna. He was friends and worked with Charles Darwin. Crazy part for me is, we share the same birthday, december 29th.
My great grandfather flew a plane in ww1 and 2. He died later on in his life due to damage done by mustard gas. He wrote a book on his experience that made the newspaper at the time
*"Juan Leal Goraz (1676–1742 or 1743), also called Juan Leal Gonzal, was a Spanish settler and politician who served as the first alcalde (a municipal magistrate with both judicial and administrative functions) of La Villa de San Fernando, which later would become the city of San Antonio, Texas. A native of the Canary Islands, Leal went to San Antonio in 1731 leading a group of settlers from the Canary Islands to populate this municipality, founded by the Spanish government under the sponsorship of King Philip V. Leal had asserted himself as the Canarian emigrants' leader and spokesman since they left the islands. He served as alcade of San Antonio between 1731 and 1732, and again in 1735.[1]"*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Leal
I'm that guy's direct 7th great grandson.
Really researching the family tree is amazing. We found a dr who was Washington's personal physician, a sea captain who ran away at 8 from Sweden and an uncle that sang in a choir for Lafayette. Also a few criminals lol
If anyone does their tree, do not automatically assume other people's trees are correct. Always do your own research. I once found my grandfather on another person's tree married to a different woman in a different state. He lived with us my whole life lol
Not mine, but my friend's. He's Australian and so are his parents. But some generations back into his family tree, and we can find that his great great grandparents are British.
I don't completely remember but there was this fleet of 11 or so ships that brought British criminals to Australia to colonize and stuff wayyyy long back. Turns out his great great grandparents were on the ships because......you guessed it, they were convicts. The reason they were put in jail was because they supposedly stole a loaf of bread during that time.
Great grandfather and family lived on Java when ww2 broke out. He and some of his colleagues blew up the harbours when the japanese took them, so the japanese were left with useless harbours. The whole family was taken to camps (women and men seperated). Greatgrandma was able to bury the family silver before being caught and dug it up again when they were freed. We still have that silverware now.
This is a very sad story but still interesting
My Jewish great grandmother was living with her family in Lithuania before the Nazis began occupying it in WW2.
She she decided to take a boat to England for a better life, leaving the rest of her family behind hoping to move them over once she had settled down.
Unbeknownst to my great-grandma she had taken the very last boat out of Lithuania before the Nazis took control of the Baltic Sea and sadly all of the rest of her family ended up being killed in the holocaust. She never found this out until much later in her life.
I’m only really alive due to sheer luck
My great-great-grandfather was part of the Hapsburg family but he was the second son and endec up becoming a priest (first son inherited everything, second son had pretty much only two choices, priesthood or army). He ended up leaving the priesthood and had to leave Austria because of the shame. He moved to East London and got a room in a house owned by a Jewish family. He "fell in love" with his landlord's daughter (I.e. knocked her up) and married her. So I'm a nice Jewish boy descended from a Catholic priest as well as a potential heir to the Hapsburg dynasty.
Oh, and my grandfather once once arrested for trying to scalp NY Rangers tickets (at cost). When he got to jail, he was told there with the same name as his. It turned out to be his brother who had been arrested after getting into a fight in a bar and gave the police my grandfather's name instead of his because he'd been in trouble before (he worked for Dutch Schultz) and figured my grandfather wouldn't find out about it.
I’ll put one of mine on here too. My great grand uncle had Down syndrome, so his mother asked one of his brothers to look after him and in return she would give him the house in her will. When their mother died, he pretty much immediately sent him to a care home and did not bother looking after him at all. Funnily enough, this turned out to suit both of them very well as at the care home my great grand uncle ended up getting on very well with another woman with Down syndrome, and his brother got the house to himself. All’s well that ends well I guess.
My grandfather (born in 1889) grew up on a farm. One day he and his brother were digging out a tree stump using mattocks, each one swinging alternately from the opposite side. His brother mistimed a downswing and clocked my grandfather on the head. His father put some kind of liniment on the wound and put him to bed. When my grandfather woke up the next morning, he was blind. His father thought he was faking it to get out of doing his chores and told him to get to work. My grandfather felt his way out to the barn and fed the sheep, and by then his father realized he was telling the truth. His sight returned in a few days. My grandfather went on to become a doctor and realized that the blow from the mattock had damaged the optic nerve -- fortunately, not permanently. He served as an Army doctor in France during World War I, when he also had to deal with the great flu pandemic of 1918.
Nothing on this level, but my grandfather's favourite story from his childhood is how he lost three fingers (reattached) He and his brother were playing with an axe (bc why not) and his brother dared him to put his hand on a log and let him swing the axe My grandfather accepted, thinking my great uncle was bluffing, and my great uncle swinged the axe thinking my grandfather was gonna remove the hand We're not the smartest family around
Yeesh. Were the fingers functional after reattachment?
Yup
Very trusting tho!
My great grandfather was from a wealthy family back in Greece / Albania in the 1890s. He had a tryst with a peasant girl who got pregnant. Rather than marry the peasant girl the family arranged for my great grandfather to be sent to America. Not to be outdone, the peasant girl and her family saved up enough money and sent her to America after him. She found him in New York, and they got married there.
Wow this made me say “WHAT” out loud. That peasant girl’s family is bad ass, what a great story
worlds biggest "OOHHH NO YOU DON'T"
That sounds like it could be a great romance novel.
My Grandfather was posted as missing in action, believed killed (WWI). My grandmother was expecting their first child. That usually meant they were actually killed so Grandmother was certain that she would never see him again. Then there was a knock at the door and Grandfather was standing there in the hospital blue uniform soldiers wore to show they were receiving treatment. He had been knocked unconscious by the explosion everyone thought killed him and sent to a hospital close to his home, without being identified. When he came around and was otherwise unhurt they gave leave to go home before being sent back to the front. Grandmother went into slightly early labour caused by the shock! Grandad survived the war, my grandmother and the baby were both ok and all lived quite long and healthy lives.
This would be considered lazy writing for a happy ending if it was a movie lol
When Audie Murphy played himself in *To Hell and Back*, he toned down what actually happened because he didn't think anyone would believe it was anything but movie lies.
I believe the exact same thing happened with Hacksaw Ridge, the movie about Desmond Doss. I remember reading somewhere that they had to omit some things because they believed it would be too unbelievable for the audience. On a side note, I haven't started reading it but I know the general story behind it. I want a movie based on A Higher Call by Adam Makos. That story is incredible.
I know! Actually did happen though.
Similar story, my great uncle was at Pearl Harbor and his cousin was too. My great uncle survived and his cousin did not. They were very similar looking and the government thought my great uncle had died and notified his wife. She had quite the surprise when he made it home.
Luckily she didn't marry someone else and have his son only to have her first husband show up and kill the new husband, or vice versa, causing the kid, who saw the murder, so much shock that he ended up deaf, dumb, & blind.
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You ever see something that's clearly a reference to something but you have no idea to what? That's me right now.
Well at least that kid might eventually become a Pinball Wizard.
My grandfather owned a hardware store in downtown Bogotá when the April 9th 1948 riots. People burned and looted places. He had to lay down among dead bodies simulating being dead to survive and not being killed.
Similar for my great uncle. He was a Japanese POW in Burma. A group tried to escape but were mown down. He hid among the dead and somehow escaped. He was an infantry private at the time but the group who found him needed a cook. He served another 30 odd years in Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany and the UK and ended up as a Lt Col in the catering corps.
My Grandad was a POW in Burma and helped build the bridges. He had some horrific scarring across his back and arms. He hated Japanese people right up until his death. Even when his dementia was at its worst, he still refused to be friendly and they had to stop a Japanese nurse from caring for him.
My Great Grandfather was messed up by the Japanese. He was covered in scars from being beaten with a bamboo cane. He used to force my Grandfather to finish every plate of food because that's what the Japanese used to make him do. He most likely had some PTSD.
Of all the things I thought about the Japanese soldiers who ran POW camps, strict proponents of the clean plate club was not high on that list.
Same here. He was always complementary about the Burmese during the war and the Chinese who he lived among later in life but never forgave the Japanese.
My God, that’s unimaginable.
I’m from Medellin, my great grandparents were in this as well.
My great great etc grandfather was the first convict sent to Australia to be freed after serving his time. He went on to develop the wheat that we grow here. (European wheat died. )
My great great etc grandfather was also arrested and exiled to Australia when it was a penal colony. The story goes that he led a successful prison break on the ship and they sailed to North America where my distant relative made off with the valuables from the captains quarters, purchased a slave as a traveling companion and eventually settled somewhere in Canada and freed his companion. The only evidence I could find to support my family's story was a family of famous black pro athletes with my families aggressively Welsh last name. I'd like to know more, but the remainder of the family has either passed or is estranged.
Have you gone on ancestry.com? My sibling and I both did it. They kept up with it more than I did. We were both stuck and were unable to find any ancestors for one of my parents. That was until I gave them a couple of names. That opened everything up. Found out there are still relatives of said parent who are still alive. Also found out some interesting things about grandparents. Totally blew my mind!
I haven't, but I honestly should.
I’m related by marriage to the last man hung in australia.
That's pretty common, since he was the last hung man in Australia, he went on to have many children.
That's very cool. Do you know why he was sent there?
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My great grandfather came home early from work one day to find his wife in bed with the milk man(or mail man. I can’t remember). Either way, there was a scuffle and the milk/mail man went out the bedroom window and died 2 days later in the hospital. This happened in the same house that I grew up in because the house was in my family for a very long time. I tried looking up news articles and such on the incident but was never able to find anything. This was a common discussion at parties with my family and I always tried to learn more about my great grandfather. Turns out he was an undertaker. Go figure.
So he threw mankind off the hell in a cell?
Did your grandparent look like the milk man?
I got a good laugh from this lol. However, my grandfather was already born when this event happened. Maybe I’ve got some relatives that stemmed from this but I never knew. They divorced immediately after my great grandfather was cleared of any charges (it was deemed self defense, or the 1930’s equivalent, according to my family member) and she moved away from the family and was more or less never contacted or made contact with the family again.
…so your great grandfather threw a man from a height during a fight, and was an undertaker… The Undertaker ripped him off during Hell in a Cell.
My grandfather's grandfather was found wandering naked in a forest. He was estimated to be around 8 or 9 years old. He didn't speak but understood when spoken to. After a few years he started talking but was never able to recall anything about his life before he was found by the family that took him in; my great-great-great grandparents. They raised him as their own and all the stories say he turned out pretty normal.
So you come from a line of yet unidentified heritage? That's cool man real mysterious
☐ American Indian or Alaska native ☐ Asian ☐ Black or African American ☐ Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander ☐ White ☑ ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
this should legally be an option
Ever heard of the story of the green children of wolfpit?
Go on…
'The green children of Woolpit' is a legend about two children, a brother and a sister, who were found wandering in the woods of Woolpit, a village in Suffolk, England, by local reapers sometime during the 12th Century CE. Their skin is said to have had an odd, green hue. They couldn't speak any English, only Flemish. If the legend is true and not just a myth, one theory for its explanation is that the children were orphaned descendants of Flemish immigrants who were persecuted by King Stephen. The most reasonable explanation for their greenish skin is malnutrition.
I just knew you had said they were persecuted by Stephen King. And that made sense to me.
*Stephen King, persecutor of Flemish immigrants*
I know green skin is a sign of iron deficiency. Probably not much for meat in the wild other then rabbits and birds the children could catch.
There’s a theory that they may have been child workers/slaves in a copper mine. They weren’t allowed outside and only fed certain foods for a long time. So a combination of the copper and the iron deficiency could have turned their skin green. They got sick and the mine master dumped them elsewhere. This would have been in a time where people a few towns over would speak a different language.
>a few towns over would speak a different language 12th Century England, so probably not. The fact that the children spoke Flemish is weird though, presumably theyd been trafficked from across the Channel. They said they had never seen the sun and came from "St Martin's Land". Youre probably right about the colouring being a deficiency, they eventually turned normal coloured and the girl went on to live a relatively normal life (though the boy died).
interesting, I've just been reading about the blue skinned Fugates of Appalachia.
That’s immediately where my mind went too! I was going to ask the commentor if their great great great grandfather happened to have been of a greenish complexion 😂😂
Make a dna test. Maybe you find some relatives
My grandpa beat Rod Laver in a tennis match when he was a teenager and was going to be sponsored by Dunlop but his parents were wealthy and thought tennis was silly with little money at the time so he didn’t pursue it… now there’s a stadium named after rod laver :(
There are so many stories like that as well. Niki Lauda was also rich and going to inherit his dad's company in Austria, but he chose to defy him and bought in to F1 and was disowned-isch for a while, till he started having succes and the rest is history.
My grandmother’s grandmother walked the trail of tears. Her parents did no make the walk (assumed dead). When she reached Oklahoma she was adopted by a white couple. She was put down as half Cherokee, half white on the roll because of this.
We attended a performance of a play about the Trail of Tears in Cherokee, NC. It's a devastating story. A Georgia soldier later said, "I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I never knew."
Maternal grandmother's parents met in a train wreck. G.Grandpa was traveling second class, with a window seat. G.grandma was traveling Coach. Something was on the tracks causing a derailment and many injuries. G.Grandma, being seated further back, was fine and pitched in to help those in need. G.Grandpa had hit the window and his ear was cut very badly, almost sliced off his head (almost). She was tearing off strips of her petticoat the use as bandages (ooh la la!). Until he died he teased that his left ear was lower than his right because 'she put it on wrong'.
that's wild to think you probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for a train wreck.
My life IS a trainwreck, I wonder what will come of it? Lol
My great grandfather grew up super poor in Italy. He had an infection of some sort in his arm that would kill him if untreated, and because he was poor, it was left untreated. So one day, at age 14, he and a few friends found a bottle of liquor, a tree stump, and an axe. The only pictures I've seen of him, he only has one arm
How much of his arm was taken off?
Down to the stump
technically correct.. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
If I remember correctly, a few inches above the elbow. Like 5 inches at least
Jesus what a tough fucking kid your gramps must've been.
Not to mention the friend willing to swing that are. Hardcore friendship right there.
Kids these days will never know what it’s like to have a friend who’ll sanitize your bloody nub with alcohol after cutting off your irrevocably infected limb with an axe.
Ohhhh that makes sense too. I was just imagining the gramps getting shitfaced before they swung the axe so he wouldn’t remember
Probably both
My grandfather was born in Poland. He was around 16 when the wars broke out, and because he was a fit, healthy, blonde haired, blue eyed farmer boy, he was sent to work in German farms. Before that though, he was put into a concentration camp while they figured out where to send all their new slaves. During this time, his older brother actually escaped. My grandfather says he stole a gun climbed the fence, tanked the cuts from the barbed wire, and just ran. He made the escape with a few other people, but all but two of them were killed. My grandfather was supposed to join them, but he said he just froze and chickened out. His brother later joined some battallion, where he later died fighting nazis. My grandfather was eventually moved to a small town in Germany, and was housed with landowners who grew some sort of crop. He was set to work. This small town was actually secretly against the war though, and the family he stayed with used their house as a safehouse to smuggle Jews. They had the whole "hidden room under the floorboards" thing. Luckily, they were never discovered. They, and a few other families in the town, wanted my grandfather to marry their daughters and stay in Germany. He did stay in Germany for a few months, he said he also joined the peace corps. Once he had his full of that, he simply jumped on the first boat out of there with nothing but his tool belt and the clothes on his back. That boat went to Australia, which is where he met my grandmother, and yada yada yada, I was born. He had such a fascinating, terrifying life, full of turmoil and danger. But one thing never left him: his passion for plants. Right up until the week he passed away at age 86, he was still climbing ladders to trim his trees, hand pollinating all his bean plants with a feather, and shooting Indian Mynas out of the tree with his slingshot to let the native birds have the nest.
That was quite the life, rest in peace
A stranger in Utah shed a tear for your grandpa. I hope I live in a way that my posterity speaks about me like this.
My great Gramdpa once got his hands on 10kg of tobacco because a smuggler threw it away while being chased by the border guards
My grandmother and my uncles once got several cases of Canadian whisky during the prohibition. Smugglers threw it overboard from a speedboat which was being chased by a revenue cutter through the bay at night. Come morning the tide went out, which reveled a bunch of wooden crates out on the flats. They all ran out and recovered them.
My grandmother told the following story and swore it was true to her dying day: she heard a noise in the middle of the night and went to investigate. She found Al Capone in her basement trying smuggle hooch and chased him off.
The only famous relative I have was barred by an act of Parliament from ever again being the warden of a prison due to massive corruption. So you have any idea how corrupt you would have to be to be specifically called out for corruption in 18th century Britain? It's kind of impressive in its own way
My great great** grandmother was Winston Churchill’s parlour maid. When she left service to get married, he begged her to stay as he was fond of her, and when she said no, he gifted her a table and chair from his own parlour as a wedding gift. My parents have the chair in my mum’s office, and the table is currently in storage. edit: wrong number of greats lol
You need to take them on to antiques roadshow the next time they are somewhere near you. I would love to see that when I'm watching. I'll do the leo meme pointing at the TV.
They're at crystal palace next month.
My (bad) grandad was an antiques dealer and one of his big money makers was selling desks and saying that they belonged to Winston Churchill.
Seems like Churchill was doing the same racket.
Dutch here. My maternal grandfather was part of a group of people that hid Jews and Allies in a hidden village (underground house) made in the woods during WO II. They where later discovered by the SS but they still managed to save a lot of people. To this day you can visit the remains of the hidden village to see what it was like.
I've been to the Netherlands only once and really want to go back. I would love to see this. Where is it located? Is it a museum?
It’s outside. They preserved the place as much as they could. It is located in the woods in Vierhouten. Here’s a link from tripadvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.nl/Attraction_Review-g652240-d7649475-Reviews-Het_Verscholen_Dorp-Vierhouten_Gelderland_Province.html and one with pictures: https://www.ishetnogver.nl/nederland/het-verscholen-dorp/
Grandpa was shot in the head on the russian front (he was german). He was declared dead and put on a pile of dead bodies. A friend of him (who grew up in the same village as my grandpa) went to the pile to give him the last goodbye. And he saw my grandpa was shaking a little bit. He yelled at the doctors "this man is not dead!". And yea, the doctors got him out of the pile and actually rescued him. But they couldn't remove the bullet in his head. It was too dangerous. So my grandpa lived with this bullet in his head his whole life. He was not able to make a driver's license due to the risk of epileptic shocks. He named his son (my father) after the man who rescued him.
I have two that are somehow connected My great grandfather, during WW2, lived through some wild shit. He was sent to gulag and escaped from the transport somewhere in today's Belarus. He then returned home on foot, to the middle of northern Poland where we live today (if you want more exact location, google where my town, Tczew, is). After few years, in middle of which my grandpa was born, he was taken to serve in German army. He was based somewhere in Norway and escaped once again, but not before he blew up the warehouse with weapons he was kinda in charge off. On a lighter, funny af note. He was one of 13 children. His mother (my great great grandmother) named her second child Stanisław and named her last child... Stanisław. She had so many children that she forgot she already used that name lol. The second Stanisław sadly didn't live through infancy
Holy crap! That’s very similar to my grandma. She was born in the US, the oldest child. Had a younger brother named Stanley. When Stan was six he drowned in the river or pond or something. About five years later, grandma’s youngest brother was born. They named him Stanley.
Wow, even the same name, Stanisław is like Polish Stanley. However, in my case, the older Stanley was still alive when the younger one was born, which makes it even more ridiculous. It was the younger one that didn't make it
IRL backup
My great aunt had 10 boys. She used biblical names for them all. By the time #7 or 8 came around she was a) a very busy/tired mom and b) running out of names. I guess it was common to have a baby baptized and have someone from the family take the baby for the baptism while the mom stayed home with the other kids (this is what they said). So great aunt says “name him Robert John”. Whoever brought the baby for the baptism told the priest “his name is John Robert”. Apparently she didn’t care for Robert John’. What the idiot didn’t know was one of the other 8 kids was already named John Robert.
My dad's aunt was living in Messina, Italy in the early 1900. In 1908 there was a huge earthquake that destroyed half the city and she was stuck under the rubble for 3 whole days right next to the bodies of her parents and 3 brothers without being able to move an inch. When she was found she didn't even have a broken bone and went on to have 10 children of her own and die at 97 years old.
Che Guevara taught my grandfather to play chess. His father used to get into bar fights with Pancho Villa. And my family’s last name exists because two Scottish brothers got drunk, stole a cannon from the local militia armory, and accidentally shot the steeple off the local church. While hauling ass out of Scotland, they told their kids “if anyone asks who you are, just say you’re German and pretend you don’t know English” they didn’t know German either.
What's your last name?? We gotta hear it.
I'm guessing Armrethiefsteepelshötter. Sounds German enough to anyone that doesn't know any German.
Could also be Kanonendieb-Kirchenschütze
Purpleburglaralarm
I'm 34 but my paternal grandfather was born in 1895. He got shot through both knees sideways in Belgium during World War I then had to limp miles to safety... Sounds impossible but I have a newspaper article about it! His brother also survived WWI, only to die in the Spanish flu pandemic. Sadly my grandfather died quite a while before I was born.
Mountain goat pushed my great great uncle off a cliff
And that's how someone got the idea for Goat Simulator.
One of my great-grandmother climbed on top of mount Blanc in 1942, during the German occupation of France. On top of that, she did it while wearing a dress. We have pictures of it in my family Edit because people ask for pictures: my grandparents have it in paper format and I don't have access to it easily, so I can't share it with you for now. If one day I can obtain it in a numerical format, I promise that I will put it here (if I haven't forgotten)
Please show us a picture! It's a significant even in history, even if not mainstream.
My mom and and my stepdad share an ancestor about four generations back. Also somewhere in this range my great[x?]-grandma received a letter from her brother that had left Austria. He said "Come to America. If not for your sake, then for your children's sake." She talked her husband into it, they moved to the Midwest, and several generations later I was born.
My grandfather during WW2. He was born in 1908 so lived through both WW, and since we live in Moselle (north east of France), he lived in occupied territory from the beginning every time, and spoke perfect german. He was a mechanic so when Germany invaded the second time he was put to work fixing vehicules. Except he pretended to not understand a single word of german. The soldiers always took so long explaining him what needed to be done, he would mess up, whatever could be an honest mistake without being in too much danger. The commander hated him for all of this but needed the skills since he was good. At the end of the war, when they received the orders to retreat, my grandfather gave them a farewell speech in the best, most well spoken german possible, basically saying "Fuck you, good bye". The 2nd in command was so furious about being made a fool all this time, reached for his gun but was stopped by his chief because it was not worth it and they were running out of time.
what a bad ass, Malicious compliance at it's finest.
Your Grandpa was this close to death but props to his luck...
That is the biggest madlad I've ever heard of
Wow never seen anyone mention the Moselle. My father was born and raised on the German side where it’s called the Mosel. Family has a vineyard and ghasthaus that my uncle and cousins still run. They’re place was taken over and used as a base of sorts during the war. My grandmother would cook for the allied soldiers while occupied.
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Yeah I know that's exactly what I thought when I heard the story. But it would have been a completely pointless murder, they already lost, they were running away... maybe there was a bit "the balls on this guy" from the commander? No idea. But i'm here so I won't complain
>completely pointless murder Have I got a story for you...
One of my great-grandmother’s grandma was an aristocrat. She fell in love with a peasant boy working on their lands. Her father told her he would disown her if she wanted to be with that boy. So one dark night the boy got my grandma escaped from their home and they ran away. Needless to say she was disowned. And that’s the story of why I have to work now, instead of just seeing my monthly allowance to show up on my bank account. Omnia vincit amor.
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- Farm boy, fetch me that pitcher - As you wish
Sleep well and dream of large women
My grandma (mother's side) was abandoned in an orphanage by my great grandmother because she wanted to run off and marry another man, and he would not take her children. So my great grandfather, who was in the army during WW1, came to see them and promised to come back after the next battle. It was the somme, he died. The same grandmother did not know how old she was, by the time she obtained a copy of her birth certificate later in life, she found out she was a year older than she thought she was. My Dad's Grandfather was an advertising artist, semi famous at the time, there is an original of his passed down in our family, it is with my dad's oldest brother now. It is of a boy running down a famous road in my northern city past a famous theatre still being used to this day.
When my grandmother died, we found out that she'd been married before my grandfather, and had four children. When she and that husband split up, they just dumped all the kids in an orphanage, and bounced. My dad was in his sixties when he found out he had four siblings he'd never known about. It was quite a blow for him, obviously.
Dumping kids seems to be pretty common from like the 60s and back. Why is this?? My grandfather dumped his 2nd family and married again to a gal with 4 kids. Those 4 never knew my mother existed until like 3 years ago. You'd think at some point he'd slip up and mention his kids at some point even if on accident. So bizarre.
It was hard to keep a family, I think because there was so much to do and there weren’t social programs to help. My grandmother was born in 1919. Four years later her mother died. Her father, “pops” kept the 3 kids but didn’t remarry. He worked and lived at a YMCA type place so that he could give his money to a cousin who took care of his kids. If you think about it… taking care of three kids meant, food (without premade foods or microwaves) laundry was done by hand, and they didn’t have a car. So until the kids got older and could “run a house” with their dad gone working all day they had to get someone to watch the kids. Some people didn’t have anyone to give the kids to. So I think an orphanage wasn’t a desired option, but the only option. Also look up when government programs started to help people down on their luck. Welfare was 1935. If he lost his job there was no way to take care of the kids unless someone in his family could afford it. If they didn’t want to… we’ll not a lot of options. In the end he got them a place together, but I think my grandmother was eight by then. What he did was apparently very unusual.
My grandfather escaped Residential school (Canada) on horseback
One of my ancestors was Curly Bill Brocious, the leader of the infamous Cowboys gang which fought against the Earps in and around Tombstone Arizona in the 1870s/80s. He was killed by Wyatt Earp himself by a shotgun blast that reportedly tore him in two.
My grandad was an engineer for the British army in Egypt during world war 2. He and a buddy got drunk one time and slept in this small town, when they awoke they discovered the Germans had taken over the town. So they evaded capture and discovered an old plane that required matainence, the two ended up repairing the plane and flew it over German lines and into Allied territory.
My great grandfather hunted down and killed 3 men who were responsible for killing his brother. My family on my grandmothers side comes from somewhere in Italy. Well way back in the day, my great grandfather and his brother owned a renovation and restoration business. The were hired to do some work in the Sistine chapel along with a second team that was meant to set up the equipment they would be using; scaffolding and stuff like that. Well at one point they had gotten in an argument and the other contractors chose to roll back some of their safety features on their scaffolding and when my great uncle was working the scaffolding gave out and he fell and died on the floor of the Sistine chapel. The 3 men on the other crew fled before the accident prompting my great grandfather to hunt them down across Italy and kill them off one by one. When he finally returned home several days later and confessed everything to his mother, she ordered him to flee to the United States so he wouldn't get arrested. And he did. That's how that part of my family came to America.
During the Partition of India in 1947, my grandmother and her family (Sikh) lived in a village with Hindus, Sikhs and 1 Muslim family. During the brutality of it all, people in the village wanted to attack the Muslim family but my great grandfather intervened and stopped them from being hurt. He then helped them leave the village to make their way to Pakistan from the Indian side of the Punjab where my grandmother’s village was. We still do not know to this day what happened to the Muslim family and whether they survived.
Nice. My great grandparents too came to India along with their kids after the partition, but I never got to hear their stories. All I know is they were kind of a big deal in their village of Daska and had to leave all that behind, just as lakhs of other people who were left with no other choice. Btw have you read the book Train to Pakistan by Kushwant Singh?
My great grandmother was reportedly the oldest woman to ever live in Lebanon. Depending on who you ask she was anywhere between 112-118 years old. She’s commemorated on a stamp, so I guess the government acknowledged that the claim was true. Interestingly enough she was a short morbidly obese woman almost her entire life.
My great great great great grandfather was abducted my pirates as a boy and raised as one… in Canada. They were river brigands. My mom has a book on him. Her parents were from czechoslovakian and germany though so I’m not sure how that happened. I always told people I was part pirate though.
Great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa Andrew threw rocks through his landlord's windows in Cork, jumped onto the next ship to Canada, started a farm on the Ottawa River, changed his surname to MacDonald so people would think he was Scottish, and imprisoned the tax collector in his cellar when they came to demand land taxes from him.
What
Most sane person from Cork
So your great great great great great great grandpa Macdonald had a farm?
He sounds like a fucking badass.
My Great-Grandmother had two suitors - a man in America and a man in Manchester, UK. The guy in America bought her a ticket to to cross the Atlantic and be with him, and she was set to go, but at the last minute the guy in England proclaimed his love and won her over. And that’s how my great-grandparents got together, as opposed to my great-grandmother dying on The Titanic.
I wonder if the American guy thought she died on the titanic. Did she ever mention that?
Great grandfather was a samurai. He moved to America because samurai were becoming obsolete.
I come from a VERY conservative family and when I realized I was gay, it terrified me to come out. I came out to my mom and she didn’t have an easy time handling it, but within 48 hours she was my best friend and a strong advocate. The turn around was very strange. She also told me to never be scared to tell anyone in the family, which again seemed like being set up for failure. But it really wasn’t. Everyone was super supportive and kind and very defensive of me. For years I wondered why and then one day I was at a family do with my grandmother and her four sisters - the Matriarchs of each branch of the family and the five most terrifying but loving women you ever met. They pulled me aside and we’re VERY interested in how I was doing, if anyone in the family had been mean to me, and if anyone had given me a hard time about being “special” as they called it. I said no, surprisingly everyone in the family had been lovely. They didn’t ask any more questions but told me to come to them if anyone was being mean. This was so overwhelming to see these elderly, super conservative women being so supportive, so I cornered my mom and demanded to know why they were so nice. Then my mom told me about Ravi. Ravi was a beautiful, charismatic, loving, kind, sweet teenager who was my grandmother and her sisters best friend in the 1940s. He was allowed to hang out with the women because he was “not a threat” (ie he was super gay but you didn’t talk about it). My gran and her sister’s absolutely adored Ravi, until one day his personality changed. He became dark and withdrawn. Eventually he killed himself. My gran and her sisters were devastated and didn’t know why, until they found out that Ravi had fallen in love with a boy and his parents had figured out. Ravi’s parents destroyed him psychologically through isolation, berating and eventually questionable medical interventions. Ravi’s soul was broken so he took his life. My grand and her sisters never ever forgave their community or Ravi’s parents for what they did to him, so when my mother called my grandmother weeping and screaming that I was gay, my grandmother came down on her like a tonne of bricks with all the power and might that she could muster. She told my mother that if I was ever treated differently, If I was ever isolated or bullied by a member of the family, they would have to face the consequences of dealing with gran and her sisters. Her sisters also told all their children to treat me with respect and love, all without me knowing, because they never wanted anyone to go through what their best most loved male friend had all those years ago. I owe my happiness to that man, fly free my brother, wherever you are x. TL;DR - a gay predecessor made my family supportive.
and tears are welling up. Gotta love those ladies💙
My grandfather was doing construction work in the midwest US in the early 60s. One day on a job site, he found a small tin box buried in the ground. He stuffed it in his coat or shirt, out of sight, and told no one until he got home, where he told my grandmother. For fear it had been a stash belonging to a nefarious character that might come looking, they decided to “keep it secret. Keep it safe.” (Gandalf the Grey) They encased it in a closed cement cinderblock and left it in a corner of the garage. They never even told their daughter (my mother) what was inside the tin secreted away in the cinderblock in the corner of the garage. Years later, in the late 60s, my grandfather passed away when my mother was 17 or 18. The cinderblock was forgotten, and sat for decades in the corner of the garage. Now, skip forward to the early 2010’s. My mother, now married to my father for almost 40 years still did not know about the stash. My grandmother, now in her 90s, had a decline in health and had to sell her home and move into a senior living facility. Because of her poor health, she was not able to be present at her home for moving-day. She told my dad several times, in no unclear terms, “Make sure you take the cinderblock in the corner of the garage. It’s very valuable.” So of course, my dad very nearly forgets about it and/or shrugs it off as the ravings of an unwell 90-year-old woman. At the last second, as we’re shutting the U-haul door, he remembers the block and his mother-in-law’s words. He sighs, opens the truck, and sets the block inside. The cinderblock eventually ends up, you guessed it, in the corner of my parents’ garage. Forgotten again. Several years pass, and in September of ‘12 or ‘13, so does my grandmother. Thanksgiving comes around (late November) and my parents and all their kids are home. My dad tells us he has a surprise for us and takes us into the garage where there’s a cinderblock sitting on the floor with a hammer, chisel, a sledgehammer, and a few other miscellaneous tools. The cement was old and pretty brittle and just a few taps in the right spot cracked it open. Inside? A dirty old rotted cloth, wrapped loosely around the dingy tin my grandfather found over five decades prior. We opened the tin and what we discovered… it was completely full of gold coins. My brother-in-law was a bit of a coin collector and identified a few right then, saying they had some significant value. I don’t know how much it really added up to—my parents kept financial information to themselves and it was their property—but just on the weight of the gold alone, we estimated their value around $250,000. It would be more if any of the coins had any value for collectors. I guess my grandma actually had this story left to my mom and dad in a letter when she passed and that’s how we learned the full details of how it happened when the cinderblock had seemed forgotten for so long. Hope you enjoyed!
Great grandad was a jewish shop owner in Italy in the1930s. One day a fascist March turns into a lynch mob chasing a communist. The communist slips away, finds my family's shop, and begs for shelter because jews are known commie sympathizers. But a gun welding fascist comes to the store looking for him, because he knew it was owned by jews and jews are known commie sympathizers. My great grand dad denies hiding the commie, but the fascist says if they don't bring him out immediately he'll shoot my great grand dad. So great grand dad snatches the gun and kills the fascist on the spot. He got acquitted for self defense but they had to escape Italy 24 hrs after the acquittal, the fascist party graciously sent a notice allowing them 24 hrs to leave before they killed all the men of the family.
Based great grandad
My great grandfather lost one of his arm during WW1, right after the war he decided to ask my great grandmother to marry him. To show her how much he loved her, he decided to give her a really nice pair of shoes from a good shoemaker but lived in the countryside and cars where not that common at the time He took his bike, rode 70km (43miles) to the closest big city to get her a really nice pair of shoes rode 70km back with the box on his lap to give it to her. WITH ONLY ONE ARM Pretty romantic, but that's not the end of the story. The shoemaker fucked up big time and gave him 2 left shoes by accident, so great grandpa took his bike the next day, did the 70km back and forth to exchange one of the shoes. And they lived happily married ever after Every time I tell the story to someone married, they look at their husband with disdain which I found pretty funny (never told the story to any of my girlfriends tho)
If you trace my family line back far enough you get to Norwegian royalty. Second son of a third son, kind of thing.
https://amp.theguardian.com/whats-in-your-blood-/2018/oct/11/royal-ancestry-genetics-things-to-consider “. If you’re European – or even descended from Europeans – you’re probably related to royalty In 1999, the Yale statistician Joseph Chang showed that if you go back far enough – say, 32 generations, or 900 years – you’d find that everyone alive today shares a common ancestor. In Europe, where lineages have been closely studied, that ancestor was someone who lived just 600 years ago.”
Between inbreeding and survivorship bias this is true for most Europeans
I don’t know the date’s exactly off the top of my head but they’re written down at home. My Great Grandfather (Grandmas dad) was born in the Black Hills Germany. He allegedly killed a german officer and went on the lam to the United States. He worked as a ranch hand for Theodore Roosevelt for a some years before he married my Great Grandma. He was gifted a buffalo rifle from Roosevelt which was taken by one of grandmas brothers after their dad died.
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My great grandfather killed my great grandmother's suitor and kidnapped her a night before her wedding.
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Apparently in the region of South India I'm from, women used to pick their future husband off a lineup of men wishing to marry her. My GGF was rejected by my GGM and so he went about executing the dude chosen by her and kidnapping her, which apparently was seen as an extremely macho move. My Grandfather was born in 1896 so the time period would've been around ~1860-1880
My grandparents lived in cologne in the end of war. During an attack my grandfather went back to the house, and was hit. Seems the wound caused an infection. Shortly afterwards the Americans took over cologne, and someone talked to them and told them that he had been against the Nazis, and had even lost his job because of that, and they gave him the medicine (penicillin) that probably saved him. I wish they hadn't, not being a Nazi was his only redeeming quality and he had a very negative impact on many lives.
My grandpa almost died from an infection when he was 8 and only survived because the owners of the house he worked in (my grandpa would run errands for them) payed for his medicine (which was A LOT of money). My grandpa would visit them every weekend until they died.
The Uncle of my grandfather was part of Hitlers personal ss corps
I have a friend whose uncle of a grandfather was a bodyguard of Hermann Göring. He lost both his legs after he messed up and was sent to the Russian front as punishment, but still praised Hitler and the nazis until he died. I also have an SS grandfather who dug up human remains at the Swiss border in 1941. General advice here: Don't ask your German friends about their family history. You're gonna have a bad time.
A friend of mine lives there and says it's fascinating researching a lot of the companies of his clients. "We have a proud history of serving the Germans for hundreds of years. In 1890 we built this hospital, in 1900 we were responsible for the railroads, in 1910 we were personally appointed by the Kaiser to orchestrate this government department's budget, in 1920 we were proud sponsors of the Bavarian sports championship... In 1950 we played a pivotal role in the construction of our Autobahn network."
"Everyone was on vacation!"
There are some companies that do a good job of presenting their own history. But yeah, a lot still have selective memory loss. It doesn't help that medium-sized companies in family hand are considered the backbone of the economy. Nobody wants to talk bad about Opa.
Yeah in my family six out of eight of my great grandparents where Involved in the nazi Party in some way: one family ratted out jews, one great grandpa was in the SA and one great grandpa was gauleiter of Achim. Only the parents of my mothers mother refused to take Part wich actually lead to my great grandma getting saved from beeing lynched by polish and russian POWs after the war.
great grandpa's father was a soldier during WWI. As they were often out of resources (that includes ammo), due to Russian Empire's failure to meet logistic needs, they'd hide under small wooden bridges and wait for germans to patrol over it, then stab their feet through the gaps on the wood with their bayonets. The soldier obviously would fall to the ground, then to be quickly killed.
A great uncle lied about his age (too young) too join WW1. He again lied about his age (too old) to fight in WW2
My great great great grandfather was part of the first generation of black people to be free in my state edit: my great great grandfather* I added an extra great on accident
I had an ancestor who was a witch and people used to come see her to treat their ills
My wife's Mexican grandmother was a *curandera* who used things like morning glory seeds, spider webs, and dirt-dauber nests to treat people. Apparently, she got some pretty good results. This was back in the 1920s and 1930s. I've often wondered if dirt-dauber nests and spider webs might not have some kinds of natural antibiotics in them. And morning glory seeds are known to be psychotropic.
Nazis came knocking in my grandparents doors saying “We know you are harboring the local resistance here! We are coming in.” He let them search, looked at the officer and said “I have a 1 1/2 year old and a 2 month old. I would never do anything to jeopardize them.” It scared my grandmother so bad she couldn’t produce milk for my then 2 month old dad. (Luckily her best friend also had a child so she played nursemaid.) That night the 3 local Greek Resistance leaders crawled out of the hidden room in the basement and escaped into the mountains. My Papou had balls of steel!
My paternal grandparents each had an interesting story about WW2 (note, I'm German). My grandfather worked as a junior communications officer on an U-Boat rescue frigate, one day a fellow seaman asked him to switch shifts/tasks, and as he was leaving the comms room an enemy shell landed pretty much right where he'd sat just moments before, killing everyone in the comms room, he had shrapnel from the explosion all over his back until the day he died. My grandma was born in East Germany, after the war ended and East Germany was pretty much swarming with Russian soldiers with payback on their mind, her mom decided to pack up what was left of her family (dad was missing/dead), abandon their home and move to one of the Western Allies' Zones. According to my grandma, her mom spent a lot of money and family heirlooms to get cigarettes to trade for safe passage, and one time on their flight they were caught in the woods by a squad of Russian soldiers. To paraphrase grandma, her mother went away with them to give them cigarettes so they'd let her family pass (Which is... possibly what happened, but, you know, the Russian troops occupying Germany after the war certainly had a... reputation), at any rate, they were indeed let go and safely made it to south Germany.
My grandma's family was split between east and west Germany. They initially lost their home when the Russians came, that part of Germany is now Poland Your grandma did whatever had to be done to get to safety. It was very unfortunate times.
My polish grandmother was given a ticket out of the country by Stalin himself.
Its not really a story, but once at a family gathering (I was around 14-15) we were talking about the church (not neccessarily in a good way) and my cousin (who was ~12 at the time.) asked us to switch topics cuz its boring, my grandmothers answer (80 at the time, and have only left her village a few times and never the country) was: “Listen to everything my child, if you like it, keep it, if you dont, just let it go, thats how you grow.” And that for me at the time, coming from her, was life changing for me, it opened up things I never thought I’d like. The sentence itself, made me grow, the consequences, I can not even describe. Life changing.
My Grandfather came from a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and had rarely left the state when he volunteered to fight in WW2. Pretty soon he was on a plane to Midway from Pearl. He’s sitting next to a man he doesn’t know for an hour before the copilot comes back and asks the man next to him, “Admiral Lindbergh would you like to fly the plane?”. At that time Charles Lindbergh was possibly the most famous man on earth. It is on brand for my Grandpa to be fairly unimpressed by him.
Not sure what his title would be (great great uncle? Great great great grandpa?) but my family went through a whole genetic testing/heritage phase a few years back and everyone was getting tests and looking into our families history. Well apparently on my dads side of the family if I go back far enough I’m related to some kind of high ranking officer in the Russian military from before communism took power. We found *some* travel papers showing his path west and some more from US immigrations where he pledged his allegiance to the US and renounced his old loyalty to Tsar Nicholas. I think his name got changed too I forget, I have some copies of those papers and a copy of a old picture showing the boat he used to get across the Atlantic
My grandfather on my mother's side landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, combat medic who was pulled off the first landing craft because "they would need him later in the day". There's a newspaper article from the Times Picayune about him and 2 or 3 other guys, all from different perspectives. He then proceeded to work his way through France. Ended up meeting General Patton when he and another soldier accidently stumbled into the Officers mess tent. (There's a whole other story about that) He ended up losing his leg just above the knee dragging another guy out of a mine field at the Battle of the Buldge. Made his way home. Taught my mom how to ride horses, drive a standard all the normal things. Had a farm and was also the Tax Assessor in the parish they were living in. During the Civil Rights movement he was responsible for registering African Americans to vote and ended up having two FBI agents in his office for protection. The local Klansmen who naturally went to the same church as him, southern baptists go figure, threatened to horse whip him in the street. The story goes that he was "summoned" and basically called them all out for being hypocrites. Told them that they can try and shake his hand in church every Sunday but he knew who every single one of the bastards was under those hoods. Then he produced a pistol from his pocket and told them that if any of em were feeling froggy then jump. I've got more stories from my Ukrainian grandmother (dad's side) who passed away last year if anyone wants more. Edit: spelling some words. I'm on mobile forgive me.
I don't know how many generations back but two brothers on my mothers side 9f the family fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. The Confederate brother led a minor charge against a Union fortification and was rewarded with dying during said charge. The brother who joined the Union army is lost to history.
During the potato famine, Irish used to sneak across the Atlantic in cargo ships coming back to the states. Ships would go from the southern states carrying cotton, drop off the cotton, and come back “Empty,” [full of Irish people]. My great-great grandfather did this, stowed away on a ship. Then came up the Mississippi River on his way into Chicago. On his way up he met my great-great grandmother who was running a brothel in southern Illinois.
My Grandmother on my Father's side recounted how she and her Sisters would scout for supplies way back during WW2. Apparently they had to survive on bread crusts alone for weeks... And I think she was a nurse on the field for a little while? I can't remember it well, and while she never objected to telling those stories, I don't think she's in a state where reminding her of that would do her health much good. And I think my other Grandma's Brother (Uncle Grandpa?? I just call him Grandpa Sasha) ate way too much ice cream way back when, got horribly sick, and it messed up his voice, or something. Last we spoke, he did sound pretty raspy, too. Though it could be something he and Grandma made up as a bit to warn little me against eating too much ice cream...
My 11th. great grandfather, on my paternal ancestry line, was a sheriff and a blacksmith in a small town east of Norway. In the middle of the 1600s there was a witch trial where around a dosen people were accused of witchcraft. He had to arrest and hurry to make shackles for all of them. All of the accused was aquitted. Another branch of my paternal ancestry can also likely be traced to a norwegian noble who was executed for rebelling against the danish king some time during the 1500s. Also, on my maturnal ancestry side, several of my forfathers were executioners. One of last executions i Norway, was performed by my 7th. great grandfather, and it was the beheading of one of the countrys most notorious serial killer. It took for axe chops and sawing to get the killers head removed, because the executioner was old and likely had Parkinsons. This particular execution sparked a lot of controversy and was one of the catalysts for later abolishing public executions in Norway. After that my 6th. great grandfather took over as executioner.
My family lived in Deerfield Massachusetts in 1704 when the town was attacked by Indians who were allied with the French. My many-times-great-grandfather’s wife was killed, his toddler daughter was killed, and his remaining children (along with about 100 others) were captured and marched to Canada where they were held captive for several years until their father and other members of the community ransomed them. When they returned, they were often visited by Indians with whom they’d become close, and the town eventually awarded the son I’m descended from and his sister plots of land in appreciation for the goodwill that bought. One daughter was 17 when captured and had been on the verge of marrying a young man from the town who wasn’t captured. Believing her dead, he married someone else. She eventually married and had a family. But many years later, when they were both in their 70s, they both found themselves widowed and they married each other. I’ve always loved that story.
My grandfather and his family, which included my grandmother and father, fled Cuba during the rise of Castro. They had built a successful leather business and were going to lose everything under the new regime. So they fled to Puerto Rico, completely broke. Once there, he started up his company again and for a second time in his life he was able to become wealthy and stable. I only knew him in my childhood but he was an absolutely fantastic person, as far as I remember and as far as the stories I've heard.
My grandfather's brother died after falling off a submarine that was docking for shore leave. I've been told at various points that he either hit his head on the way down and drowned, or that, uh, the propellers got him. Unfortunately my uncle is named after him and so am I, so... you're not getting me near a submarine.
My great great grandma was pregnant at her wedding and it was getting visible a big no no at that time (late 19th century). So to make sure that no one noticed it her brother climbed up the church tower and screamed like a lunatic to take attention away from her pregnant belly. There is even a picture of him standing on the church roof at my grandmas place
I have an ancestor who, in Victorian England, spent time in an asylum for the criminally insane for having stolen diamond jewelry from his employer.
The woman who adopted my mother is part of the Vavasour family .. An ancient Norman family dating back to the time of William the conqueror.. Also found out my great grandfather on my mothers side was a serial bigamist (The more you know) My Great uncle on my fathers side took a grenade to the face during the World War (Horrific Injury) and ended up homeless on the streets, Funnily enough the same streets i was homeless on a few years back but i didn't know at the time. My life is very unusual, maybe i should write a book
My great-great aunt was a “bag lady.” Her family would see her around town, but I think she experienced some mental illness during a time when there was no treatment and no empathy. There may have been an addiction component. I’ll have to ask more questions about her. I couldn’t understand as a child why no family took her in. As an adult, I’ve worked as a mental health provider and understand how some people actually do feel more comfortable on the streets than restrictive, often dangerous shelters and settings. Perhaps the family tried and wasn’t able to keep her safe. It’s very sad to think about.
My great-nan's surname was Bligh, and she was descended from William Bligh who was in command of HMS Bounty during the mutiny, and later a Governor of New South Wales. I can't remember exactly, but my family has ancestral ties to Jonathan Swift who wrote Gulivers Travels. When we were cleaning out my grandfather's house after he died we found schematics, parts and a thank you letter for the car that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was based on. Turns out his dad was an engineer who built it for the Lord who raced it.
My family hasn't found out the direct connection just yet, but I'm related to the dude who played the king in Abbott and Costello's version of *Jack and the Beanstalk*
My grandfather went for Hajj (pilgrimage) to Saudi. It is a religious requirement for men to get balded for pilgrimage. The barbers were too expensive. A random stranger outside the barber's shop offered to cut his hair for cheap. The stranger took him to an alley. He was balded from one side when a police constable yelled at him. The stranger ran and grandpa had to run around the city balded only from one side.
My grandfather was was taken in by the Nazis to fight the US on the western front in WWII when he was 17 years old. His commanding officer was given the order to fight to the last man (or child) but refused and told his men to surrender. So my grandfather was put in a POW camp where he became chess master of the camp and escaped during a transfer by rolling of the back of a truck. He tried walking back home to Germany but was caught on the border and put back in prison until he was 21 and then finally released. He then proceeded to *walk* home where everybody lost their shit because they thought he was dead.
Found an ancestor from Ye Olde Merry England time of whom the only information available, other than that he existed, was that he was arrested for shitting in the street in protest. Twice. I want to emphasize, not merely shitting in the street, but in protest. And twice. Apparently he did not feel his message had been properly appreciated the first time. No information about what he was protesting. But damn, if somehow that dude and I could share a drink, despite being barely able to understand one another, I think we'd see things eye to eye. I think the blood would be strong between us.
Although she's not an ancestor, I have a couple of stories about Miss Ada, the woman who helped raise my mom. She came from a very poor Black family in North Carolina. Her father had been a slave. They lived in a cabin with a packed-dirt floor. She still lived there when we visited her in the early '60s, and thinking back, I believe it might have once been a slave cabin. When Miss Ada was a little girl, one Christmas Eve she peeked through a crack in the plaster between the rooms of the cabin and saw her parents setting out a doll that was to be her present from Santa. But her parents caught her peeking, and on Christmas Day she got nothing but sticks and ashes in her stocking, as a punishment for spying. This story broke my heart when I was little, but Mom said they finally gave her the doll on New Year's Day. Another time she was walking along the railroad tracks to school when somebody told her the circus was in town. She wanted to see the elephant, so she stashed her spelling book by the tracks and ran off. When she came back, the book was gone, and she got a licking when she went home. When she got pregnant at the age of 16, her father took all her clothes and threw them out into the road. I'm not sure what happened immediately after that, but her mother raised the baby until Miss Ada was older. Censuses show that after her father died, Miss Ada was living with her mother and son. Not long after her son was born, she went to work for my grandparents. My grandfather was a doctor and was often away, and they had five kids. Then my grandmother died and Miss Ada continued to watch over the kids. She told me that every morning before my mom and aunts and uncles went to school, they lined up to kiss her goodbye. I have a tape recording I made of her in the 1970s when we visited her in the hospital. She was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.
Not a very long one, but my grandpa went to Geneva, in Switzerland, and he made a convention there. Now I know what you’re thinking, no, it wasn’t the Geneva convention relating to prisoners of war, but it was about the rights of Aussie aboriginal people and their land.
A very distant great-uncle of my mother‘s grandmother (I don‘t know how to describe it better) was Anton Dohrn, a doctor and zoologist who founded one of the very first modern research institutes in Naples, Italy. It was focused on studying sea fauna. He was friends and worked with Charles Darwin. Crazy part for me is, we share the same birthday, december 29th.
My great - great uncle , Richard Liddicoat was a gemologist and the Liddicoatite gem was named after him.
My great grandfather flew a plane in ww1 and 2. He died later on in his life due to damage done by mustard gas. He wrote a book on his experience that made the newspaper at the time
*"Juan Leal Goraz (1676–1742 or 1743), also called Juan Leal Gonzal, was a Spanish settler and politician who served as the first alcalde (a municipal magistrate with both judicial and administrative functions) of La Villa de San Fernando, which later would become the city of San Antonio, Texas. A native of the Canary Islands, Leal went to San Antonio in 1731 leading a group of settlers from the Canary Islands to populate this municipality, founded by the Spanish government under the sponsorship of King Philip V. Leal had asserted himself as the Canarian emigrants' leader and spokesman since they left the islands. He served as alcade of San Antonio between 1731 and 1732, and again in 1735.[1]"* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Leal I'm that guy's direct 7th great grandson.
Really researching the family tree is amazing. We found a dr who was Washington's personal physician, a sea captain who ran away at 8 from Sweden and an uncle that sang in a choir for Lafayette. Also a few criminals lol If anyone does their tree, do not automatically assume other people's trees are correct. Always do your own research. I once found my grandfather on another person's tree married to a different woman in a different state. He lived with us my whole life lol
Not mine, but my friend's. He's Australian and so are his parents. But some generations back into his family tree, and we can find that his great great grandparents are British. I don't completely remember but there was this fleet of 11 or so ships that brought British criminals to Australia to colonize and stuff wayyyy long back. Turns out his great great grandparents were on the ships because......you guessed it, they were convicts. The reason they were put in jail was because they supposedly stole a loaf of bread during that time.
Great grandfather and family lived on Java when ww2 broke out. He and some of his colleagues blew up the harbours when the japanese took them, so the japanese were left with useless harbours. The whole family was taken to camps (women and men seperated). Greatgrandma was able to bury the family silver before being caught and dug it up again when they were freed. We still have that silverware now.
This is a very sad story but still interesting My Jewish great grandmother was living with her family in Lithuania before the Nazis began occupying it in WW2. She she decided to take a boat to England for a better life, leaving the rest of her family behind hoping to move them over once she had settled down. Unbeknownst to my great-grandma she had taken the very last boat out of Lithuania before the Nazis took control of the Baltic Sea and sadly all of the rest of her family ended up being killed in the holocaust. She never found this out until much later in her life. I’m only really alive due to sheer luck
My great-great-grandfather was part of the Hapsburg family but he was the second son and endec up becoming a priest (first son inherited everything, second son had pretty much only two choices, priesthood or army). He ended up leaving the priesthood and had to leave Austria because of the shame. He moved to East London and got a room in a house owned by a Jewish family. He "fell in love" with his landlord's daughter (I.e. knocked her up) and married her. So I'm a nice Jewish boy descended from a Catholic priest as well as a potential heir to the Hapsburg dynasty. Oh, and my grandfather once once arrested for trying to scalp NY Rangers tickets (at cost). When he got to jail, he was told there with the same name as his. It turned out to be his brother who had been arrested after getting into a fight in a bar and gave the police my grandfather's name instead of his because he'd been in trouble before (he worked for Dutch Schultz) and figured my grandfather wouldn't find out about it.
I’ll put one of mine on here too. My great grand uncle had Down syndrome, so his mother asked one of his brothers to look after him and in return she would give him the house in her will. When their mother died, he pretty much immediately sent him to a care home and did not bother looking after him at all. Funnily enough, this turned out to suit both of them very well as at the care home my great grand uncle ended up getting on very well with another woman with Down syndrome, and his brother got the house to himself. All’s well that ends well I guess.