From a letter to Dear Abby:
My husband and I were told that a family headstone has been purchased, and our share is $2,000 - each. This was never discussed among the family members. The cemetery is located out of state.
We have been told we are no longer welcome to attend the family reunion this summer unless we fork over the $4,000 and agree to have our names placed on the headstone. [Link]
If you're ever approached by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Gunter to swap genealogy data, just walk away. Quickly.
According to a police report on the Sept. 2 altercation, Justice Jim Gunter asked his sister, Janet Gibson, for some genealogy papers he had left with her for a family reunion that day. When Gibson told Gunter that she was not through with the papers, he began screaming at her and backhanded her across the mouth, knocking her into a dresser, the report said. [Link]
Irish author Martina Devlin stumbled upon a family secret while scanning a list of Titanic passengers.
Idly running my eye down it, a name and address leapt out: Thomas O'Brien of Bonavie, Co Limerick. My grandmother, Josie English née O'Brien, came from Bonavie. It's such a small townland (near the Tipperary border) that I assumed there had to be a connection between the two.Devlin learned that Thomas O'Brien was her grandmother's uncle, and had boarded the ship with a woman named Hannah—possibly his bride, and certainly pregnant. Hannah survived and gave birth five months later to a daughter. Devlin also discovered the reason for her family's secrecy: Hannah and Thomas' mother fought over who should be considered his next-of-kin and collect compensation from the White Star Line. A letter from Hannah to Tom's sister was less than conciliatory.
"Did Granny have a relation on the Titanic?" I asked my mother. Her forehead pleated. "That's ringing a vague bell," she admitted. "I don't know anything much about it, just that there's a family connection. We knew never to talk about it as children. It upset your granny too much."
"You needn't worry about me. My baby and myself will be alright. I knew ye were all trying to get some money. I produced my marriage certificate, and I had the nearest claim. So you nor the lawyer needn't bother," she said. [Link]
Gracia Jones—a great-great-granddaughter of LDS church founder Joseph Smith—is among those trying to heal a long-standing rift between his descendants and those of Brigham Young. It all started with Smith's death in 1844.
While Young led the LDS migration to the Salt Lake Valley, Emma Smith remained behind and eventually re-married. One of her sons led a splinter group known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Consequently, none of Smith's descendants were affiliated with the original body of Latter-day Saints until Jones discovered her ancestry and joined 51 years ago.
Ill will has persisted among some descendants of the families for more than a century and a half, Jones said. When planning a reunion of their family members, Smith descendants "talked about the difficulty that children of the family had with Brigham Young and the harsh feelings that had filtered down and left a scar on the family because of the bitterness the children held against him," Jones said. [Link]
After a fight with his wife, Serbian farmer Zivomir Nesic had her name on the family headstone replaced with a picture of his favorite cow.
He said: 'I always said my wife was a cow so, if I'm going to have a cow on my grave, I would rather it was one I actually liked.' [Link]
The long-running feud between the Hatfields and McCoys may have been due in part to a medical condition passed down in one of the families.
Dozens of McCoy descendants apparently have the disease, which causes high blood pressure, racing hearts, severe headaches and too much adrenaline and other "fight or flight" stress hormones.
No one blames the whole feud on this, but doctors say it could help explain some of the clan's notorious behavior.
Affected family members have long been known to be combative, even with their kin. [Rita] Reynolds recalled her grandfather, "Smallwood" McCoy.
"When he would come to visit, everyone would run and hide. They acted like they were scared to death of him. He had a really bad temper," she said. [Link]
Two sisters in Zimbabwe, Beauty Tunha and Siphelile Magaya, got into an argument over who should erect the stone on their brother's grave. A sibling offered to contribute a bag of cement if the sisters shared the cost of a second bag.
But this did not go down well with Tunha, who opposed the idea, saying Magaya was supposed to buy the cement this time around since she had bought the cement that was used to build their late mother's grave.
As the argument continued, Tunha suddenly rose from her chair and started assaulting her younger sister, biting off her lower lip. [Link]
Members of The Clan MacFarlane Society are painting their faces Braveheart-blue in preparation for a battle over an island in Loch Lomond.
Eilean-I-Vow—less poetically known as Cow Island—was claimed by Douglas MacFarlane nine years ago for about £500 after he'd traced the roots of the clan to that location and established that it had no official owner. Now the rest of the clan—a family of "notorious cattle raiders"—wants ownership.
The clan's descendants, who span the world, believe the ruins of a historic seventeenth-century castle are being further dilapidated by party-goers. By assuming ownership of the land, the society wants to preserve the relics, one of the last few remaining traces of the clan in the region.Douglas is willing to give it up for the ever-so-reasonable price of £1 million. His wife Bernadette says, "I've e-mailed the society several times but never had a reply. I don't understand what they're trying to do." She concedes that the island has had unauthorized visitors, but "It's very hard to stop people coming over to the island."
"We thought about hiring someone, maybe an eccentric poet, to stay there, but we can't build anything on the land." [Link]
From EducationGuardian.co.uk:
My PC blew up, miss
Donald MacLeod
Thursday September 1, 2005
New technology means that "the printer didn't work" and "our PC was stolen" have now overtaken "the dog ate it, miss" as excuses for not handing in homework.
But schoolboy (and schoolgirl) excuses are as alive and flourishing as ever, according to a survey published today.
[snip]
Absent homework is never, ever, the pupil's fault. Siblings and parents come in for a lot of blame. "My baby sister was sick on it" and "my little brother drew all over it" were popular choices (mentioned by 13% of secondary teachers surveyed).
Perhaps more credible, and hinting at a dark family feud, was the excuse: "My mum tore it up as it included my uncle on the family tree who she hates."
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From The (Big Stone Gap, Va.) Post:
Two-headstone grave idea causes concern
By JEFF LESTER, Senior Writer
August 17, 2005
BIG STONE GAP - Owners of burial lots in the Glencoe cemetery can't put headstones at the head and the foot of a grave.
Or can they?
[snip]
Freda Bishop, chairman of the town's Citizens' Cemeteries Committee, said one group of people proposes to mark a particular grave with headstones at both ends. It's part of a family feud, she said.
Councilman and committee secretary Edward Hutchinson and others said apparently, the aim is to place a headstone at the foot of the grave specifically to block the view of the headstone for the grave below it, as an act of spite within the feud.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
