discovering family history

My great grandmother was allegedly the first divorced woman in Kentucky.

Easy joke there, but being from Arkansas, I shouldn't be the one to make it.

I've got Russian Jews on one side too (well, one at least, who met a Jewish French woman on the boat over). They arrived late in the 19th century.

I never thought about them escaping anything though. Just pictured him laying in his bedroom in ‎куда, looking up at the walls affixed with postcards of Memphis, Tennessee, and photographs of unborn blues singers.

my paternal lineage traces back to a guy who came over to america from england in 1638 which is kind of cool idk

also i have an ancestor on that side who was a privateer hired by the US to raid european ships, that branch of the family maintains their old homestead in connecticut and i got to visit it one time and they have the letter/contract signed by the president at the time (im blanking on whether it was jefferson or madison but one of those two) authorizing him to use force on british ships or w/e. i thought it was neat.

I'm related somewhat directly to Daniel Webster and somewhat less directly to Noah Webster. I have a copy of our family's genealogy but I still haven't done the work of figuring out how many "great"s there are between us.

An ex-girlfriend had a story about her great-grandparents. Typical life in the country, I guess. Open door, kids bringing home friends for dinner or going to their house. Great-grandfather comes out of the fields one day for supper and his tweenage daughter has met a new girl at school and brings her home to meet everyone.

You see where this is going. Great-grandfather and new girl from school apparently hit it off, she gets pregnant, family life is ruined in scandal, and nine months later, my ex's grandmother is born.

I always thought it was a good story just because here we are in the 21st Century with that descendants of that couple doing well and living life, all thanks to that horrible end-all, be-all scandal of 1920.

Wow...had to read this three times. I kept picturing a great-grandfather type emerging from the fields instead of a younger fellow.

My grandmother's cousin was a wealthy girl who was really into the arts in Mexico. She got married, had a little boy...kept falling in love and having affairs. Finally after two bouts of unrequited love she shot herself at the alter of Notre Dame de Paris in 1931. Recently my cousins have all been claiming her and attending these openings and dedications in Mexico City in honor of her. I still haven't figured out exactly what she did, I have never seen her art. I think she did a lot of schmoozing. Growing up I was told she was a communist, really promiscuous and depressed.

I kind of love that story about the scandal and then the point about all the descendants who are just FINE. Really a much happier story than many...

I apologize for being ambiguous up there, but hey, there are still Confederate war widows running around so it's not that crazy, I guess.

hey, if people were interested in the report about my great-grandfather:

http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/mississippi/samuel-bacon/

Wow, djp, thank you for sharing that.

heartrending. inspires horror & outrage but also great admiration for the man your greatgrandfather was.