Have you ever looked into your family history

Question

and had a WTF moment?

OK years ago it was common for 14 and 15 year old girls to be married off.     

Very aware of that.   

But parents sending off their 10 year old daughter to marry a man in his 20s?    

Yes 10 with documents to back up that lunacy.     

1870 census lists my cousins age as 4.  Born approximately 1865.      

 Indiana Marriage certificate says she married in 1875.  

Died April 1877, age 12 or 13.   

Sorry but that's really messed up .  

Answer 1

Yes, I have as a member of Ancestry.com!

Mostly farmers and land owners of large tracts of land! I was proud none of the generations listed slaves on the census which was very apparent at the time with many neighboring farmers using them to work their fields and tend their large families.

I did come across a story retold by a elderly great great aunt, tho. She told of her grandmother and grandfather getting “together!” ;) Her grandmother was a young Cherokee Indian maiden and her grandfather a 30 something y/o adult (widowed) Well, her grandmother’s brothers were incensed at her being with a “white man” and outcast her from the tribe! And packed her up on her horse and dropped her off at his home never to return to her tribe again! 

So apparently they married and had a large family including  my great grandmother and perhaps that was the reason for my “darker complexion?”

That’s as big a surprise I got in my 30’s! Lol!

Answer 2

Yes. I wanted to put some meat on the flesh as my line manager used to say.

Comments

A full lineage of “Blue bloods?”

Lol???

Answer 3

The worst part of looking into my family history is that I discovered they were looking back!

Answer 4

Death was probably the only way she had out of that situation.

What terrible things to do to a kid? Poor girl.  I feel sorry for her.

Comments

Currently In contact with the ohio county she died in to see cause of death.   

Luckily ohio required death certificates starting in 1867.  

Indiana didn't require it until 1882.

April 1877 her mom and 2 brothers also died.

10 months and 7 years of age.         

I have a sick feeling the baby was the young daughter's.    

 1880 census has the older daughter and several kids living with their aunt and uncle/ my gg grandparents.        

Answer 5

We don't know all of the details.  But my great grand mothers husband left her and the 4 kids back in Iowa in the winter.  Her neighbors were going to go west and homestead a place in Montana, so she persuaded them to take her and the kids along.  They homesteaded an area that my father called bellyache basin.  I don't know where it was actually.  As soon as possible the kids all left.  My grandfather became a forest ranger for the newly formed forest service.  But he wanted a wife so he went to Nebraska for a young women.  It is not clear wether he bought a wife, or found her some other way.  After a couple of years she had my father.  My grandfather was not the easiest guy to live with so when my father was about 3, she took off and left them.  She eventually went to Canada.  Dad was raised by his grandmother until she died, and then his father was forced to acquire a new wife by mail order.  

Who knew.