Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Truths That Trickle Out
When I was a child, I lived in the same small community where my dad was raised. The people I called “Grandpa and Grandma” were not his real parents; I knew because we had different last names. Also, every year on Memorial Day, we’d visit the cemetery and put flowers on the graves of his actual mother and father. My dad was orphaned by age 8 and was lucky enough to be taken into the family of a young couple who were his relatives.
However, as the years went by, and my sisters and brothers and I grew into adults, some previously unspoken events were gradually made known to us, bit by bit. Once, I was recounting parts of this to a friend, and my (then) teenaged children asked if this tale was a book that I’d read. I replied, “No, it’s your family history.”
It involves a baby being born to a girl who wasn’t married to the boy who was the father. However, the boy wasn’t allowed to marry this girl, so the baby daughter was raised by her grandmother as a sibling to the mother. A few years later, the mom/girl was married to another fellow and this child continued her life as a little sister and was never mentioned in any other context. Not too unusual for the times: the early 1900s.
So that girl grew up and married a fellow in their small town. She gave birth to three children–my aunt, my dad, my uncle. Then, when my father was just six years old, his mom died in a rather traumatic way. She lost her balance and fell down the stairs, landing unconscious on the floor, unable to breathe because of the large swollen growth in her neck that blocked her throat. My dad would tell me this story one time, while we were milking cows. He said how he tried to move her, but he was too little. So, he ran to the neighbors (they lived in town) but his mother was dead when they returned.
My sisters and I learned many things about our father’s life, but always one story at a time, and always when we were working together on the repetitive chores that a dairy farmer does, day after day. He told me how his grandfather moved in with his family after their mother passed away to help out with the children. Daddy knew that his widowed father drank quite a bit. He also knew that his father and one of his uncles had a stash of alcohol. This was only of note because it was during the period of the United States Prohibition (1920-1933).
It was never clear to me if they made their booze, or if they just were the people who sold it for the brewers. I don’t even know what kind of alcohol it was. I knew almost nothing about drinking because my family (and everyone I knew in my hometown) belonged to the Mormon Church. [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] Yes, even my dad’s grandfather who moved in to help care for the motherless children had come out to the West from Pennsylvania as a three-year-old. He was carried in a hand-cart pulled by his parents across the states/territories of Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to their ultimate destination of Utah. My grandfather came up to Wyoming in his late teens to trap beaver. He later brought his wife and family from northern Utah when other Mormon families came to that little mountain valley to live.
It was his sons who made the “hooch” and after my father’s mom died, I guess that his dad would pilfer from the stash and drank quite a bit. Well, apparently the brother who was the partner in this business was upset that someone was stealing from them. He put strychnine in a couple of the bottles. Two years after my father lost his mother, his father died from drinking the poisoned moonshine. (Umm…no one was arrested or held accountable. I don’t know who else knew about the poison besides my dad.)
Again, my sisters and I only heard these stories, bit by bit, when we were working with our dad. He didn’t sit us down and recount his astonishingly tragic childhood all at once. I don’t even know what motivated him to tell us these bits and pieces of his life story when he did open up and explain an event. All I know is that I am so grateful that we were together often enough doing our farm work that he would have the opportunity to let us in on the totally different family situation than we, his children, were privileged to have.
To add to the trauma of being orphaned through his dad’s death, the 74-year-old grandfather died the very next day! So, there they were…three children ages 6, 8 and 10. The woman I always called “Grandma” told me that when she heard of the two men passing away, she said to her husband of three years, “We should go get one of your sister’s children. We could take that middle boy.” So, they did, because my father’s mom had been the “big sister” to my “Grandpa” when he was growing up in their very large family. I don’t know when everyone became aware of the actual relationships…it was never talked about when I was little.
As the years have gone by, and the people who were the original characters in this dramatic story have died, my sisters and I have discussed all the bits and pieces that Daddy let us know. We’ve combined the whole thing into a narrative that describes a world and time that was only one generation previous to our lives. We are amazed at the love-filled home that our parents gave us. We realize the absolute security we felt in our family life, and recognize the incredible blessing that our dad got when the lady we called Grandma decided to take him into her home and love him like her own child. We know that our mother’s upbringing, and total love and joy she brought to their marriage, gave our dad the security he needed to know that life could be good.
Sometimes the “truth” just needs a few generations to mellow and relax before it can be all revealed. And, maybe for some families, it can’t ever be told. I’m glad I learned my history.
This is the grandfather who trapped beaver,
then moved in with his son to help with the mother-less grandchildren.
A fascinating family history. Thanks, @cowgirl!
Cow girl you should write a book about this. Love family history stuff. Still trying to get pieces from relatives about the long ago. One recent incident really hit home. Idiots in Charlottesville torn down the Lewis & Clark statutes. And Sacagawea’s. She was actually a great aunt seven or eight generations ago. Steven Ambrose wrote about the great expedition. Sacagawea was married to a French fur trapper (Charbono) who was worthless on the expedition to the Pacific. His brother married an Osage. My ancestors. She did a hell of a job in 1803. Not sure any other statutes of her in the U.S.
Sacagawea is one of my favorite heroines! I couldn’t believe it when I heard about the statue. I was born in a town that borders the Wind River reservation in Wyoming and there is some history that says she is buried there on that reservation. There is conflicting info about that. However, she was a certified heroine! Without her, Lewis and Clark could never have been successful. Do you know the story about her finding her brother Cameahwait after all their years of separation?
Why in the world did the idiots get rid of her statue? I saw a photo of the statue and she was represented on her knee, looking at the ground. Probably because she was looking for tracks or food or some other thing that enable the progress of those explorers. It is an example to me of the unbelievable ignorance of the stupid people who had the statue removed.
I didn’t realize that Charbonneau had a brother also married to a Native American woman. And that is very cool that you’re a relative! I taught my students about Sacagawea every year and read a book about her life aloud.
What a read!
I started a FB group for relatives on my mother’s side; mostly in the UK, but also the States, Canada, Australia. My mother was the youngest of 11 and there’s hundreds of cousins, 2nd cousins, etc.
I recently got contacted by someone with my Mother’s maiden name. He was drinking at the pub and introduced himself to a cousin from my father’s side of the family. My cousin recognized the last name (fairly unusual) as my mother’s maiden name and asked if he was a relation. Guy didn’t know – he was aware of others that shared his last name, but didn’t know anything about his family tree.
So my cousin gave him my contact info and I got him in the group. Within a couple of days the mystery was unraveled. Amazing what a couple of bored women during lockdown can uncover.
His grandfather was the illegitimate son of one of my mother’s aunts; so his grandfather was one of my mother’s cousins. Anyone who was aware will have passed away long ago. But I can imagine my mother’s response if I could have inquired: It’s none of your business.
I think Ambrose’s book had it all. How she was kidnapped (by Comanches?) and sold to the Osages. My French fur trapping relatives wandered by at the right time.
When my sisters and I were adults, and we started looking into the whole family tree, we discovered that, as an old man, the real father of the baby who was given to grandmother to raise had acknowledged his paternity and included her as a child in his official family records with the church! So, since the people who could have been upset and personally embarrassed are all gone, we claim all of their offspring as our family now. We’ve talked to them, and showed them the records, and since we’ve all known each other our whole lives, we just smile and say “cousin” now! Seriously, the guy lived his whole life in the same small town as the rest of our relatives, but it couldn’t be said out loud!
There are statues of her in Astoria, OR, at Fort Clatsop, and on the capital grounds in Bismarck, ND. I guess we Westerners appreciate her more than those agitators in Charlottesville, VA.
Will check them both out when I retire in a year or two and start my coast to coast drive of all the cool places I never saw. Mount Rushmore, etc. We love Astoria and missed that statute on our one trip there many years ago. Will not miss it again.
A wonderful tale of a grafted family tree.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the July 2021 Group Writing Theme: “We Hold These Truths (or Fictions).” We have plenty of open days left, so stop by now, our schedule and sign-up sheet awaits.
Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.
I have an idea for a children’s book about a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Got it from Undaunted Courage, the Ambrose book.
Also one in the US Capitol.
Thanks Capt. Lived in D.C. for a spell but before this memorial. Will check them all out.
Cool family history connection.
I remember when Lake Sakakawea was being built. I went to school (1st and 2nd grade) with children of some of the construction workers. At that time it didn’t have that name, though. It was just called the Garrison Reservoir.
I also remember going out to see the site of some of the salvage archaeology that was being done before the area flooded, though I had zero understanding of what I was seeing at the time. I presume it was related to ancestors of the people who were forceably evicted from the area and relocated at New Town.
One story at a time is the best way to take it in, don’t you think?
This has been my experience as well. My brothers and sisters are blown away by how much I know about my dads childhood. The reason is because after dinner my dad and I would have a cup of coffee and a smoke.
How wonderful that you have family still to “remember” with you.
This is not an unusual circumstance, I know, but I am now the only member of my nuclear family left. My sister, who was older, was the one who had the best memory for family lore. How much I wish we had spent more time together hashing over these old stories and that I had been more conscientious in writing them down. Good for you!