The Skeleton in Our Closet − 30 March, 2008
There is a skeleton in my Italian ancestors’ closet. A child was born out of wedlock in Italy while the mother’s husband was in the U.S. When the woman and her children immigrated to the States, the child was brought along, and given to the father’s family.
Having found entries in a ship’s manifest on ellisisland.com for my “legitimate” ancestors, I wondered who the child could be. No extra child appeared on the manifest with the family’s surname. That meant that he or she was registered under a different last name. I looked at all of the names and ages of the passengers on the ship. I found a lone girl, 3 years old, with a unique surname among the many passengers of the ship. Could she be my illegitimate ancestor?
If she belongs to our family, I would like to create an entry for her in my online family tree. But I won’t. I don’t think some members of my family would want it. I think that they would ask, why post such information on the Internet, even if it were only available to family?
But I am reminded of Josh Shartzer’s story The Day I Was and the accompanying commentary. One comment suggests that perhaps some family stories are better left “on the shelf to collect dust”, and shouldn’t be posted on the internet for our progeny and the rest of the world to see. But Kelly points out, without falling on one side or the other of this argument, that he created Dandelife as an experiment. “In 100 years what will the family tree look like?” he writes.
Indeed, what will it look like? It will most certainly not be written on paper. It will be digital. Will we let the skeletons out of their closets? I believe that my illegitimate ancestor has every bit as much right to appear in our family tree as her half-siblings. Otherwise, her family tree will have a gaping hole where her mother and half-siblings should be. Of course, in 100 years, probably no one will care. But right now, I care.
My male ancestor was apart from his wife and four children in Italy for about five years before they arrived on U.S. soil. My female ancestor would have been 28 when her husband left. She probably had help with the children. Small-town Italian families are very close knit even now, and that was a long time ago. But it must have been very difficult to wait, even if she loved her husband. If she did not love him, it must have been very difficult to live without the love of a man. Birth control was probably pretty unsophisticated. As careful as my ancestor and her lover might have been, it was all too easy for evidence to bulge through in the shape of her belly.
Today, we hear about military marriages crumbling over spousal absences of much less than five years. A close friend of mine suffered the pain of being a cuckold. He’d been assigned to another country for a couple of years, and apparently his wife, left behind, grew too lonely. Fortunately, they repaired their marriage. But clearly, where love and sex are concerned, people struggle with being apart from their spouses, and are not always able to remain faithful, as society and the traditional contract of marriage requires.
Given what I have heard about my male ancestor, I suspect that my illegitimate ancestor was born of great passion and maybe even love. Whatever the reason, she is still a member of our family, and belongs in our family tree.
Having found entries in a ship’s manifest on ellisisland.com for my “legitimate” ancestors, I wondered who the child could be. No extra child appeared on the manifest with the family’s surname. That meant that he or she was registered under a different last name. I looked at all of the names and ages of the passengers on the ship. I found a lone girl, 3 years old, with a unique surname among the many passengers of the ship. Could she be my illegitimate ancestor?
If she belongs to our family, I would like to create an entry for her in my online family tree. But I won’t. I don’t think some members of my family would want it. I think that they would ask, why post such information on the Internet, even if it were only available to family?
But I am reminded of Josh Shartzer’s story The Day I Was and the accompanying commentary. One comment suggests that perhaps some family stories are better left “on the shelf to collect dust”, and shouldn’t be posted on the internet for our progeny and the rest of the world to see. But Kelly points out, without falling on one side or the other of this argument, that he created Dandelife as an experiment. “In 100 years what will the family tree look like?” he writes.
Indeed, what will it look like? It will most certainly not be written on paper. It will be digital. Will we let the skeletons out of their closets? I believe that my illegitimate ancestor has every bit as much right to appear in our family tree as her half-siblings. Otherwise, her family tree will have a gaping hole where her mother and half-siblings should be. Of course, in 100 years, probably no one will care. But right now, I care.
My male ancestor was apart from his wife and four children in Italy for about five years before they arrived on U.S. soil. My female ancestor would have been 28 when her husband left. She probably had help with the children. Small-town Italian families are very close knit even now, and that was a long time ago. But it must have been very difficult to wait, even if she loved her husband. If she did not love him, it must have been very difficult to live without the love of a man. Birth control was probably pretty unsophisticated. As careful as my ancestor and her lover might have been, it was all too easy for evidence to bulge through in the shape of her belly.
Today, we hear about military marriages crumbling over spousal absences of much less than five years. A close friend of mine suffered the pain of being a cuckold. He’d been assigned to another country for a couple of years, and apparently his wife, left behind, grew too lonely. Fortunately, they repaired their marriage. But clearly, where love and sex are concerned, people struggle with being apart from their spouses, and are not always able to remain faithful, as society and the traditional contract of marriage requires.
Given what I have heard about my male ancestor, I suspect that my illegitimate ancestor was born of great passion and maybe even love. Whatever the reason, she is still a member of our family, and belongs in our family tree.
Comments:
edunn (March 30, 2008. 11:43pm)
I think it is admirable that you are including her. She is a member of the family. My tree has a few of those too. I think all of ours do. I am curious...what online tool are you using to generate your tree?
peahayes (March 31, 2008. 01:25am)
geni.com -- I've seen it mentioned here, and I think I might have found out about it from FaceBook. It's pretty intuitive to use, and you can invite other members of your family.
edunn (March 31, 2008. 01:34am)
Perfect. That is what I am using too. Just wondering if there was something else I was missing out on. Thanks!
Bazookah 5 (March 31, 2008. 02:01pm)
I am using geni.com also and have included our "born out of wedlock" cousin and...cats.
peahayes (May 1, 2008. 12:53am)
I can't believe this -- one month after writing this piece, and after having read it about 80 times, I caught a typo: "In 100 ears what will the family tree look like?" Indeed, what do 100 ears have to do with anything??? I corrected the typo...