BS: How respectable is your family?

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.