Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Family secrets?

Have a cousin (on my dad's side) that knocked up a preachers daughter behind the church building in Tulsa OK.

both my grandfathers made moonshine.
Mom's Dad got caught and served a little time back in the 30s.
He didn't stop making it though until around the late 40s best I can understand.

Dad's Dad didn't get caught. He gave up making shine when a new preacher came to town and got his kids involved in church.
Then, he started working on him. My grandfather (Pap to me, Peck to all the community) become a Christian and gave up the shine business.
When I was 15, my friend and I had been fishing a lot of farm ponds and after leaving Pap's house, we traveled the back gravel road.
I saw 3 men standing by a pickup with the hood up in front of an old abandoned home that was all grown up around it.
We stopped and asked if we could help. Jumped the truck off.
Got to talking and they asked who I was. I said "I'm Peck's grandson."
He said, "Boy, you're pappy made the best shine in the state. Have a drink with us."
He pulled out a bottle of Vodka and poured a few fingers of it in a glass for each of us.
My 1st drink of Vodka. Didn't like it, but finished it to be polite.
After that, we got in my truck and headed to the next farm pond.

I’d say that’s obvious.

LOL

Uncle was a jazz musician & drug dealer, introduced weed to Louis Armstrong and others in the jazz community back in the 30's.
There's a book about him, Really the Blues.

Got a great x? Granfather from way back that came to the states in the late 1800's. Was a Belgian cavalry officer busted for shooting rabbits on the kings land. Was bail to the US or face consequences. He came over, never learned English. Apparently was very wealthy for the time.

I always think that when I see a dude with a shaved head, ,,,what is he hiding??

Confederates, moonshiners and horse thieves. Most of them moved to Arkansas after jail time or so my maternal grandfather told me. He didn't like pops family.....

Have 3 sons. Oldest is 46. Has always been in ex's pocket. Just confirmed I am not his biological father. Ex will never admit it though. About all the scandal here.

Found out at my mom’s wake that dad worked as muscle collecting for a numbers operation run out of grandparents store.

Family goetta recipe. Don't even ask!

I was 40 before I learned my father had a whole different life with another women while married to my mom when I was a kid. We haven't talked since. No half brothers and sisters to my knowledge though from it....

The great scandal in our family was my grandfather. Born in 1872, he lived just a shade on the wrong side of the law, probably the guy they made the movie “Unforgiven” from.

He was in a card game and got in a fight with a guy and the guy pulled a knife on grampa, and he took it from him and stabbed him with it. The guy died and they charged my grampa with second degree manslaughter and he went to prison in Deerlodge, Montana for several years.

The story was told to all the family that grampa was at college in Deerlodge. Years later a bunch of the family came back to Montana and went to Deerlodge to see the college where grampa went to school. It was a shock to them when they found no college in Deerlodge, just a prison.


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There's a Booth family in town that I'm related to, not too distantly. They're directly related to that same Booth.

There's an old family legend that we have some Cherokee blood in us. If true, I'd be 1/32. That's obviously not enough to be a tribal member and give me Oklahoma hunting rights. For years, it was a disgrace to be a breed and it was kept secret that such a marriage had occurred. Then, maybe 15 years ago, my brother was doing some genealogy on the family and discovered some evidence, totally unprovable, that the Cherokee might in fact be Freedman Cherokee. If so, that would be a super disgrace. You certainly didn't want THAT in the family line.
5 or so years ago, I had a DNA test and it showed 0% of either Indian or black in me. Seems that the family legend is just that - legend.

In case you don't know about the Freedman Cherokee...The Cherokee owned black slaves. When they were displaced and forced to move to the Indian territories in the 1830's to 50's, they were allowed to take their slaves with them. After the Civil War, when the slaves were freed, they became known as the Freedmen Cherokee. They made up about 15% of the total Cherokee population. They wanted to be members of the tribe which caused no end to the infighting in the tribe about it. They've been sometimes in, sometimes out for the last 150 years. The dispute has involved congress and the US courts for years. Currently a court ruling has them in the tribe but there's a dispute about the words 'by blood' in the Cherokee constitution that separates them.

When my Grandpa went broke during the depression, him and his buddies stole one of those kit homes form a parked train and set it up in the woods.

That was the house my dad grew up in.

Or their real name.

Bruce Davis?

You might want to reconsider that story, a house isn’t something you just put into a shopping cart and head to the woods.

I almost included in my comment that some friends from my home area are related to Booth. Her maiden name is even Booth. Funny enough, my wife claims to be distantly related to Lincoln.

(Edited to say that I didn't add this info in an effort at one-upsmanship.)

My Dad was a traveling salesman! Take it from there.