Who's going first? LOL

My Great Grandfather made moonshine in OK during the Depression. Never got caught.

none here......

None I'm owning up to.

Some rumors on my exs side about her grandpa and how he adopted his brothers bastard kid.

His wife ruined the kid, almost as if it was revenge. And he let her. Hmmmmmm.

No secrets i know of on my side. Do have some loser alcoholics back some on my grandmas branch.

Most here won't list their last name.

I've heard of first cousins being married.........................................

Moms side was indians dads was poor white trash so......

Half of the local Mennonites are married to their first cousins.

I asked one why. He said they had a saying.........closer the kin, the better it goes in.

"We're descended from thieves and whores."

friend of mine was an admin clerk for a shrink for a year or so where we grew up. He told me that he couldnt disclose any names, but a fair amount of the kids we grew up that had money and were popular in school had some horrible family secrets and not everything was it appeared to be in high school....

Meh, mostly stuff about running booze during prohibition, smuggling gold out of Mexico and Ed Gien doing odd jobs/work for us.

Well now it wouldn't be a secret if I told someone!

Nothin' says lovin' like f-in' a cousin...

So secret, they won't tell me!

"I could tell ya- - - -but then I'd have to shoot ya"!

Well my Mother's Father was a gypo and a horse trader.

I can not think of much more shameful than that. I would rather be descended from a used car salesman.

I guess we’re boring

None of my kids or my sister have “nappy roots”

Do you have any odd-looking table lamps? 🤔

An ancestor on my father's side was a judge for the Salem Witch Trials.

Nope

We got a woo-woo injun in the woodpile. I need to get me one of them bitchin vests with the leather fringes and wear it to church with a lot of turqoise

After being told all my life I was English/Irish/ German I found out I'm mostly Scandinavian, Irish, and Spanish/Portuguese. Maybe I was adopted. Or stolen from Basques.
Had a great uncle who rode with Teddy.
Nothing real scandalous I'd share.

Great grandparents had the same last name. It’s not a common name either.

Prison? Two wives at the same time? Tore the tag off the mattress?

Claude Dallas worked for me. Did some odd jobs and built the nice fence around my property when I lived in Nevada. He was actually pretty easy to get along with considering his reputation.
Paul B.

Oh man do I have a doozy of a family secret. I'm pretty ashamed of it but I kinda need to get it off my chest.

I've got an Aunt that thinks Q is real and believes everything he says.

So embarrassing.

My wife did a court search of convictions and hit my families names.
JFC……my cousins are some serious criminals. Mostly drugs and drug related with a smattering of DUI’s.

Jag’s your Aunt?!

All my family is addicted to Seaweed...

We're seeking kelp.

I'm really a nice guy.
There. It's out.

I win. One of my first cousins was Charles Manson’s “right hand man “.

My Grandma was the church organist for probably 20 years. Does that count?

My paternal grandparents (Italian immigrants) had the same surname too. The name is far from common as well.

My grandpa and his brother played for the Toledo Mudhens about a hundred years ago. Not really a secret or juicy, but it's all I can think of right now.

My biological mother recently told me I'm Irish.

tip of the hat

I have a crazy Aunt. Who....... is a liberal.
Oh, the shame!

Not too many church people here or this thread would be alot more interesting! LOL

wife' s great great (somethin) grandfather was a Confederate
General
bout it

My Grandfather was addicted to the Hokey Pokey.

But he turned himself around.

Great grandmother wayyy back, found she was pregnant and they had two little ones and no money and husband had died of a heart attack...she went and lifted the washing machine to exert herself until she eventually caused a miscarriage.

Times must have been damn tough because I knew her to be a warm loving soul when I came along by the 80s

Don’t know much about mine, except grandma liked Grand Prize beer and Winston cigarettes.

I can't say until the statute of limitations runs out.

G23

It was a family secret back in the day, not now of course. My Aunt Alice married Will James, cowboy author, artist etc. in 1920. Later we learned he had served a little over a year in the Nevada State Pen for rustling.

My Grandpap made moonshine because he liked the easy money and he liked to drink it. He got caught three times, went to jail first & second time did a total of about 90 days in county lock up. Third time he jumped bail went to Hamilton, Ohio, left Big Hill, Kentucky behind. He sent for my Grandma, Mom and uncle after he got a job and a paycheck.
Went to work for Frigidaire making fidges and freezers.
Last name Parker, he told me we were related to Bonnie Parker of Bonnie & Clyde. His Dad [my great granddad] told him of her Dad leaving Big Hill, KY. in a covered wagon.

Great uncle on my fathers side involved in a shootout with prohibition agents in Detroit, made it back to Canada. Wouldn't come to my wedding fifty years later because the statues of limitations haddenent ran out

My mother does genealogy and has really dug up some detailed stuff going way back. There were two murderers on my dad's mom's side of the family. The one was a coal miner that shot a man in the back and killed him for taking one of his coal cart claim tags and hanging it on his claim hook. He died in the state penitentiary. The other was a woman that poisoned her husband. Can't remember the outcome to that one.

Just heard one yesterday, but I promised not to tell.

Thought of another one - I'm related via marriage to Dr. Samuel Mudd, the Dr. who treated Booth after he shot Lincoln.

Great-grandfather was a senator in the Cherokee government and also a delegate sent to Washington.

The real dirt stays under the carpet.

Mine too. But not in OK.
My Grandmother met my Pap when he came to buy hooch.
Her family talked about his drinking for years.
Bunch of Fűking hypocrites, along with a long list of bad stuff.
Mom's side of the family.
I like to think I'm like Dad's.
They are boring. Good folks usually are.


Oh, a cousin on Paps side was one of the nine who got out of Que Creek mine as it flooded.
Not the famous 9.
He waded cold water up to his neck trying to get out.
Barely made it.

My brother makes mooshine. Never got caught. Yet.

Moms side had some real scoundrels. Rapists. Thieves.

As early as 1854 there were O’Birdys living in Ireland outside of Queenstown (now called Cobh, near Cork) in a notorious sailors’ dive euphemistically referred to by the locals as “Holy Ground”.

Early 1900’s my Great-Granddad and his mother and siblings returned to Holy Ground from Brooklyn after his father was murdered on a job site by a Sicilian, the accounts say they returned to Holy Ground “where there were numerous aunts and uncles”.

Note, they didn’t just live near Holy Ground, but in a tenement right in the middle, just off the pier. Seems sorta odd, all their descendants that I know of are all on the strait and narrow now.

Great-grandad and his brother both joined the Merchant Marine, his brother was Mentioned in Dispatches after he fell at Gallipoli. Great-grandad messed up his lungs working as a salvage diver in the Caribbean but went back to Brooklyn and fathered nine kids.,

Not shady, but interesting. My Grandfather on my Mom's side was a film distributor in the Twin Cities up until the mid 50's when he died. He was good friends with Walt Disney.

Had an uncle, Dad’s older brother, married four times by the age of 30. This was in 1974.
He admitted to loving wine, women and song.
The women loved him so much that two of them named their kids after him. Real character.

I know of any so I guess they kept them pretty good.

GeezUS is this the first Thread The Burning Bush ain’t going to make Comment ..
Give those Skeletons Up ..
We’re paying Attention.. Trump is Too..

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.


[/quote]

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.

My mom's gone now, so I can't confirm it, but I remember overhearing a comment when I was a pre-teen that a white hood and cloak was found among my paternal great-grandpa's effects. He passed in the early 1970's.

Not sure how I feel about this.

Is your grandfather a farmer, by chance?

My great grandfather ran booze from victoria canada to agate beach washington, then on to Reno during prohibition.

My fathers brother was in prison after his USMC service in Korea for a short time but I'm not sure why. I would guess it was car theft. Other than that I don't know all that much about my his side since he went out of the picture when I was 15. His other brother was a close friend of Clyde Barrows nephew. I remember them discussing his embarrassment when Bonnie and Clyde came out.
My wifes family, her paternal grandfather knocked up his step daughter then shot her and killed himself when she wouldn't marry him. This young gals mother had a brother that shot and killed someone in a crime of passion. She survived into her 80s. Her maternal great grandfather ran a large gambling house and hotel, surely a whorehouse in Los Angeles. He lived in the Pico House. In his obituary he was referred to as a prominent leader in the Chinese community. I think he was along the lines of Woo in Deadwood. He was shut down by fire code violations of all things.

Someone above caused me to remember... Not really a secret exactly but a great great grandfather (I think that's correct), was active in the Kkk and we have a picture of him marching with their band. 30 guys in hoods and my relative is the one playing trumpet with his damn hood off lol

Similar. Somewhere out there I have a half-brother. I met him once but no longer remember his name. One of my fathers liaisons.

Jim

We ate Aunt Jamima syrup!

Not so much a family secret but my maternal great great grandfather owned 129 black slaves on a plantation near where the White River in Arkansas, runs into the Mississippi River. After the Civil War, he and his wife owned no slaves and no plantation, as the yankees took it all.

My brother still has a couple of the old plantation ledger books listing the slaves' names. I've seen them. Interesting reading.

L.W.

Wabigoon: My family name is "Gibbons".
When my great grandfather immigrated to the United States of America way back when - the family name was "Fitzgibbons" and once here to America he found out no one liked Irish people so eventually he changed his last name - dropping the Fitz.
Other that (if that can be classified as a secret?) no family secrets that I know of.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Not much on my mom's side but seeing how I never knew who my dad was the sky is the limit. I could even be kin to some of you on here and we'd not know it!

My grandfathers older brother was traded to the neighbors for a pig. Then he ran away and so my Grandfather was given to the neighbors instead.
He grew up on their farm,, and was treated just like one of the family, even taking their surname until he married my grandmother and moved on.
So that's how I have an Irish name but am almost entirely Norwegian blood.

Darth Vader?

Mom was the third born to a family of 15 siblings, 8 girls and 7 boys. Of the boys, 4 died alcoholics.
Her father died in 1953, I believe. When her mother died 21 years later, no one in that family knew where he was buried! My Dad and my Uncle went through the cemetery records to find his grave so the mother could be buried next to him!
Mom and her sisters never talked about him.
Dad told me that he suspected their father was very abusive.
7mm

That's flipping wild.

Hell, I thought everybody's granddaddy made liquor back in the "good old days." Learn something new every day. Life never ceases to amaze me.

Or if they didn't make it they ran it.

I ran the same roads that Robert Mitchum did in the movie, with the same cargo, for real- - - -not play-acting. It was a good thing to have a very boring ride!

Mom's great aunt is buried in the cemetery at the Walla Walla State Prison.

Dad's grandmother was in a gun fight with bootleggers in her kitchen.

A couple of cousins killed a bunch of members of a vigilante group in Southern Indiana.

Brandenburg Kentucky is named after family of ours.

I was put up for adoption as a baby, my biological last name was Baldwin and I am part Inupiat Eskimo.


That's about it really.

No seal clubbing in the woodpile Jim? LOL

You guys aren't spilling the real beans. I talk to old guys, I know what they done!

Had a uncle shot in the face with a 12ga over a girl in the 40's... .... dad had 4 kids divorced ......then married my mom 4 years latter.......there was a kid born in between, met him in o8....

I was a teenage werewolf.

You're still kinda fuzzy!

Yep.

I did that in the back of a 55 Buick, not a secret the whole family knows, as does hers.

Same preachers daughter and church?

What a slut!

Yeah, and we don’t ever talk about the reason I was kicked outta the Cub Scouts.
I was kicked out for eating Brownies!
7mm

My family is mostly boring, a few engineers, a lot of farmers and an attorney or two.

In the 1800’s I’ve been told that we had some mariners, a whaling captain, and a riverboat captain. I haven’t dug up who did what so I cant confirm it.

Oh yeah, we had a dirty distant English relative, ever hear of this nice guy: Guy Fawkes.

Not exactly a secret; one of dad's maternal uncles beat his first "wife" to death at a 4th of July party. Many witnesses, including my father and his two older brothers; they were young boys. Nothing done about it, because:

A: She was Indian (Chippewa)
B: Indians were not yet considered U.S. citizens, no protection under the law
C: His woman, his business, not anyone else's

The "Good Old Days"

Same guy made a deal with Grandmother, after Granddad died, to use their boat to carry freight, and pay her at the end of the season. He piled it up on rocks. total loss, never gave her a cent. Hell of a way to treat a sister!

Dad and uncles had absolutely no use for him, for life.

My father’s oldest brother who, at the time was a teenager, made up some home brew. It was some time during Prohibition in the ‘20’s and he had stashed it in one of three little workshops just a few feet behind the house. He must have capped the bottles too early.
One Sunday afternoon my Grandmother was having a meeting of her church circle (Baptists btw 😁) on the back porch.. It was then that some of the bottles reached peak pressure and exploded. He had some ‘splainin’ to do 😁

There’s another episode where all four of the brothers were caught by a railroad inspector stealing old railroad ties along a train track. They would sell them to make a little money during the Depression. When he asked their names the oldest gave the inspector Jack Johnson, Jim Johnson, Bill Johnson and Dave Johnson. All fake names. After dressing them down for a while and explaining he would have them arrested if it happened again.

Well, some weeks later, they were at it on the RR right of way, when the inspector caught them again. After yelling at them for a bit he asked, “aren’t y’all those Johnson boys I caught a few months ago?” My uncle said, “oh, no, that’s those Johnson boys, our names are Johnston with a ‘T’ “ . So they got away again. 😁

Fast forward several decades and when those four got together, especially after a bit of Bourbon or scotch, they were a scream. That’s when the tales would get told.

I have two brothers and a couple of years ago, my son grown son told me that we were hilarious when we got together, especially after a drink or two. 😁

Just one of many.

Is that meatloaf baked in a zucchini?

I was born a poor black child, with no natural rhythm.