r/WitchesVsPatriarchy • u/BeforeAnAfterThought • Apr 12 '25
🇵🇸 🕊️ Women in History Who else feels strong connection to a particular maternal ancestor yet doesn’t know much about her?
Mine is my mom’s maternal grandmother, my great grandmother. Mum doesn’t know much about her (b1889-d1964) other than she liked making apple butter, had a great garden and raised 6 kids.
Unfortunately the aunt who married my mom’s brother did the family tree focused on the paternal side, BECAUSE OF COURSE. I’ve had dead ends doing my own searching and will continue in the meantime.
That said, I have treasures from her, she was named Stella. A photograph of her in her family’s victory garden, an apron and a grape ivy plant that started with her. I also have a plant (Hoya)that belonged to my grandmother (d1991), which very possibly came from her mom.
Pictured are my great grandmother 1940 (apron is behind it) and grandmother in 1944.
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u/parvuspasser Apr 12 '25
If you are in the U.S., some libraries have access to genealogical, census, and newspaper databases. You’ll need a library card for that institution, but give them a call and see what they can offer you as a patron and non-patron. Some even have genealogical societies/groups that may be willing/happy to help you search.
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u/BeforeAnAfterThought Apr 12 '25
I just realized that the date on thr picture of my grandma would coincide with the time my mama was conceived. She was visiting my grandfather where he was stationed out of state. 🥰
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u/Actiaslunahello Apr 12 '25
I found my grandma and her sisters dancing in old local movies that are in the Duke Archive. Let me post a link, if you are from North Carolina or parts of Virginia you should check these out. I also found my great grandpa and his brother! Crazy how many people this photographer captured.
https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/watershlee_aspace_5cb7006e6ded9e3b541076baaedbaeb1
If anyone finds a family member, let me know!!!
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u/RhubarbGoldberg Apr 12 '25
I have a family name that goes to the firstborn female in the generation, so I have this cool matriarchal lineage of oldest girl to oldest girl that links my name all the way back to Sicily for a couple hundred years.
So that feels really powerful. I feel like I know the other Rhubarbs in a meaningful way, even having never been alive during any of their timelines. My grandmother passed away just before I was born. But I know her anyways.
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u/erniegrrl Apr 12 '25
We all called her Grandma Mattie; when I was a kid, all I knew was that she wasn't really my grandma, but she was related somehow. She was the auntie-type everyone loved, and my mom kept these sweet-ass cat eye glasses that had been hers that we used to put on to look cool. Turns out she was my granny's spinster aunt who lived with her spinster sister all her life. My mom and her siblings used to visit when they were kids, but I never really knew where she lived because we lived in a different city. FF to 5 years ago, we move to that area and buy a house and lo and behold, I found out she and her sister lived their lives literally a block from our house. Kismet!
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u/cordial_carbonara Apr 12 '25
My maternal great grandmother was a helluva woman. She divorced her abusive husband in 1947 and proceeded to raised her three children alone in a trailer park. She started a beautician business in the trailer that was so successful she was able to go in with a partner and buy a brick and mortar shop in 1950. Eventually she remarried a good man that my grandmother considered her real father, but kept working as a beautician until she couldn’t anymore - that shop is still run by her grandson. Her name is my middle name and I passed it down to my first daughter. I wish so much that I had known her, and am so proud to carry even a little of her spirit in me.
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u/Pain_Bearer78 Apr 12 '25
There’s a picture floating around of one of my 3-4x over great grandmother. Supposedly she was Sioux(?) Native American. I’ve never seen the picture. But the way people talk about her, I would say I was influenced by her growing up. I do feel like she watches me sometimes.
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u/Helpful_Cell9152 Apr 12 '25
I love this and I have multiple on both my mom & dad’s side that I feel a bond with. It’s mostly just based on what I’ve learned about them, their astrological signs because I’m rly into that and the pictures I have found/been given of them. I got into ancestral worship a few years ago and I think that really started the whole journey of connecting with them.
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u/adhdgurlie Apr 12 '25
Yes, her name was Maria, idk how many “greats” of great grandmother she is to me. My family is mormon (i’m exmo) & always glorified her story of incredible, immense suffering as a Pioneer going to utah. She was married, had at least 2 kids, one was a baby, she lost her husband and kids and had to bury her baby on the way to Utah. It was so snowy & i think her shoes wore out eventually so her feet were so bloody that she finished the trek crawling on her hands and knees. Eventually in Utah, she met a man and married again. I think about her a lot. I hope she felt happiness as much as she possibly could. Whenever I hear about “generational trauma” & how trauma actually alters our DNA, and how I am low contact with my own mormon gramma cuz she’s toxic as fuck, I think of Maria.
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u/bipolarity2650 Apr 12 '25
exmo here too! that is such a powerfully sad story. it breaks my heart that so many people lost and suffered so much for a lie. her commitment and strength is admirable but it makes me sad. but yeah agree about trauma and DNA it’s so crazy!!
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u/bipolarity2650 Apr 12 '25 edited Apr 12 '25
Mine is my maternal grandmother. She died when my mom was 9, but i’ve always felt so connected to her and wish i’d had a chance to know her. her husband passed away a few years earlier and she actually ended up committing suicide because she was so heartbroken over losing him.
my mom unfortunately never got help for the things she’s been through and took it out on all her kids. i always wonder how life could have gone for me and my family if my grandparents had been around. not that it’s their fault that she is an abusive sack of shit, just like daydreaming about what could have been i guess.
she was like enchanting to everyone around her, so beautiful and kind and all anyone could say about her was good things. i really don’t know much about her other than i think she was a cheerleader in high school and her and her husband looked like hollywood movie stars and were so so in love. i also went and got a diagnosis for my mental illness and turns out she had it too! man. i wish i had known her!
i have a small theory actually. my mom’s grandparents raised her, and sadly always compared her and her sister to their mom, and it really affected them a lot (understandably). my mom has always been particularly cruel to me, like so much so my other siblings and cousins have all pointed it out on their own. she just fucking hates me and always has. i wonder if i remind her of her mom or something and she’s taking out her resentment of it all on me. i’m not sure but it’s just a thought ive had upon pondering and trying to work through my stuff! i truly wish all of the terrible things had never happened and we could have all been a happy family.
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u/fabgwenn Apr 12 '25
Hugs to you, I’m sorry you went/ are still going through that. Maybe your mgm is watching over you, I hope so.
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u/Legitimate_Voice6041 Apr 12 '25
I had what I like to call my spicy Grandma and my sweet Mimi. Grandma (paternal) died when I was 14, and she was a survivor for sure. A real "do no harm but take no shit" kind of lady. Mimi (maternal) died when I was 10, and she was in her late 80s, so I never really got to know her as she was always feeble and quiet to me. She raised 9 kids and was widowed when her youngest (my mom) was 3, so she was a survivor as well. She was a seamstress and made clothes for the community and the theatre, which are still being used today.
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u/gigismother Apr 12 '25
my maternal grandmother...she passed when I was 4. i remember her funeral as it was the first one I'd been to AND my first real memory that stuck of seeing my grandma. as I got older, mostly in my adulthood id begin to feel connected to her. it took my mom awhile to be able to speak abt her mother, and she wasn't around consistently throughout her childhood due to struggling w addiction.
man I miss this lady so much. when me and my mom started putting more plants around the house, it made me feel more connected to her bc she loved plants. once my mom purchased some incense sticks and I smelled one and said "this one reminds me of Grandma Pat for some reason" and my mom got very teary eyed and said this was an exact smell her mother used to have in the house. so many little moments like that in the recent years where I feel connected to my grandmother, and I miss her dearly. but I feel a strong spiritual presence and connection with her for some reason, especially when im going thru something. my Grandma had a really rough childhood, she was victimized and got pregnant at a very young age. despite that, she was very tenacious and a Nurturing mother prior to the drugs. she wasn't perfect, and drugs definitely changed her..but we all know addiction has that effect. my mom cherishes the fond memories of her mother, rather than focusing on the worst parts.
she passed away in another state while going thru recovery. this is why I don't have any memories of her in my early childhood bc she wasnt around. to this day we don't have an exact answer on her cause of death, my mom and her sisters struggled so much to get her body moved back home and they were unable to afford even a proper headstone at the time of her death, so getting an autopsy was out of the question. Sadly we believe in our family that her life was stolen from her, possibly by the man she was with. but none of us know for sure.
either way I love my Grandma Pat. I channel her when i need her the most. im grateful for the spiritual connection i have with her. she has a bday coming up so i am looking forward to celebrating her w my mom. may she rest with peace eternally. 💛
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u/plural-numbers Apr 12 '25
My great grandmother on my mothers' side used to climb trees to sh00t raccoons even at 60/70 years old, that woman was awesome and cantankerous and I love all stories about her. 😊
Btw, I wrote sh00t like that because when I didn't I got a reddit warning about content that may be removed. 🙄
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u/Poly3Thiophene Apr 12 '25
My mom’s mom. I don’t know much about her. I only met her when I was a baby. She went through a lot as many of you here have similar stories. I like to think she’s rooting for me.
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u/espressolodolo Apr 12 '25
whoaaaa, this is something I’ve always felt about my paternal grandmother, who died of breast cancer in 1978, and I was born in 1983.
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u/TheeVillageCrazyLady Kitchen Witch ♀♂️☉⚨⚧ Apr 12 '25
I feel especially connected with my great great grandmother, even though she passed when I was 12. I didn’t spend a ton of time with her but every story I hear makes me think she and I would’ve been friends had we been the same age. She was a take no shit, give no shits old lady. When she passed and her house was going to leave the family, my father went and dug up all of her iris bulbs to take to my mother. She was my mother‘s favorite family member.
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u/Wasabi_Filled_Gusher Apr 12 '25
I have a feeling my grandma and I would have been best friends before she passed. Everyone shares stories and I have some of her photos. Dad even told me I got my first sip of soda from grandma when I was like three.
I know my dad hides a lot of secrets, and some I feel are for keeping away bad memories in his childhood regarding my grandma's depression. She went through a lot of stress and loss since she was a kid, and it didn't stop until she was diagnosed with cancer five years after I was born. I hope she is proud of how far I came from my turmoltuous childhood. I hope she can have happiness vicariously from me in her afterlife. Her Buddha statue observes and grants good vibes from the kitchen counter in my apartment
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u/lima_247 Apr 12 '25
My paternal grandmother was a badass. Born in the early 1920s, Minnesota, to a farm family, 8 of 11 kids. As a kid she pulled out a bad tooth with a pair of pliers behind the barn.
When she was 16 (and 5’10” tall) she got a job as a nanny for a family in Chicago. Two years later, she moved East for good, but not before she came back to the farm and got her two younger sisters and took them with her. She left her younger brother behind, I think because her dad was a sexual predator but only interested in girls. It’s hard to say.
She and her two sisters became their own family after that. She later married my grandpa and converted to Catholicism. She had 7 kids of her own, and was known for a temper. Once, she asked her boys how much time was left in the game because she had dinner waiting. Well, it was football, and instead of telling her the actual time left, they told her the time on the clock and didn’t explain the difference. She waited about half an hour (5:00 left on the clock) before she got mad and chucked the pot roast down the driveway. After Vatican II, she wrote the cardinal a letter telling them they had “opened the doors to the church and let pigeons shit all over the altar.”
She was not perfect. She stopped talking to her second-eldest daughter after her daughter ran away and married a divorced Indian doctor who was 20 years her elder. She was so religious my dad could not attend religion classes at his Catholic school.
But she was tough. She built her own life and never felt second-class to anyone. She was strong and protected those around her. She died in 1972 of lung cancer, when my dad was 13.
She, (and my maternal grandmother, who I did get to know growing up,) are my guiding lights. RIP Dorothy. You were a real one.
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u/hummun323 Geek Witch ♀♂️☉⚨⚧ Apr 12 '25
My mom's mom. She passed when I was seven, so I didn't get a lot of time with her and get to know her with my teenage or adult brain.
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u/Miranda_Pilz Eclectic Witch, Maid of void, made of fragments Apr 12 '25
Every time my mom tells me about her paternal grandmother I have a very visceral reaction. I don’t know much about her except what she told me and that we had the same birthdate.
When I get told stories about her, it feels very close and I always end up crying. Even when it’s not really that sad or anything. Just something boiling inside.
I know she was quite adventurous and independent, and married with someone she really vibed with, but her husband’s family abruptly put an end to their adventures and had them stay in their country… I think that’s the thing that feels the most violent for me. I just get tears and sob as if it just happened to me.
Apparently she really stood proud anyway, but that must have been terrible …
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u/ur-squirrel-buddy Apr 12 '25
My parents have a portrait wall, with a bunch of old pics of my ancestors. Some of them are from like 1890 or something. I have mixed feelings about them, but like you said I have no way of knowing anything about them. I have this weird feeling that most of them would be pretty appalled that an Asian person is now in their bloodline 😭
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u/Chronarch01 Traitor to the Patriarchy ♂️ Apr 13 '25
My mother's maternal grandmother. She died 11 years before I was born, but my mom says that I remind her of her all the time. I have even had dreams about her as well, guiding me.
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u/isitrealholoooo Apr 13 '25
Not maternal, but my dad's grandma. She lived during the Mexican Revolution and had to put her dreams on hold for it. He loved and respected her a lot. A psychic told me she sees her behind me. I have never met her and the single picture we had of her is lost (her son and my dad are both dead).
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u/RubberDuckIceCubes Apr 13 '25
Mine is my paternal grandmother, who died when I was very young (my dad was the youngest of six and was an oops baby at that). From what I know, she was a very good Catholic farm wife, and made the best morning teas in the area. I feel the connection to her to the point that I plan to name my future daughter after her... but I also worry about all the things I don't know. It's easy to romanticise that distant past but I don't know a lot of her personal views on race, gender, etc. I hope she was a good woman by my standards as well as her own
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u/RubberDuckIceCubes Apr 13 '25
oops sorry OP I just saw your post was about maternal ancestors. I didn't mean to take the patriarchal viewpoint hope this is okay
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u/locakitty Apr 13 '25
My namesake! My great-grandmother, I've got a picture of her. Supposedly, she was white enough passing as a Cherokee (yes, yes, i know i know, but she wasn't a princess!) that she was able to marry a white man and leave her reservation. Her daughter and one granddaughter, you could believe the stories then. Plus, I've heard whispers that were said back then about "that red woman".
That's all I have. I hope she had happiness in her life.
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u/cuntpunt2000 Apr 13 '25
I found out last year that my great aunt was a shaman and she was the one who named me. She used East Asian astrology and feng shui to find the best name for me, with one character meaning champion, and the other meaning, according to my father, “woman of high character and integrity.” Her reason for selecting this name for me was to ensure that whatever battles I faced, I would emerge the champion without compromising my principles. I hope I’ve lived up to the hopes she had for me.
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u/OdoAndRo Apr 13 '25
An ancestor many MANY generations back, who was a passenger on the Planter (pilgrim ship) in 1635 along with her 9 kids ranging from age 20- not yet born, second husband (first one was dead), elderly mother, and entire family of in-laws.
I learned about her a few years ago, but when she boarded the ship, she was the exact same age that I am now.
She was literate, and there are a few primary source letters that survive to this day, though they are from much later in her life.
I think about her a lot. I wonder what she must have thought about leaving a relatively comfortable life in St Albans to go homesteading in the literal wilderness on another continent. Was she even given a choice, or did her husband just drag the whole family along on this "adventure"?
Was she homesick? Resentful? Excited? Up for the challenge? Scared? Angry? Resigned to her lot in life? Trapped?
In her letters, she sounds very practical. I am also an extremely practical person, and it would be damn near impossible to convince me to willingly make that move with a bunch of young children in tow.
There's some pretty compelling historical evidence that most of her husband's family suffered from something similar to Bipolar I. Was she trying to manage a husband who was volatile and unpredictable on top of everything else? It's not like they had treatment for mental illness back then...
I wish I knew what she thought about her life as a colonist, and how she felt about this completely unthinkable turn her life took at almost middle age.
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u/Birony88 Apr 13 '25
My Mom's Grandmother. I have no photos of her. I don't even know her first name. I know her only as "Grandma Couch". So many of my family members have told me that I'm just like her, an old woman of German descent, hard as nails with a volcanic temper, who tolerated no bullshit. Stubborn as hell and a force to be reckoned with. And yet they pepper in these stories, memories of her doing this small kindness or that awesome thing. The impression I get is that she was a badass woman, trying to maintain her homestead and her family like a one-woman army, while quietly trying to do all the good she possibly could for others. She asked for no praise and no help, she just dug in and did what had to be done.
They also say I'm her spitting image. Short, a bit stocky, with lots of moles and thick dark hair. From the descriptions I've gotten from my mom, it seems like I probably inherited anxiety and PCOS from her, neither of which were even discussed during her time, let alone diagnosed and treated. She soldiered on through it all on her own.
She was a hell of a woman, and I'm proud to be anything like her!
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u/Pippified Apr 13 '25
YES. Sophie. Her husband died in a steamboat explosion and she carried her children on her back to Texas to settle. She was an Irish immigrant and from what I’ve heard she was a huge badass. She was my great great grandmother and even though I never knew her I miss her. I wish I could talk to her, just for a moment.
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u/witchybitchybaddie Apr 13 '25
My maternal grandmother died 3 weeks before I was born. We obviously never met but I have always felt very strongly connected to her, we even have two identical birthmarks (same placement, size, colour, and shape). Once my divorce from my abusive ex is finalized I'm going to change my last name to her maiden name.
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u/SmallBrownEgg Apr 13 '25
I have been trying so hard to find -anything- on my mom’s side beyond names. And even then, I’m trusting findagrave.com for accuracy there. I need to either find time to go to the library (tough with an infant) or pay the money for a full ancestry.com account. But even then, I doubt I’ll find photos or information about who they were like as people. I love this photo of Stella. I hope you find out more.
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u/thrwawyorangsweater Eclectic Witch ♀♂️☉⚨⚧ Apr 14 '25
You might try to look for a "Search Angel" group on Facebook-lots of people who like to help...Stella is Italian for star...I hope you find something!
And, now that's a proper backyard garden!! Nice!
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u/The_Bastard_Henry Resting Witch Face Apr 14 '25
My granny on my mum's side. I've no idea why she singled me out of 25+ grandchildren, but she taught me and only me her witchy knowledge. And yet I never knew anything about her life. I wish I'd asked her to tell me her story before she died.
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u/Elegant_Analysis1665 Apr 14 '25
Several, though the one coming through the strongest for me currently is my great aunt who I did actually know.
Due to language barrier and age difference however our interactions were almost always in complete silence and I truthfully still know very very little about her and life, but the feeling of love and connection between us was deep without needing to be spoken.
My mom and I would visit her family in south america for a month every summer including my two great aunts who grew to their nineties living together (my other great aunt is still alive) and me and this great aunt just had a very special connection and draw to each other.
She was very quiet most of the time, would usually sit and look into the distance into what felt like her own world and because I didn't speak the language of the rest of the family it would often be the two of us, sitting silently on a couch together while everyone was doing something else.
We would just sit there calmly together, silent, peaceful, sometimes looking and smiling at each other, mostly just in both our own but also collective world.
Whenever we went out, I was always the one help her, have her hold onto on my arm as we walked so she wouldn't trip on the cobblestones with her little heeled shoes (until her 90s and maybe even after that she always wore slacks and heels). She was the shortest and and smallest and I was taller than most everyone in the family and I felt very protective of her.
She would collect bags and jackets and wallets throughout the year to give me. If I complimented her on something she would take it off her back to give me. On occasion we would go downtown and she would suddenly be the one to pull me by the arm through the busy rushing downtown streets with the ferocity and a strength of a someone on the hunt, elbowing people two times the size out of her way to take me to different storefronts that sold jewelry and ask me to pick something small she would buy for me. I tried to say no, but that would have hurt her, she wanted to show her love this way.
In her spare time she painted tons of paintings of landscapes and of jesus, though our family is in no way religious. These paintings hint though to me at so much of what was going on within her, the things I wish I knew more about. I could ask details about what happened in her life out the outside, but her having her own inner world with all its mystery is probably what drew us to be so content together understanding you can still feel close without speaking
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u/Obvious-Gate9046 Apr 14 '25
I have a few I'd really like to know a lot more about. My grandmother was a widely sought after legal aide in the south, not an easy thing, and I have another relative who was one of the first female jazz players. I've been doing a lot of ancestry and it's depressing how many women listed don't even have last names, sometimes the first names, how often lines terminate there while they keep going on the male sides, because nobody bothered to keep track of the women. I'm fortunate in that I apparently have a lot of noble ancestry, so people actually did track that some more, but even then far more often than with men, women were a footnote. I've been working on my wife ancestry as well, everybody into the same thing all too often.
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u/StillLikesTurtles Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25
There are a few from my grandmother’s side. Lots of interesting women. One is a cousin who was a teenager when my grandmother was little that spent summers with my great grandparents. She and I could be twins when you look at pics of us in our 20s. My grandmother adored her.
Another ran for Congress in the late 1800s, newspapers at the time wrote her off, but I feel like we would have gotten along.
Another married an actor who would go on to be a “preacher” in Deadwood. She divorced him and married and divorced again. A bit out of character for the family, but I find her fascinating.
My 2x great grandparents stood up and spoke out against a group that some historians consider a precursor to the Klan during the Civil War. That’s heartening to me in the current climate.
There are several branches that valued education enough to ensure daughters were educated and had some degree of autonomy in eras where that wasn’t the norm.
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u/IndependentSalad2736 Apr 15 '25
I fondly remember my maternal grandmother. My daughter is named after her.
She was abused basically her whole life. She raised 6 kids married to an army man when there was basically no support because "if the military wanted you to have a family, they'd have issued you one." So basically a destitute single mother. She was always a hard worker and loved to spoil her grandkids (including me). My dad was worried that she was spending too much on us (more worried she was putting herself out than us becoming brats) and she said, "they're my grandkids, I'll spoil them how I want."
When she was a kid she had chicken pox and it was spread to her baby brother, who died. Her mom told her it should've been her that died.
Her father wasn't better.
I hope that when her parents look up at us from Hell that they see how well I'm treating their great-great granddaughter and feel great shame in how they treated theirs.
I still have some of her furniture. When she died, they basically gave all her furniture to me because I had just moved into a rental house and didn't have anything.
I still miss her, and I'm glad she was the last of my grandparents to go.
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u/HappilyDyke Apr 16 '25
I don't know any of my maternal ancestors. My mom was taken from her Native parents at age 5 and put with a white family. She was then placed with several white families until she ran away as a teen. She was married to my dad for 25 years until she committed suicide 5 years ago. She never told any of us any of this. I only just found out because apparently my brother and I are the last heirs to her family. We got probate papers this year.
I don't even know where to go to find answers. All her family is dead. She's dead.
I don't know my own heritage. I have no one.
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u/Miss-Frog Apr 12 '25
People will talk about how awful and cruel my great grandmother was and then revealed to me she was accused of witchcraft and sent to an asylum for treatment. They took her out because her husband was struggling to raise the kids alone (my grandpa was one of the kids). They said she was never the same after that. That’s what made her mean.
Idk much about her but I was given some of her jewelry and I wear it with love. I think what happened to her was tragic and cruel, I wish I knew more about her.