Weird/unusual stories about your family’s history?

[JuniperW]

OK, this thread kinda came out of nowhere, but I just found out something super strange about my mum’s side of the family — and I was wondering if any of you also have anything weird or confusing to share about your family, heritage, etc.
The something in question is a court case filed against my great grandfather for illegally selling horses. According to my late grandfather, he had fought in the battle of Stalingrad and lost some of his fingers and toes. Except that he’d been summoned to court during Stalingrad, so he couldn’t have been present there. Which makes the missing digits even more bizarre. So many things don’t add up, and he wasn’t exactly sane after he returned to Germany from a Soviet POW camp. He must’ve been captured somehow, then, but we’re not sure when.

 

[Hogo]

My grandparents on my Dad's side of the family had the original Colonel Sanders at their wedding. And yes, they were in Kentucky.

 

[Jaredthefox92]

Tell me you have heard this one before, my grandmother claims we're Cherokee related. I think she's nuts.

 

[the sleepiest kitty]

Tell me you have heard this one before, my grandmother claims we're Cherokee related. I think she's nuts.

My mom tells me we're related to the "Chiricahua Apache"

 

[The_biscuits_532]

Tell me you have heard this one before, my grandmother claims we're Cherokee related. I think she's nuts.

Apparently that's incredibly common for people in the Deep South to claim

Anyway

Dad's family: Idk when exactly we split from the clan that shares our name (Scotland woooooo) but there's some weird shit there. Apparently they used to be super involved with the Templar and Stonemasons, and one is thought to possibly have reached North America before Columbus.

Stepdad's family: More of a coincidence but I traced them back around 400 years and they originated from, oddly enough, the town in Derbyshire I graduated from high school in. Despite the fact he's from Southern Scotland, and his parents are from I think Essex?

 

[MaelstromEyre]

Not super unusual, I guess, but my great aunt was born on the boat from Europe. That side of the family is Polish and fled the country prior to WW2.

 

[AniwayasSong]

OK, this thread kinda came out of nowhere, but I just found out something super strange about my mum’s side of the family — and I was wondering if any of you also have anything weird or confusing to share about your family, heritage, etc.
The something in question is a court case filed against my great grandfather for illegally selling horses. According to my late grandfather, he had fought in the battle of Stalingrad and lost some of his fingers and toes. Except that he’d been summoned to court during Stalingrad, so he couldn’t have been present there. Which makes the missing digits even more bizarre. So many things don’t add up, and he wasn’t exactly sane after he returned to Germany from a Soviet POW camp. He must’ve been captured somehow, then, but we’re not sure when.

heh heh heh
Momma's lineage hails from Ireland, and the not-secret story that was always bantered around at our irregular family get-togethers with her kin always included the story of great-grandda fleeing Ireland (the Cork region), for being a horse thief, and he was going to be hung if caught! (of course, he didn't continue that career once he landed in the States!).
With Papa, the only semi-unusual tale involved him and the A.I.M. movement/incident, but I won't say much about that due to the legal ramifications. Papa's long gone so in no danger of being arrested/persecuted now, but some skeletons really should be left in the proverbial closet.

 

[The_biscuits_532]

Just found out today, my Step-Great-Grandfather Leonid was apparently a Red Army expert on Alpine Warfare.

Apparently he was kind of an abusive prick and the second WW2 ended my Step-Great-Grandmother Yevgenia, a naval engineer from Makhachkala, divorced him because she didn't want to deal with his BS.

 

[OllieTheOtter]

Found out recently that lots of my ancestors were probbably pretty queer.

Lots of people of the same sex in my family history 'lived together' and never married the opposite sex in their lives, making my family and i conclude that most of them were pretty homo, just hiding it due to it not being socially accepted then.

Other than that, my family history is pretty boring, English atleast 8 Generations back, and that only changing now with my sister living in Italy, my brother moving to China and me hoping to go to university abroad, hopefully in Canada.

 

[Yastreb]

My great-great-great-grandfather was a peasant who cleared so much new field area from wilderness that he got a medal from the emperor of Russia.

 

[JaceyOnes]

We're related to a famous scientist.

Georg Ohm - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Frank Gulotta]

My grandma once waited for hours for a gunfight as guerilla fighters were planning to ambush a convoy of Germans during WW2, before she got bored and left. She also saw a bus burnt to a crisp, with just the dead chauffeur at his post, hands still on the stirring wheel

 

[contemplationistwolf]

My grandfather was forcefully drafted to be a gulag guard, one of the stories he recalled was:
At one point, when he and his buddies were in a restaurant, they were asked to investigate some patrons who were trying to pay the owner with a golden wedding ring. The problem was: the severed finger of the previous owner was still attached ... People regularly disappeared there ...
That probably just covers the surface of his experiences though, he came back a traumatized alcoholic from all that and it's only in the last decade that he started to recover. He also mentioned how there were names of 32 of his relatives in a recently built memorial for victims of communism.

 

[aomagrat]

I never met my grandfather from my father's side. Apparently he was not a good person. He was run off long before I was born. No one spoke of him much. From what I managed to overhear, he was a drunk who beat my grandmother. My dad told me once that his father was the reason he refused to drink alcohol. Rumor had it he burned school buses during desegregation. I'm kind of glad I never knew him. I don't even know his name.

 

[Kit H. Ruppell]

One of my paternal great-great-uncles or great-grandfathers (I forget which) lived on a farm in Minnesota. One night in the famously cold winter, he was driving a sleigh home through the woods in a snowstorm. Wolves were howling, snow was blowing around, generally a bad time for human and horse alike. By the time he had made it back, he had suffered severe frostbite to his lower leg, which had to be amputated. Ever handy and inventive, he fashioned his own prosthetic leg from wood.

 

[Furrium]

Mom once told me that our family has Estonian roots. That's all I remember.

 

[The_biscuits_532]

My stepgrandfather Vladimir used to be one of those violin dudes on cruise ships. He went all over the world doing that.

 

[Beepsi]

Apparently my Mother's Grandma's Grandma was a cook in the Whitehouse of the United States; which would explain why she was very persistent with table manners.

 

[JaceyOnes]

One of my paternal great-great-uncles or great-grandfathers (I forget which) lived on a farm in Minnesota. One night in the famously cold winter, he was driving a sleigh home through the woods in a snowstorm. Wolves were howling, snow was blowing around, generally a bad time for human and horse alike. By the time he had made it back, he had suffered severe frostbite to his lower leg, which had to be amputated. Ever handy and inventive, he fashioned his own prosthetic leg from wood.

wait a minute, i've heard this same story from a friend of mine who has family in Ontario.

did your relative happen to know some farmers in the Douglas family?

 

[Kit H. Ruppell]

wait a minute, i've heard this same story from a friend of mine who has family in Ontario.

did your relative happen to know some farmers in the Douglas family?

Doesn't ring a bell.