Your relative may know more about deceased family members than they are willing to tell you. And they may never tell you everything you know, no matter how much you wish they would or how many times you ask. For reasons that are entirely too long for a “short tip,” I know my own grandmother knew more about her grandfather than she ever told me, including the fact that he had a second wife. Yet my queries about him always received a “don’t know anything response.”
Sometimes that is all you are going to get and sometimes you have to let it go to preserve relationships with your living relatives.
3 Responses
I always enjoy reading your tips, thank you for sharing all that you do. I had a similar issue with my paternal grandmother. She always answered that “you best leave the dead, don’t dig up old skeletons, you don’t want to know it” After she passed, my dad told me a story, not sure if true, about how that side of the family thought my great grandfather overdosed his wife with insulin, contributing to her death. What he never told me either when I started digging deep was that my great grandfather remarried. I found his probate, death certificate, grave site and kept asking relatives if they knew who the informant on the death certificate was. Come to find out yes may have been married a second time, and none of the family ever visited him or met the 2nd wife.. Haven’t found a marriage record and no wife was listed on his death certificate only the informant. More work to do yet on this line. Look forward to reading your tips. Thanks!
Glad you find them helpful. Yes one never knows what one will find. Family traditions are usually part truth and part fiction–it’s just difficult sometimes to determine what is what.
How well I know that response! No matter how many times I asked, my grandmother refused to tell me anything about her family.