Week 8 (February 18-24): Family Photo

Family Photo

So.  I do happen to have some great family photos-  I'll start with my direct family-  because the outfits have so much to say: 

I'm not sure of the year on the above photo.  MB looks to be about 3-  that would make it 1964 or so.

Clearly later than the previous photo.  Patty, with the lovely chip bowl on her heard.  Mom wearing the standard Easter CAKE on her head... and I have the infamous veiled hat that I BEGGED Aunt Lise to buy for me and then proceeded to get slapped in church for pulling the veil down over my eyes, pretending to be some mysterious widow.  (True story).

Another FAMOUS family photo-  Unfortunately, I can only identify ONE man and ONE woman in the photo-  this, of course, lead to a very funny story!

While in college (in 1977) we hung all sorts of crazy things on the walls in our off-campus house-  

It was a rental with 7 girls living upstairs and 6 guys living downstairs.  We hung anything and everything, including a duck stolen off someone's yard - and then later turned into a phone - but I digress ...  drawings that we created, newspaper articles that related to nothing at all... college event flyers  AND THIS PHOTO.  Someone found it behind the couch and so it was stapled right onto the wall... and we called them our house grandparents.  Of course, NO ONE had a clue who these mystery people were.

One day when my sister came to visit, she was admiring the wall art and exclaimed, "Why is this picture of Uncle Joe and Aunt Katherine hanging on your wall?"  

WHAT??

I took a closer look.. and what do you know???  The man on the left is Uncle Joe (a cigar-smoking man married to my Grandfather's sister.. and that is honestly ALL I can say about him) and Aunt Katherine is on the far right.   It hung on the wall for two years- and we made fun of these "unknown" people all that time... come to find out -  they were MY relatives!  It still gives me a chuckle.

Week 7 (February 11-17): Love

Love

I guess I have to think about this one.  I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone here today, catching up on Week 6.  I don't know that I have a Love Story.

Week 6 (February 4-10): Surprise

Surprise!

Sorry to be late with this one.  I THOUGHT I had an idea, but since "the old aunts" prepared a bunch of our paternal history-  and I eventually was in touch with someone on the maternal side who prepared that family history, I think I knew a lot of basics already.

There was one surprise that I keep finding and losing - every time I get a new computer.   I finally found a few additional details, but have never found the full-on horror story.

Apparently, our Grandfather's brother was a bit of a lady's man.   There was one particular person that I seemed to find a few different articles about so I've included them below.   Basically (between wives  -  I said a lady's man, not a cheater lol) there was one woman with whom he was apparently love-stricken-  and SHE was married.

At one point our great uncle was chased through Hoboken and jumped off a cliff to escape the husband of his paramour. (that's documented in the article to the right)... but the awful surprise is the story with no documentation -  where at this same person's home, someone was shot and killed.  Darn, I hope I someday come across the details... anyway... SURPRISE! hahaha.   

OK...  this IS A LIVE document-  and searching for the "chased through Hoboken" article, I came across the shooting article!  Sadly, it dealt with ... well, dear reader of blogs, you can read it below.  "Old Uncle Chris" was NOT directly involved, but his paramour was the one shot and killed-  in front of her kids - now I'm sorry I laughed.

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And then there's the one about the fortune teller:

OH MY.  It must have been difficult being Christian's brother, but Grandpa pulled it off!  I'm thinking maybe this is why we NEVER heard any stories about this guy.

Week 5 (January 29-February 4): At the Library

At the Library

Seriously?  I have nothing.

When I first moved from North Jersey to the Jersey shore, I immediately joined the library-  and realized that Ancestry was FREE if you went to the physical library.  I did that for a while-  and advanced a bit in my findings, but it was more than 10 years ago.

I've had a paid subscription off and on for the last little while.  But there were no librarians in the family that I have come across in my research.

I worked at a library for 5 years- but as I said above...

Seriously, I have nothing.