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Archiver > MDALLEGA > 2008-04 > 1209274875
From:
Subject: Re: [MDALLEGA] Living folks?
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:41:15 EDT
Hi Mary Ellen et al:
About the skeletons in the closet…
We understand some of the problems with offending folks, but we don’t see
how distorting the truth solves the problems… In the case you mentioned, if we
correctly followed your story, you are going to list in your records the son,
who you know to be the natural child of one sibling, as the adopted child –
natural parents unknown – of the second sibling? And let this inaccuracy
stand, forever?
In our family, one of our cousins gave us information about her and her
direct family, and also information about her siblings, including a brother that
had been married 4 times – in a Catholic family. The brother, who had been
ducking us himself, was apparently embarrassed by his marital track record, and
berated his sister, when she related to him what she had told us. Further,
he insisted, to her, that she “get the information back.” If this brother
could have his way, he would simply be deleted from all family references. Would
you do that? And pretend he didn’t exist?
In another situation we know about, a researcher spent a generation
researching her family, and then published a book about the family. She was the
oldest of four children, who were raised by parents whose parents owned a boarding
house. Her mother had married a German gentleman who was a boarder at the
house, and they went on to rear a large family. Much time and effort went into
researching the German connection, and as the first copies of the family book
were being reviewed by members of the family, one of the elderly aunts in
the family, who had watched all this work being done while it was a work in
progress, then spoke up and said, “well, dear, you realize he wasn’t your
father,” referring to the German fellow… It turns out, our author belatedly
learned, her mother had hooked up with a fellow down the street, and when she was
found to be with child, the lout (the author's father) abandoned her, and the
German gentleman stepped forward and offered her a respectable alternative.
Our author had written a family history that was accurate for her younger
siblings, but not for her. And her well-meaning aunt was an accomplice to the
crime for all the years the research was in progress.
In yet another family story, we met a cousin we felt we were related to, but
he insisted that the crucial connecting individual had died childless while
crossing the Ohio River, walking across a railroad trestle, thereby “erasing”
the two children we thought this man had, who provided a later connection
to our part of the family. We later learned the man who supposedly died on the
trestle had been alive and well, at least for a time, but had been divorced
by his wife, and she was embarrassed to own up to the divorce in his part of
the family, so she had made up the trestle story to explain his absence to
most of his family. The fellow was in fact in and out of what passed at the
time for a detox center for his alcoholism, and he managed to father two
children while sharing his time with the detox center and a TB sanitarium. His
paternal family never did learn what really happened to him, and when he died, of
TB, the wife and boys and his mother, moved out of the area, taking their
secret about the son with them. Most of his paternal family, to this day, think
he died in the Ohio river from a train accident.
We question the wiseness of much of the super-sensitivity we encounter to
the feelings of people who only know part of the true story, and we are
concerned about the distortions of the truth that are frequently involved in “
maintaining the story”..
Vince
In a message dated 4/26/2008 5:23:45 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
writes:
Mary Ellen,
Bravo--a wise and generous path to follow.
Mary Ellen Chambers <> wrote:
I don't know if there is a law, but I only share and request data on people
who have expired. I feel that posting our family history with all the
generations to date, may be an infringement on privacy that people may not desire
for many reasons. Therefore, what I send out, which is usually 3-5 generations,
all are long gone but they may have children, grandchildren, etc. still
alive. Therefore, I do have edited data.
For example, the family knew of an ancestor who was raised by his aunt as
her child. He was her brother's child. When we tracked his descendant and
requested data, the gentlemen said is grandfather was adopted so the family of his
g grandmother would be of no interest. We did not explain further since the
adoption was known but as they say, "the rest of the story" was not. People
had died but had kept their secret, so we honored it also. If we had told the
story within the first 3 generations and sent the data out, some people may
have been offended. It is not in the packet and won't be.
Jane Grabenstein wrote:
Hi - I have what may be a silly question, but are there are "rules" about
posting questions or information about living persons? I ask because I saw a
request and a reply this weekend about someone I know (went to school with her
kids, went to St. Pete's with them as well) who is very much still alive.
I realize that the person who asked may not know this, and most definitely
asked for pure and honest reasons, but I do worry about privacy.
Thanks, Jane
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