Genealogy Chat

I hope it is alright to post this here, I won't mention any names and all people concerned are now deceased.
I have found something out about my family that happened over 100 years ago.
It's a very sensitive issue so I hope nobody will be offended, but I don't know how to feel about it and wondered if anyone else was in the same situation.

I have found that a relative was made pregnant by another close relative, and I am descended from that person. It was kept secret of course, but a relative has confirmed it was definitely the case, and when I searched for a record I could not previously find, it was confirmed with name and date.

I can see why it was covered up in the family, but it's such a horrible thought to know that my female relative was so mistreated like that, at a young age, and that I descend from that incest.

I feel bad about having asked questions of relatives, I did not know why they didn't want to give me information, now I understand.
What does one feel in this situation? Is it very rare? I am certainly confused and disturbed by it.

sadly Ruth we cannot change the past and I think we all find something in our family that we would rather not know. But the siver lining in the cloud is you. If it had not happened you would not be here, so please don't feel so bad
regards
maddie

Yes I suppose once we go far back and find lots of relatives there's going to be a bad one somewhere along the line. :(

Hi Ruth
My thoughts are that I can see why you find it a bit disturbing, and you might benefit from having someone professional to talk it through with.

I also think that this was more than a hundred years ago, and whilst I accept that incest was never 'acceptable', society was very different then. In researching family history we often see marriages between people at ages that we would never see now, and we have to accept that life was very different then. In the same way, some people find they are descended from criminals. Hopefully we have moved on; we have child protection laws, and there are helplines and places people can go to for support.
Children are often born in difficult circumstances; it doesn't define them. You are your own person.

Sadly, like every sin in the book , it has been there since time began. Its only a few years ago when that guy ( ? in Germany) had kept his daughter locked up and she had 7 children by him. Nothing changes. As fast as society finds a voice and a new way of combating wrong doings, someone else will find a loop hole to bypass what is right.

Perhaps a professional might provide the reassurances to your initial worries if this becomes too much to accept. It doesn't alter who you are.

We shouldn't worry about the sins of others, just what we do ourselves in this life.
I wish you the best-jl

Thanks everyone for your support.

That must have been upsetting for you and not something you can get over easily. I do think perhaps if you can't come to terms with this past,you should seek some help although they say it is good to talk it out with others as you are doing.

I don't think this was a rare event. In a certain county which I will not name it was common practice for the eldest daughter to take over all duties of the wife in the household if her mother died. This information came from a psychiatrist I worked for many years ago.

Vera

It was not only the fathers back then what about the brothers? I often wonder about my own gt grandmother who was illigitamate and her mother was the only girl with four older brothers...not nice to think about that sort of thing going on...but it did

jax

Part of your concern and bad feeling seems to come from the way your female ancestor was treated. I take it that you suspect or have evidence that the relationship which created the child was one of abuse and unlawful sex.

Unless you know for certain, this may not be the case. If you have only the anecdotal hand-me-down information I wonder if it would be easier for a family to assume it was a bad relationship than to come to terms with a relationship that was of love but inappropriate. I think this would be more apparent depending on the age of the mother.

I'm trying to make sure that I use exactly the right words for fear of upsetting or giving the impression of saying something I'm not.

The dreadful fact is that girls and young women were not well-protected. A blind eye was turned to far too many abuses and even though we are a hundred years down the line now, you have found out that you were an eventual product of that situation.

I've put far too much of my life stories onto another thread so I don't want to put them on here aswell but I want to say that I understand how you feel. The male parent was an abusive bully. But what has been told to me by cousins since his death about stuff he did nearly 60 years ago had an effect on me. The female parent stood by him for those same 60 years. I know now that nothing about their relationship turned out to be real. Everything I accepted about my family is totally untrue. Everyone said that she worshipped him but no one saw the reality. He controlled and tormented her too for all those years and she lived in fear of him. She hid it from us and the world and let him (or was probably powerless) do the same to me and my sister which is sadly what families have been doing generation after generation. The only thing is that his abuse was not sexual.

What you have to try to get your head around is everything you have always believed/understood isn't how it was. You've got to be in some sort of shock because your world isn't the same now.

If you can get your head around what you have found out you can move on from this. You might reach a point where you know it happened but like the easing of grief of losing a loved-one, you can think of them and not cry. It isn't going to happen overnight though. But, if you find that you can't come to terms with it, then you should find someone to talk to. In chronological terms it happened a few generations ago but to you it is very real as if it was yesterday.

I hope that you can find some level of where you can deal with this.

Jill

It was usual for the Egyptian Pharoahs to marry their sisters - other people were not considered royal enough. It did eventually cause problems because of inbreeding - that's the reason it has become taboo. However, just one instance, in your case, obviously didn't result in any difficulty, so you should simply celebrate the fact that you are here!