The Lies Continue

Both my grandmothers were involved in genealogy during their lives, both wanting to find a familial identity after suffering tragedy in their early lives.  My maternal grandmother Olive lost her father when she was 10.  The story goes; she brought home the influenza virus and passed it on to her father who died in 1917 during the Great Influenza Epidemic.  Most of my family myths come from that side of the family.  My paternal grandmother Edith lost her father in 1925.  He fell to his death at the Zilwaukee plant.  Edith was 8 years old and one of eight children.

My grandmother Olive is part of my Roll-Howes family tree. The Rolls arrived in the mid-1650’s. Through her, I am descended from Jan Mangelsen (Roll).  Jan supposedly married a Mahican (Mohawk Indian) woman. There is the start of one family myth.  However, most of the Roll family researchers believe there were not any children from this union.  His children are assumed to be descended from his first wife, who was Dutch.

Growing up my mother told a few family lies of her own.  I think she even convinced herself they were true.  There is a story of an event that happen to cousin at the age of 16.  My Mom would boldly tell the story when I asked her who’s who in our family.  Years later there was a knock on the door and the truth is revealed.  My Mom was married with children and close to this cousin.  She knew the cousin was 21 not 16.   All the family heard the exact same lie for years.  We still don’t know why my mom and her sisters came up with that story.   Truth may hurt, but it is still the truth.

I find the open secrets just enticing.  Mom’s favorite uncle had a first marriage with children that he kept secret from the children of his second marriage.   I knew, my sister knew; but we just didn’t talk about it to our cousins. Only once did my sister say something.  But the cousin never asked her father.  Did it cause a mess years later, it sure did.

I think families have bee practicing plausible deniability long before the CIA coined the term.

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