I am a sporadic genealogy buff. I have been sort of maintaining a half assed family tree for several years and have learned many things about my family, including several things I sort of wish I hadn’t. I think it is important to look back at where one’s family came from so that one can marvel at how unlikely it is that one came into being at all.

What are the odds, after all, of the granddaughter of a Tennessee pedophile meeting and marrying the grandson of an Irish mobster? Minimal, I should say, but God bless America because that is where I came from.

Anyhow, here’s what I’ve learned.

I am part German

Growing up, I always assumed I was just Irish. Maybe a little English. Apparently, the German side of my heritage was being kept from me deliberately. We’ve actually traced the German side of the family back to some sort of arch duchy or other in Germany in the fifteenth century. My German ancestors settled in the deep south in the early 1800’s, which means my family is not at fault for World War II.

Anyhow, I am glad to be German because it gives me a greater range of ethnic slurs that I can use without being accused of being racist. I can now call people krauts, fritz and sausage suckers. I only like to use slurs from my own ethnicities. I keep looking at my tree hoping to find more ethnicities so that I can use every slur someday.

My Father’s Grandfather Was an Irish Mobster

Seriously. James Freeney was in charge of garbage pick up and roughing up less than cooperative property owners in Boston in the early twentieth century. My grandfather, a banker, used to talk about hanging around with police officers and mobsters after marrying Freeney’s daughter (my grandmother). This would also explain why all of my grandmother’s sisters were vicious and evil. Seriously, it was like hanging around with six clones of Janice from The Sopranos.

My grandfather, on the other hand, was the product of an English society lady running off with the poor Irish gardener. He worked his way up to Harvard and ended up being a valuable “legitimate” associate of my great grandfather. They never let him be involved in anything illegal (and I don’t think he would have wanted that) but my grandfather was buddies with a slew of crooked Irish police officers and mobsters right up until he retired and they all got murdered.

My Mother’s Grandfather was, well, ewwww

At the time of the 1930 census, my Great Grandfather Melvin on my Mom’s Mother’s side was 59. His wife, Belle, was 49. Now, the interesting thing about the 1930 census is it also asked for your age at the time of marriage. According to this column, Melvin was 22 when he married Belle, who was listed as 14.

Now, I was a little freaked out by this until I went back and did the math. In 1930, they were 10 years apart. When they were married (in 1893), they were only 8 years apart. Now, does it make more sense to claim that Melvin was 22 when he was really 24 or to claim that Belle was 14 when she was only 12?

Basically, my great grandfather married a 12 year old. At this point I stopped being a little freaked out and started being a lot freaked out. My mother points out that A) He was of German descent, B) He was a farmer, and C) This was Tennessee we were talking about. Apparently, any one of those things alone is justification for marrying a child, but together, it is a wonder he didn’t marry a six year old. Basically, he showed considerable restraint by waiting until she was 12. since his Germanic, Tennessee farming blood was demanding he marry somebody straight out of the womb.

I suggested to my mother that he explanation wasn’t doing a while lot to clear up the reputation of Southerners as hopelessly. She pointed out that her parents were from entirely different families, so that is at least one family that was not inbred. Go Tennessee!

One of my Relatives Was Captain of a Slave Boat

Remember that romantic little story about my great grandmother falling in love with the Irish gardener and running off? The family she was fleeing from? They were Northerners made wealthy beyond imagination thanks to the slave trade.

As near as I can tell, by the time that my great great grandfather came into the picture, they were out of the slave trade and, presumably, squandering the fortune. Furthermore, my great grandmother was disowned for marrying an Irishman, which at least makes me feel like I came from the one branch of that family that ceased to benefit from slave money.

There is a nice little history lesson buried here on this northern side of the family. Somewhere back along the old family tree, my slave trading Northern ancestor made a pile of dirty money selling human beings to the South States. The Civil War came around, fought over slavery, and the North won and my ancestors never had to give a penny of the money they made off of it back. The moral being that slavery (or anything) is only bad to certain rich people when they can’t make money off of it anymore.

Anyhow, I bet some of my sausage sucking, pre-teen marrying Germanic ancestors in the south ended up fighting to make sure that the descendants of the slaves that my evil slave trading, Irish-hating ancestors sold them remained in bondage, so you can see I have a lot to be proud of.

About That Dwarf

Then, of course, there is my Grandmother’s sister, who nobody told me about, who was a dwarf. A dwarf with the attitude of Janice from The Sopranos, but a dwarf none the less. A very religious mobster dwarf who would hide in the closet with her mother (my great grandmother) saying the rosary whenever a thunderstorm came around.

The important thing about this is that it is genetically possible that I am going to father me some dwarf babies someday. I am kind of excited about this possibility, to tell you the truth. I think it is silly that it was hidden from me. My grandmother, ever concerned about how she looked to the public, sort of pretended she didn’t exist - though this was easier after the dwarf managed to pursued my great grandmother to leave all of her ill earned mob money to her (and not to any of the other sisters, including my grandmother) at the last moment.

She may have been the shortest member of my family, but she was also clearly the cleverest.

Original Settlers

The last thing I am going to mention is that my slave trading ancestors track back to some of the original ships that came to the U.S. from England. This is awesome because it means that in addition to selling human beings, marrying pre-teens and busting kneecaps for the mob, my family was involved in pushing the Native Americans off of their land - probably even killing a number of them themselves.

Dude, I am America.