as long as we're on the topic

[kaigou]

This is for taithe's amusement, but the rest of you are welcome to join in. Just imagine that the older half of the conversation is speaking in a coastal Mississippi accent. If you're not sure what that is, think something close to Holly Hunter's (Georgia) accent, but slower, and farther back in the throat. It's really a rather gentle accent, and for all that we fuss about non-Southerners thinking Southern accent means stupid, the Delta/coastal accent has definite connotations of elegance, if a friendly kind.

Anyway, in talking of the Civil War and Reconstruction, I was reminded of one of the few family stories that... well, it remains a mystery. My grandmother was, as befit many Southern women of her era, big into genealogy. Come to think of it, it's still a big thing, but we've got that whole thing about family, anyway. I grew up with stories of various people in the family, like the time she told me I had a however-many-greats-aunt who was -- drumroll, please -- Abraham Lincoln's stepmother.

Me, at tender age of ten: wasn't the reason Abraham Lincoln left home really young because he hated his step-mother?
Gramma: *handwave* Dear, we don't speak ill of the dead.

[ETA: many many thanks to wordweaverlynn (see comments) for enlightening me on this childhood misunderstanding, that childhood-me had it Completely Wrong. Wah!]

Anyway, the only other Civil-War related story of unexpected relatives was about a Southern General. When the South decided to secede from the Union, all ranking military officers who were residents of a seceding state were contacted by the newly-formed Confederacy. Each general was asked to convert his commission from the North/Federal govt to the South/Confederacy. Many didn't, many did. And then there was one general -- the one in my family -- who regretfully replied that he had -- really! -- only just discovered, like, within minutes of getting the invitational letter -- that he had inherited some form of madness.

Terrible, terrible thing, them late-in-life unexpected insanities. Kill you right off, if you weren't careful. Naturally, he had to listen to his doctors' advice, and promptly packed up his entire family and off they all go to a sanatorium in the South of France in hopes he might live out that what's left of his life, in peace. And, y'know, hope for a cure.

Me: What happened then, Gramma?
Gramma: Remarkably, he was only ill for foueeah yeeaahrs, and the sanatorium cured him completely, just in time for him to return home, on the tails of the South surrendering.
Me: ...
Gramma: *completely deadpan* The nick of time, really.
Me: That seems awfully convenient timing, Gramma.
Gramma: Gracious, I'm sure it was just a coincidence.
Me: Unh-hunh. So what was his name? Who was he?
Gramma: *handwave* Dear, it's not polite to speak ill of the dead.

(Like she didn't do it all the time. She just figured if she didn't name names, it wasn't really speaking ill of the dead because you hadn't said who exactly they were. At least, that's what I think she was thinking. She never did explain why not, only that... well, she had plenty to say about plenty in the family. Now I've got plenty of stories and no names to go with them. Except for the stories about my grandmother's step-grandfather's younger brother, who -- according to my mother -- really did run that wild. Not like running wild was all that much, considering my grandmother's aunt ran a boarding house, threw parties where the bathtub really was filled with gin, and had three pet house-pigs.)

I guess this just means temporary insanity runs in my family, or maybe -- to not speak ill of the dead -- just really good survival instincts.

Comments

[rogue53]

Oh, to know who the Southern General was! That is absolutely precious!

I think any family that is into genealogy likes to find all the best and the brightest that they can, personally, I like finding the skeletons and horse thieves and the like!

[kaigou]

I think despite my grandmother being raised to believe she had to conform to a certain way (of being a proper lady) that privately, I suspect she may've had her own way. I mean, she skipped two grades, graduated high school at 16, went onto college, and when she married she was making more than her husband. I just don't see how you can have that kind of potential and not have the experience of "proper women stay home" not twist you...

At least, that's one theory for why I think she outwardly did the whole "here are important people we're related to" but within the family, she had all sorts of stories about the oddballs and the outcasts. She seemed to find it immensely, if quietly, amusing that our so-called "historical roots" of "how long in this country" that the DAR prized so much... amounted, in great part, to coming over as felons and debtors in the first settlements of Georgia. I mean, once you know who Oglethorpe was picking, it's not something to boast about, is it? Not that she did, but I think she enjoyed pulling one over, of a sort, on the DAR and its picky rules. She got the community-cred of being a member, but the joke was definitely on DAR and not her.

[wordweaverlynn]

Actually, Lincoln credited his stepmother with being consistently loving, kind, and encouraging to him. It was his father who beat him for reading.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.--Abraham Lincoln, about his stepmother

[kaigou]

REALLY?

Oh, I had no idea! (I wonder who it was whose stepmother made him run away from home, then. Hunh.) Okay, that's much better to have as a member of the family, then!

(Then again, both sides of my family have multiple instances of step-mothers basically running off broods of 8 or more kids, in favor of producing a new batch -- and many of those kids didn't make it, choosing to leave home as young as 12 rather than deal with the step-mom. We lost a lot of family history that way, since what 12-yr old knows jack about family history, but then never has a way to fill in the blanks, years later. Well, when we didn't just plain lose everything in house fires, which were apparently as common as mayflies.)

[edenfalling]

I vaguely recall that Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd, had a disastrous relationship with her stepmother. Perhaps that's a source of confusion?

[kaigou]

*scratches head*

I have no idea. I don't think it was Mary Todd, since she's never interested me at all. But it's not like stepmothers were that thin on the ground, whether historically or in my own families -- you have eight or more kids, you're probably not gonna live very long, y'know? And then the widower's left with a bunch of kids and needs help raising them, hence the necessity of stepmothers. So might've been a mix-up of another family story getting overlaid on Mr. Lincoln.

[dharma_slut]

Oh dear, that poor man, and how wonderful that he was cured!

these are fabulous stories, thank you for sharing them...

[kaigou]

Yeah, apparently my family is just full of poor men who suffered all sorts of things. Mostly things they had coming to them, delivered in full by the women of my family, but still! At least one of them was cured!

[taithe]

Your grandmother sounds like a fun person to have around. Those are the sorts of tales I would've loved to hear as a kid.

[kaigou]

She had a dry wit, that I've only learned to truly appreciate (sadly) in the years after her death. She covered it with a veneer of propriety, but I think under there was a woman with a very sharp sense of humor.

[hollyberries]

Both of my grandfathers lost their families early on, so there's very little I can piece together. Thank you for sharing your stories (and such amusing ones too!). I'm glad your umpteenth-grandfather got well... :D

[kaigou]

My grandmother's father died when she was young, then her step-father died when she was twelve, I think it was. Her mother remarried again, and was always travelling while my grandmother was in boarding schools... so sometimes I think the genealogy stems from a wish to connect with a family that had always been somewhat distant and intermittent.

The real storyteller in the family, though, is on my father's side -- my first cousin once removed, by marriage. (In other words: the wife of my father's first cousin.) Cousin P was a good country boy from south Georgia, got a scholarship to Harvard Law, went up with hat in hand and came home with a Boston princess of the highest blue blood... who was absolutely a total terror growing up. Ran away frequently -- to the bushes "at the top of the drive" (where "drive" is like a quarter-mile from the house) and would set herself up in defiance of the family. Fortunately, she didn't starve because the servants would sneak her food, until she got tired or cold and came home. Yes. SERVANTS. Hehehe. And then there was the time she poured laundry soap into the swimming pool, or the time she tried to set her brother's hair on fire...

[obsession_inc]

This is the most glorious story I have ever heard in all my life. Although then I got to "three pet house-pigs" in conjunction with bathtub gin, and. WHY IS MY FAMILY NOT TELLING ME STORIES LIKE THIS? I DEMAND A REFUND.

[kaigou]

I honestly wish my mother would tell me more stories about her Aunt, but the most I can recall was that Mom used to work summertimes in the boarding house. (Which in Mississippi had to be blistering hot, stripping beds and doing laundry and running up and down the stairs, so possibly childhood trauma makes my Mom refuse to recall too much.) I don't think Aunt Rina ever married, but -- as even my grandmother admitted once -- it wasn't like Aunt Rina didn't have at least two 'beau' at any given time, often one on each arm.

Plus, she also had chairs that came with the house, carved somewhere we have-no-idea -- tall backed wooden dining chairs, with faces sort of like green men carved at the tops and just under the seat. (They were lined up in the front hall, and my mom's story is that she used to take the servant's stairs just to avoid the chairs, which seemed to be glaring at you, at night.) They look cool, but they're ridiculously uncomfortable, which was apparently the entire reason Aunt Rina kept them. She called them "guest chairs," since the idea was that no guest would stay for longer than five minutes if that was their only seating choice.

That kind of humor seems to run in my family.