All families have mysteries, secrets and even scandals – or at least events that would have been regarded as scandals at the time. But how do we, the family’s historian, deal with them? Should you share them? Tell them? Write them down? Charlotte Soares reflects on this potentially sensitive but very important aspect of our family history endeavours
I was told when I was growing up that the rules of polite conversation were never to talk about religion, sex or politics, all subjects that could cause heated arguments. Add to that genealogy scandals! I feel I need to have a little black book for those off-the-record stories not for publication or to be repeated.
Of course, I am not at liberty to divulge any secrets here, but most families have one or two racy tales: crime, prison, suicides, bigamy, second secret families, illegitimate children, affairs resulting in children kept or adopted. Mothers sometimes raised their daughters’ children as their own, which show up on the census when mothers are impossibly late in years at the birth of their youngest.
‘Should I write the secrets down?’
I usually record things in writing, but should I even write those sensitive secrets down? Oral memories of relatives are the essence of what makes an anecdote memorable, only recalled because it triggered emotion and the two things latched onto each other, the story and how it made the teller feel. In retelling, the shock, fright, anxiety of life events are passed on to the listener, usually of a younger generation. Dreadful stories are exactly what makes them stick in the mind whereas you forget other facts, such as dates and places, which are harder to remember unless you jot them down.
The spark for research
Sometimes the stories are the start of more investigation.
By way of example: a large family with parents who did not seem to be married was told, along with the oral story that the girls were brought up Roman Catholic and the boys Church of England. Why would that be?
An Irish Catholic family would never accept a Protestant son-in-law and the couple would not have been allowed to marry in Ireland. Yet they could live together in England, away from their family, and each keep their faith.
This was just such a story of religion, as forewarned against by my elders, that would have caused problems to discuss in certain circles!
Taboo topics over time
Taboos include abuse and violence within families, betrayals, cowardice, criminals, men who were scandalous
