BS: How respectable is your family?

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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!