BS: How respectable is your family?

Subject: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 07:17 AM

Are you from respectable stock? Are you sure?

I thought mine were until my cousin, researching our family history, discovered that we come from a fairly disreputable background. Here are just two clips from newspaper that she found:

From the Hull Packet and Advertiser 13 March 1885 Police Court Report

'John Henry Thompson Barber of West Dock Avenue , charged with receiving a quantity of stolen tobacco.'

(It seems that my grandmother always said he was a rogue – but my granddad wasn't much better, having a mistress for most of his life.)


From the Hull Packet and Advertiser March 7th 1834 Inquest Report

'John Thompson Master of the Sloop 'Dunn' a trader between Hull and Sheffield

John Thompson Master of the Sloop Dunn was found drowned in the Old Harbour.
The vessel was tied up at Chapel Lane staithe. George North publican of the Black Boy said the deceased had been in his pub worse for drink the previous night. He had been warned against returning to his boat, the night being so windy. His body was found in the Old Harbour having received a severe blow to the head. The body was removed to the Black Boy Public House. Verdict Accidental Death.'


This John Thompson had formerly been a whaler and we thought that he had been lost a sea in Greenland.


The strange thing for me is that, in my youth, I too have been the worse for drink in the Black Boy in Hull (and other dockland hostelries) – I even have the scars from some fights I got into with trawlermen on benders, as in Mike Waterson's song 'Three Day Millionaire'.

Is being disreputable bred into you? Thankfully, one of my sons has become a policeman!

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 09:18 AM

Let's see....

According to the tracings my great-aunt paid to have done, the records peter out around 750 CE. Apparently we were some sort of chieftains or leaders (my surname means "Keeper of the Sacred" or, in modern parlance, "Goalie"). We were among the princelings of Germany and up to about 1934 still received payments from the family "county" there. One of my ancestors was Ludwig Windhorst -- look him up in Wikipedia.

Then again, another helped slaves escape in the South, got them across the Ohio and into the free territory of Illinois, and then took them back across the Mississippi and re-sold them back into slavery.

Another was a pro baseball pitcher; he got syphilis, left baseball, and eventually fell in the Mississippi and drowned -- we don't know if he was drunk at the time or not.

But what difference does it make NOW?

"I once met a sad little lizard who bragged that his ancestors had been dinosaurs."

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 01:50 PM

Hey, we're not only a bastard branch of the family, we are also an bastard branch of *that* branch...

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 02:37 PM

Mine? Oh, reasonably respectable I suppose...

On one side it goes back to Rob Roy, who was not at all well liked by the English, but seems to have been well thought of by the Scots. In the interim we have a succession of reasonably respectable types along with the occasional dypsomaniac or nutcase here and there...but no murderers or crimes of high treason.

On the other side we have a pathologically obsessed line of pretentious social climbers from central Europe....yet again no assassins, no heinous crimes really, no vampirism or lycanthropy.

It clearly could have been a lot worse. ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: MarkS
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 03:43 PM

Respectable?

One grandfather came to America one step ahead of the Carabinieri in Italy.
The other grandfather came to America as a runaway, in order to become a famous artist. All he got was hungry, so he had to get a job.
This guy, btw, is decended from another fellow whose claim to fame was that he was a successful horsethief.
But now, here I am, hanging out on Mudcat.

Maybe Europe is better off without us!

Karma!

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 03:50 PM

I am not related, at least not directly, to Elizabeth Bathory, Jack the Ripper, Giles de Rais, Jenghis Khan, Ed Gein, Albert Fish, Herman Mudgett, Big and Little Harpe, Donald Armstrong, Ivan Milat, Tsutomu Miyazaki, Bruno Ludke, Peter Kurten, Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, John Wayne Gacy, Albert Greathouse, Mary Bell, Harold Shipman, John Haigh, John Baker of Sissinghurst, Belle Gunness, Vlad Tepes, Heinrich Himmler, or any of the Benders.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 03:54 PM

I am unrelated to the McBride "fambly".

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 03:59 PM

Family legend has it that a distant ancestor was a British sailor who jumped ship in an American port. Another greatx4 grandfather was fined 1 pound sterling by a grand jury in colonial Virginia for refusing to attend Church of England services (he was a Quaker). The charges were brought by his own brother.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 04:04 PM

We do, however, drink our tea with our middle fingers cocked in the air.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: lady penelope
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 04:21 PM

Erm... bits of our family are respectable... The bits that aren't cattle rustlers etc....

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 04:24 PM

Depending on which of the recent elders was telling the stories, my recent family has commanded great respect.

At the first appearance of one of the clan, the practice was to gather the women safely indoors, lock the livestock in the barn, and bar the door. (as a sign of respect of course.)

Passing through an area three states from home, my son reports that he was recently invited to join a local at the cafe for lunch; but the offer was withdrawn as introductions were completed, with the explanation "the town has an ordinance prohibiting more than one with our last name in the same place of business at any one time."

Now that's gotta be real respect.

John

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 04:28 PM

Your last name wouldn't be "Donnely", would it?

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 04:36 PM

This is a funny question, really. In a gang of theives, who earns the greatest respect? The best thief, usually. In an antisocial clumb of motorcycle raiders, it's the biggest Harley with the biggest rider. In the world of ruthless bloodthirsty white-collar leeches, it's the exec who sucks the most financial blood without getting caught. In the world of priestly pederasts it's the Padre with the cutest choirboy. Among folkies it's the fastest fingerpicker or the most mournful singer or the guy with the most obscure repertory. But take that folksinger and put him in the highly competitive world of Singapore gigolos or Hungarian salt-miners, and he would be laughed at.

So the answer is, yes, all my ancestors have been quite respectable.
Just don't ask to whom they seemed that way...

A

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 05:43 PM

Difficult to tell really - when they didn't leave a forwarding address, or in some cases gave a false name....

Maybe some day I'll get my DNA 'read' and see what turns up. It won't reveal where the missing ancestors went, but it would show where they were from.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 06:06 PM

Are we including ourselves in the answer?

I'd get my DNA 'read' as well, only I don't trust the 'readers' not to leak people's private information to governments, insurance companies and other bad guys.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 06:48 PM

Killers, pimps, thieves, politicians, guttersnipes, ragamuffins, whores, whoremongers, horse thieves, rustlers, gun runners, moonshiners, dry gulchers, drunks, back stabbers, slave drivers, rum runners, policemen, abductors, well poisoners, mercenaries, bribe takers, short weighers, folk singers, drug dealers, porn merchants -- ain't many occupations my family hasn't tried.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 07:15 PM

You and your family always were special, she says admiringly. :)

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Naemanson
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 07:39 PM

My family was and is entirely respectable... at least those that lived long enough to breed.

Agincourt - One of my ancestors was there. He was one of the few English knights who didn't survive.

1635 - The ship Angel Gabriel arrives off Pemaquid, Maine (well, Massachusetts at the time), with three of my ancestors on board. Before their goods could be unloaded a hurricane sank the ship at anchor. Penniless in a strange land. Archaeologists are still looking for the wreck.

Colonial Connecticut - The Committee of Safety issued a summons for one of my ancestors recommending that he be arrested and hung from the nearest tree. We don't know who he pissed off or how.

Revolutionary War - An ancestor living in Quebec, Antoine LaChance, took advantage of an opportunity and joined the American army... under Benedict Arnold. He was there for the attack on Quebec City and made the long sad retreat back to the States.

War of 1812 - Cape Porpoise, Maine. A group of American soldiers on Goat Island are fired on by a British ship. Six dead including a Lt. Burnham.

American Civil War, Gettysburg - One ancestor was wounded by the rebels and then later that day by his own sergeant. At least he survived.

Modern times - One of my cousins has died in prison and several are unaccounted for.

So... at least I'm still breathing.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Janie
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 09:41 PM

I safely (I think) assume my ancestors were as equally divided among the respectable and the not so respectable in roughly the same proportion as those of us living now.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 10:00 PM

well, my earliest known ancestor arrived as a convict in 1812, sentenced in York cos he & others broke into a house, threatened the owner & servant & took stuff including a few bits of money & a leg of ham! They were apparently dobbed in by a notorious fence with an interesting nickname I can't remember now. While they were in jail the wife of one tried to smuggle in a saw & joined them in court & exile!

His wife & 5 children joined him a year later & everyone did well in the new country, he & his sons sending up with land & respectabilty.

One daughter married the son of a famous rich man BUT she appeared to have left him some time later as her death was judged by the Coroner as being caused by "Intemperate habits' - she was found dead on the street, & that made me wonder if any of her brothers & respectable relatives had similar intemperate habits, covered up by equally respectable doctors.

One of his sons married a girl who was born in the colony, probably the (2nd illegitimate) daughter of a soldier who arrived in 1796 (8 years after the first English settlement in Australia at Sydney Cove) so that makes us very early setters indeed.

Oh & the best bit of all - my Scottish ancestors were Borderers, they didn't just fight the English, they fought everyone!

Other than that an assortment of farmers, a blacksmith, an innkeeper, several storekeepers, a saddler, 2 stonemasons, a number of labourers, a cordial factory owner, housepainter, electrician, motor mechanic, several clerks, a poor Irishwoman who was a steerage passenger, & some lightly better off Scottish folk, one of whom was a Presbyterian lay preacher.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 10:17 PM

I came from a line of very bourgeois and quite (sociably)respectable people.

and that's that.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 10:25 PM

My great-grandfather managed to combine respectable and not so. Arthur Bowen Davies was a fairly prominent US artist at the time and president of the Armory Exhibition in 1913, championing modern artists--though his own art was not precisely pathbreaking--mostly nymphs and melancholy landscapes, with just a few ventures into cubism.

But he also got close--real close--to one of his models. The model and her daughter showed up on the doorstep of his wife after he died mysteriously in Italy in 1928. He's been my role model--well, maybe not the dying part.

Of course, he probably was prudent, for all sorts of reasons, not to make his arrangement with the model too obvious. He didn't know it--may never have known it--but his wife, at age 19, had killed her first husband. She eloped with him on a train from Huntsville AL to Chattanooga, then found he was a gambler and opium addict. They separated.   He met her in the street with a pistol and ordered her to return to him. So she shot him (with the pistol he had given her mother after an earlier scene had resulted in his backing down.) She had it in her pocket at the time of their street encounter. It probably helped her case that, before he died, he described her shooting him as self-defense.

After her acquittal, she left Tennessee and went to NY , where having studied under Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first US woman MD, she became a doctor. She delivered over 4,000 babies during her career.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Celtaddict
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 12:06 AM

The first record of my earliest ancestor in the New World was in 1632 when he was fined 2 shillings for 'improper utterance in court.' His words are not recorded.
He did go on to run the mill, dig the graves, tend the impounded animals, and perform a number of other jobs for the township. However the local Puritans did not approve of his name 'Emanuel' and pushed him to change it; he is variously reported as 'Emanuel' and 'Enoch' and had sons named both, which makes research interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Alice
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 12:11 AM

"I once met a sad little lizard who bragged that his ancestors had been dinosaurs." Rapaire, I like that quote!!!
(Alice, descended from Alfred the Great, Henry II Plantagenet King of England, Charlemagne, Pedro I "The Cruel" Alfonsez King of Castille and Leon, and other royals. Don't think they were all respectable!!)

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 12:39 AM

Mine is respectable- at least those I know about, kept out of jail. They left no outstanding debts. What more can one ask!

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 10:38 AM

The last 2 generations have been pretty bland but the 2 before that included a serial killer (female), a mob enforcer, and my grandfather who was murdered in prison. The rest were probably better at keeping low profiles.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 01:11 PM

My forbearers were almost uniformly farmers, horse trainers, carpenters and preachers. I know a good many small and salacious tales of some of them but it's not official. So far as I know, there were no murderers, thieves or politicians. :)

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 01:33 PM

Well, my father was born (a full term baby) six months after my grandparents married. But as my mother used to say, "The first can come anytime and the rest take nine months."

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 05:48 PM

My parents were married February 6th and I arrived April 13th the same year.

My father's mother did not approve of the marriage, and did not give her consent to it, and my father would not go ahead without it.

He was in his mid 30s at the time, but she was a formidable woman.

I don't know why she changed her mind.

I never really got the chance to ask as my parents always pretended that they were married the previous year.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: fumblefingers
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 09:23 PM

Rumncoke: My parents were married February 6th and I arrived April 13th the same year.


The first one can come anytime. The rest take 9 months.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Naemanson
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 09:33 PM

Ron Davies mention of his forebear who was the first woman doctor in Maryland reminds me of our own Grandma Keene. The story is that she was the first woman doctor in Connecticut. She raised all her children and then went off to Philadelphia to study medicine.

Sounds pretty respectable doesn't it? Unfortunately Keene is not a family name. Research indicates that there was a doctor who taught at the medical school and HIS name was Keene. No record of a marriage so far as I know...

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 09:57 PM

They're all dead... next question...

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 12:43 PM

We have a stunning photograph of Great Grandfather Leopold Ipcar on the stage, in his robes as master of ceremonies, somewhere in Eastern Europe. Working in the theatre is generally not considered a respectable occupation but we have few other details of father's grandfather.

My mother's parents met in Paris in the early 1900's as art students; not only did they become enthralled with one another but became advocates and well known leaders of Modern Art. They were not considered respectable till half a century had passed, and couldn't have cared less!

Cheerily,
Charley Ignoble

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 02:55 PM

Well I haven't found much that was questionable.

My Great-Grandfather drank himself to death, and the maternal great-great-grandfather ended in the poor house due to drink.
But that was a feature of the times and the cause of the temperance movement. Maternal grand & great grand fathers both signed the pledge.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,Mike in DC
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 03:13 PM

I have a great, great grandfather who was the first person convicted of manslaughter in Rush County, Indiana. He was a Justice of the Peace at the time, but I think his political career sort of fizzled after that.

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 07:24 PM

Then again, per my DNA ancestry thing, I'm related to Otzi the Iceman!

Famous relatives include the Mayflower Madam (on Dad's side) and (on Mom's side) the guy who heard the dog bark in the OJSimpson trial (and later ghost-wrote If I Did It)...

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: DougR
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 08:22 PM

Rapaire: In your earlier post you did not include Adolph Hitler in the group, only Himmler. Can we assume ...ah ...ugh ...gee, I just can't ask. :>)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 08:39 PM

My family's so respectable that I look like the height of disreputability beside the rest of 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 08:41 PM

All of my ancestors were farmers and fishermen, back to the beginning of all records. So, yes - highly respectable.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,Bee
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 09:07 PM

Mine have been either respectable or very good at concealing their perfidy, at least on my paternal side, which I know most about: a long line of blacksmiths, teachers, farmers and tailors, with a surprising number of doctors pre-1850. They are traceable, faintly, back to their leaving Scotland for France in the 1050s or so. They returned en masse in the 1300s some time. It wasn't religion, since they promptly divvied themselves up between a catholic clan and a protestant clan. They were often referred to as 'doctors to such and such a lord'.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 11:10 PM

Frankly, DougR, he was far to declasse for my lot. Nyahkultura, as the Russians say. He was just a social climber, a noveau riche, a failed artist who wanted to make good and failed. Whenever we saw him we cut him dead, socially speaking. And those were the members of my family employed as pimps and sociopaths....

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: alanabit
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 04:30 AM

My Dad (bless him) quite deliberately drank himself to death after my mother died. His great grandfather was a mysterious tramp, who disappeared for long periods and occasionally turned up for a few days. Various parts of my ancestry are tricky to trace, because the births, marriages and deaths registers do not always correspond with the passing on of DNA... I guess it all adds up to a suitable background for a busker. Oh, even less respectable, one of my ancestors was a musician! Another relative of my Dad's was a headmaster, and my Dad had a hard time living down the shame... My maternal grandfather was one of two foundlings raised by a parson. All in all I would say our claims of blue blood are well buggered.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Brakn
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 05:05 AM

I've been doing family trees for about the last 30 years.

My mother's family tree can be found here.

Didn't get very far with my father's side because he came to England with someone else's birth certificate. I think his eldest sister was really his mother. Can't find out now because they all took it to the grave.

Joe Coburn, who was heavyweight bareknuckles champion of America is supposed to be related though I can't get the connection. See here.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 08:47 AM

And we never spoke to or about "Fatso" Goering. Not after The Incident at the party at Great-Aunt Trudy's schloss, where he became soooooo drunk and insisted upon showing his "giant propeller" to everyone in the drawing room. NONE of Those Sorts were related by blood, marriage, or even bar sinister.

We might have sold dope to children and buggered the pigs, but we DO have our standards!

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 08:49 AM

My father was hung for sheep-stealing,
My mother was burnt as a witch;
My sisters reside in the whorehouse,
And myself, I'm a son of a bitch!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: theleveller
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 09:58 AM

It also appears that another grandfather was turned down when he applied for the job of public hangman of Hull.

Wonder what went on at the interview!

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,bullshi**er
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 10:10 AM

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great cousin 25 times removed was a hand maiden for the Queen of Sheeba, so I understand.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: theleveller
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 10:32 AM

Interesting that, BS. Which side of the family was that, the Bull or the other?

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 10:47 AM

Since the early 1700's, apart from babies appearing before or very shortly after marriage (hey, it was the custom to see if the woman was fertile - sort of like trying out a mattress before you buy the bed), we're a terribly respectable lot... not a deserter, defaulter or debtor amongst them. Good solid farming stock until my paternal grandmother who refused to name the father of her child, my father, ever. It's possible she never even knew it - she was in service to the 'big house' when she got pregnant and could just as easily have been a bed warmer to the lord as his butler.

Even the one who went to Australia went of her own accord (and on her own!) rather than being transported.

Haven't managed to get farther back than the early 1700's yet... but I live in hope.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 01:13 PM

Hope, Kansas or Hope, Arkansas? The latter was the boyhood home of W. J. Clinton, a recent US politician.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 02:03 PM

Hmmm. Mine, I guess, is reasonably respectable (whatever that means), although a great grandfather returned to Germany in 1915 to be on the same side as Kaiser Bill. (He actually never made it back -- he died on shipboard.)

I come from a long line of German fishermen and farmers -- most of whom ended up farming in Wisconsin. (Or, seasonally, cooking in lumber camps, moving houses all over the upper Midwest, working as a lumberjack or carpenter, etc.) One ancestor, though, was a dye chemist and made some major major discovery and invented a new dye or process but for some reason didn't get any financial advantage from it.

When I married my first husband I was given explicit orders not to trace the family tree. Evidently the Italian side of his family stole a dukedom in the 13th century and had to buy their way into the Church and the other side of the family got thrown out of England and kicked out of Scotland and ended up in Kentucky where they turned into a passel of horsethieves and moonshiners.

(Actually sounds a lot more interesting than MY family!)

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Muswell Hillbilly
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 02:46 PM

our family has never claimed to be respectable, and never will either

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: DougR
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 02:55 PM

Rapaire: you can be a funny guy at times.
DougR

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: theleveller
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 03:47 PM

Ah, the old ones are still the best.

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Muswell Hillbilly
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 03:49 PM

Or as my brother in law is wont to say, "if you haven't had at least one ancestor hanged for something or other your family simply isn't respectable!"

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: GUEST,Cats
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 04:57 AM

With a grandmother who spent time in Holloway prison on hunger strike [suffragette] and a great great aunt on the music hall stage... not a chance of me being respectable!

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 05:08 PM

Does that include an ancestor who was well hung?

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Jul 08 - 05:17 AM

My mother warned me not to look!

Subject: RE: BS: How respectable is your family?
From: Celtaddict
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 12:05 AM

My mother's father's father was a railroad man, and he ran away with a barmaid named Gertie. (That sounds like a song to me.) His three young sons never saw him again, but for years after, from time to time his wife would receive a letter saying somebody had seen him somewhere.