Upsetting genealogy?

[Roobarb]

Felt quite upbeat until I read all these sad stories! My own:-
  Grandfather who died when my dad was only 3, so grandmother was left with two young boys to bring up on her own
  One gt grandmother who had never had alcohol until she was introduced to it by gt grandad and subsequently became an alcoholic and died an early death
  Other gt granparents who had 12 children and lost at least 5 of them in childhood
Hard times! 

[wheeldon]

I'm moved to tears by my own Grandparents hard lives.

My Mum often says that they were two very damaged people who clung together through life but who should have never met 

I feel for the ones who came before them but because I never met them - I can only feel for them 

[Kezlyn]

When I was in the local records office checking out Inquests, my Dad asked me to find out if there was anything on his biological Grandmother. He never knew her (although she died when he was in his 20's) but had heard that she "drank herself to death".

I found an Inquest for her death. She was an alcoholic, in her 70's, living in a boarding house and estranged from what was left of her family. But the actual cause of death was self-immolation. She tipped a bottle of metho over herself and lit a match.

Although there were no emotional ties to this woman it was upsetting for my Dad to find yet another person in his biological tree who seems to have been mentally ill. Very sad, and of course he wonders about the legacy his bloodline will inflict on me and my descendants. Don't worry Dad, I *like* having bipolar disorder!!!

Kez

[trish251]

Some of my tears were for my Great Uncle who died in WW1

Whenever I find a young man who died in the Great War (whether it be my own family - my mother was named for her Uncle who was killed 2 weeks before the armistice - or someone elses) - I seem to be reduced to tears. So many of them enlisted within a week of turning 18 (or before if they could hide their age).

I also find the tears when I have young women who marry, have a number of pregnacies, lose most of the children & then die in yet another failed childbirth. I have a few of these souls in my tree & I do weep for the sadness of their adult lives.

Trish

[kena]

Hi Trish, I have a 2 times great uncle who died about 2 weeks before the end of the first world war, not of any injury but illness. I always remember him on Remembrance day now. Also my grandad was named after him.

Anna

[Jean McGurn]

I was moved emotionally when I found g.grandmother on the 1901 census as being listed as a  Lunatic in Stafford Lunatic Asylum

I got my maternal g.grandmothers death certificate some time later to find she actually died of Senile Decay. I suppose what she actually suffered from was Alzheimer's.

What I think saddened me was that none of her family had looked after her but had put her into the asylum instead. I am so glad that these days people aren't assumed to be mad because their memory has deteriorated.

Jean

[bearkat]

I think it's impossible to judge what happened in the past by todays standards and values.

Many people worked until they died.  They couldn't afford to stop working to look after an elderly or infirm relative.

There is no doubt that many of our ancestors led very difficult lives.

[Simon G.]

I've felt sad (like when I discovered my 5xgreat-grandfather buried 4 of his children from scarlett fever within 3 days of each other...and his wife a few weeks later from typhus), and angry (like when I found out my great-grandmother had an affair with the lodger while my great-grandfather was in the navy...there's a family of half-greatuncles out there somewhere from it too), but I've never cried...don't know why.

[7igerby7he7ail]

I like to feel I am fairly solid when it comes to grieving etc.But in recent times I have wept at the grave of my great uncle who was KIA [aged 17 and six months] on the Somme.

I have felt an overwhelmoing sense of saddness when discovering one of my great grandparents was one of 9 children, 8 of whom died before the age of 5.

Sad that I had lived for 55 years whithout knowing of the existence of 18 first cousins and my dad's younger sister.

Sad that I left it late to question the previous generations.


Tom G