Article created by: Gabija Palšytė
There are many things we can learn from our ancestors, whether it’s pearls of wisdom or captivating stories about them. Once you strike up a conversation with a representative of an older generation, they might share some quite unexpected tales (whether their own or something their predecessors have gone through), from happenings at the warfront to love stories that sound like something straight out of a movie.
Lots of fascinating examples were shared by the members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community. The user Careless_Put_4770 asked them what was the most interesting story they have of an ancestor past their parents' generation and the redditors provided quite a few of them. Scroll down to find their answers, which might inspire you to delve deeper into the stories of your ancestors yourself.
I come from a VERY conservative family and when I realized I was gay, it terrified me to come out. I came out to my mom and she didn’t have an easy time handling it, but within 48 hours she was my best friend and a strong advocate. The turn around was very strange. She also told me to never be scared to tell anyone in the family, which again seemed like being set up for failure. But it really wasn’t. Everyone was super supportive and kind and very defensive of me.
For years I wondered why and then one day I was at a family do with my grandmother and her four sisters - the Matriarchs of each branch of the family and the five most terrifying but loving women you ever met.
They pulled me aside and we’re VERY interested in how I was doing, if anyone in the family had been mean to me, and if anyone had given me a hard time about being “special” as they called it. I said no, surprisingly everyone in the family had been lovely. They didn’t ask any more questions but told me to come to them if anyone was being mean. This was so overwhelming to see these elderly, super conservative women being so supportive, so I cornered my mom and demanded to know why they were so nice.
Then my mom told me about Ravi. Ravi was a beautiful, charismatic, loving, kind, sweet teenager who was my grandmother and her sisters best friend in the 1940s. He was allowed to hang out with the women because he was “not a threat” (ie he was super gay but you didn’t talk about it). My gran and her sister’s absolutely adored Ravi, until one day his personality changed. He became dark and withdrawn. Eventually he killed himself.
My gran and her sisters were devastated and didn’t know why, until they found out that Ravi had fallen in love with a boy and his parents had figured out. Ravi’s parents destroyed him psychologically through isolation, berating and eventually questionable medical interventions. Ravi’s soul was broken so he took his life. My grand and her sisters never ever forgave their community or Ravi’s parents for what they did to him, so when my mother called my grandmother weeping and screaming that I was gay, my grandmother came down on her like a tonne of bricks with all the power and might that she could muster. She told my mother that if I was ever treated differently, If I was ever isolated or bullied by a member of the family, they would have to face the consequences of dealing with gran and her sisters.
Her sisters also told all their children to treat me with respect and love, all without me knowing, because they never wanted anyone to go through what their best most loved male friend had all those years ago.
I owe my happiness to that man, fly free my brother, wherever you are x.
TL;DR - a gay predecessor made my family supportive.
My great grandfather was from a wealthy family back in Greece / Albania in the 1890s. He had a tryst with a peasant girl who got pregnant. Rather than marry the peasant girl the family arranged for my great grandfather to be sent to America. Not to be outdone, the peasant girl and her family saved up enough money and sent her to America after him. She found him in New York, and they got married there.
Dutch here. My maternal grandfather was part of a group of people that hid Jews and Allies in a hidden village (underground house) made in the woods during WO II. They where later discovered by the SS but they still managed to save a lot of people. To this day you can visit the remains of the hidden village to see what it was like.
My Grandfather was posted as missing in action, believed killed (WWI). My grandmother was expecting their first child. That usually meant they were actually killed so Grandmother was certain that she would never see him again. Then there was a knock at the door and Grandfather was standing there in the hospital blue uniform soldiers wore to show they were receiving treatment. He had been knocked unconscious by the explosion everyone thought killed him and sent to a hospital close to his home, without being identified. When he came around and was otherwise unhurt they gave leave to go home before being sent back to the front. Grandmother went into slightly early labour caused by the shock! Grandad survived the war, my grandmother and the baby were both ok and all lived quite long and healthy lives.
My grandfather's grandfather was found wandering naked in a forest. He was estimated to be around 8 or 9 years old. He didn't speak but understood when spoken to. After a few years he started talking but was never able to recall anything about his life before he was found by the family that took him in; my great-great-great grandparents. They raised him as their own and all the stories say he turned out pretty normal.
My Great-Grandmother had two suitors - a man in America and a man in Manchester, UK. The guy in America bought her a ticket to to cross the Atlantic and be with him, and she was set to go, but at the last minute the guy in England proclaimed his love and won her over. And that’s how my great-grandparents got together, as opposed to my great-grandmother dying on The Titanic.
My great great** grandmother was Winston Churchill’s parlour maid. When she left service to get married, he begged her to stay as he was fond of her, and when she said no, he gifted her a table and chair from his own parlour as a wedding gift. My parents have the chair in my mum’s office, and the table is currently in storage.
One of my great-grandmother’s grandma was an aristocrat. She fell in love with a peasant boy working on their lands.
Her father told her he would disown her if she wanted to be with that boy.
So one dark night the boy got my grandma escaped from their home and they ran away.
Needless to say she was disowned.
And that’s the story of why I have to work now, instead of just seeing my monthly allowance to show up on my bank account.
Omnia vincit amor.
My grandmother’s grandmother walked the trail of tears. Her parents did no make the walk (assumed dead). When she reached Oklahoma she was adopted by a white couple. She was put down as half Cherokee, half white on the roll because of this.
My grandfather (born in 1889) grew up on a farm. One day he and his brother were digging out a tree stump using mattocks, each one swinging alternately from the opposite side. His brother mistimed a downswing and clocked my grandfather on the head. His father put some kind of liniment on the wound and put him to bed.
When my grandfather woke up the next morning, he was blind. His father thought he was faking it to get out of doing his chores and told him to get to work. My grandfather felt his way out to the barn and fed the sheep, and by then his father realized he was telling the truth.
His sight returned in a few days. My grandfather went on to become a doctor and realized that the blow from the mattock had damaged the optic nerve -- fortunately, not permanently.
He served as an Army doctor in France during World War I, when he also had to deal with the great flu pandemic of 1918.
Maternal grandmother's parents met in a train wreck.
G.Grandpa was traveling second class, with a window seat. G.grandma was traveling Coach. Something was on the tracks causing a derailment and many injuries. G.Grandma, being seated further back, was fine and pitched in to help those in need. G.Grandpa had hit the window and his ear was cut very badly, almost sliced off his head (almost). She was tearing off strips of her petticoat the use as bandages (ooh la la!). Until he died he teased that his left ear was lower than his right because 'she put it on wrong'.
Great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa Andrew threw rocks through his landlord's windows in Cork, jumped onto the next ship to Canada, started a farm on the Ottawa River, changed his surname to MacDonald so people would think he was Scottish, and imprisoned the tax collector in his cellar when they came to demand land taxes from him.
My great great etc grandfather was the first convict sent to Australia to be freed after serving his time. He went on to develop the wheat that we grow here. (European wheat died. )
My grandfather was born in Poland. He was around 16 when the wars broke out, and because he was a fit, healthy, blonde haired, blue eyed farmer boy, he was sent to work in German farms. Before that though, he was put into a concentration camp while they figured out where to send all their new slaves.
During this time, his older brother actually escaped. My grandfather says he stole a gun climbed the fence, tanked the cuts from the barbed wire, and just ran. He made the escape with a few other people, but all but two of them were killed. My grandfather was supposed to join them, but he said he just froze and chickened out. His brother later joined some battallion, where he later died fighting nazis.
My grandfather was eventually moved to a small town in Germany, and was housed with landowners who grew some sort of crop. He was set to work.
This small town was actually secretly against the war though, and the family he stayed with used their house as a safehouse to smuggle Jews. They had the whole "hidden room under the floorboards" thing. Luckily, they were never discovered. They, and a few other families in the town, wanted my grandfather to marry their daughters and stay in Germany. He did stay in Germany for a few months, he said he also joined the peace corps. Once he had his full of that, he simply jumped on the first boat out of there with nothing but his tool belt and the clothes on his back. That boat went to Australia, which is where he met my grandmother, and yada yada yada, I was born.
He had such a fascinating, terrifying life, full of turmoil and danger. But one thing never left him: his passion for plants. Right up until the week he passed away at age 86, he was still climbing ladders to trim his trees, hand pollinating all his bean plants with a feather, and shooting Indian Mynas out of the tree with his slingshot to let the native birds have the nest.
Its not really a story, but once at a family gathering (I was around 14-15) we were talking about the church (not neccessarily in a good way) and my cousin (who was ~12 at the time.) asked us to switch topics cuz its boring, my grandmothers answer (80 at the time, and have only left her village a few times and never the country) was: “Listen to everything my child, if you like it, keep it, if you dont, just let it go, thats how you grow.” And that for me at the time, coming from her, was life changing for me, it opened up things I never thought I’d like. The sentence itself, made me grow, the consequences, I can not even describe. Life changing.
My dad's aunt was living in Messina, Italy in the early 1900. In 1908 there was a huge earthquake that destroyed half the city and she was stuck under the rubble for 3 whole days right next to the bodies of her parents and 3 brothers without being able to move an inch. When she was found she didn't even have a broken bone and went on to have 10 children of her own and die at 97 years old.
My great grandfather grew up super poor in Italy. He had an infection of some sort in his arm that would kill him if untreated, and because he was poor, it was left untreated. So one day, at age 14, he and a few friends found a bottle of liquor, a tree stump, and an axe. The only pictures I've seen of him, he only has one arm
My grandfather owned a hardware store in downtown Bogotá when the April 9th 1948 riots.
People burned and looted places.
He had to lay down among dead bodies simulating being dead to survive and not being killed.
During the Partition of India in 1947, my grandmother and her family (Sikh) lived in a village with Hindus, Sikhs and 1 Muslim family.
During the brutality of it all, people in the village wanted to attack the Muslim family but my great grandfather intervened and stopped them from being hurt. He then helped them leave the village to make their way to Pakistan from the Indian side of the Punjab where my grandmother’s village was. We still do not know to this day what happened to the Muslim family and whether they survived.
My great grandfather came home early from work one day to find his wife in bed with the milk man(or mail man. I can’t remember). Either way, there was a scuffle and the milk/mail man went out the bedroom window and died 2 days later in the hospital. This happened in the same house that I grew up in because the house was in my family for a very long time.
I tried looking up news articles and such on the incident but was never able to find anything. This was a common discussion at parties with my family and I always tried to learn more about my great grandfather. Turns out he was an undertaker. Go figure.
Great grandad was a jewish shop owner in Italy in the1930s. One day a fascist March turns into a lynch mob chasing a communist. The communist slips away, finds my family's shop, and begs for shelter because jews are known commie sympathizers. But a gun welding fascist comes to the store looking for him, because he knew it was owned by jews and jews are known commie sympathizers. My great grand dad denies hiding the commie, but the fascist says if they don't bring him out immediately he'll shoot my great grand dad. So great grand dad snatches the gun and kills the fascist on the spot. He got acquitted for self defense but they had to escape Italy 24 hrs after the acquittal, the fascist party graciously sent a notice allowing them 24 hrs to leave before they killed all the men of the family.
My grandma (mother's side) was abandoned in an orphanage by my great grandmother because she wanted to run off and marry another man, and he would not take her children. So my great grandfather, who was in the army during WW1, came to see them and promised to come back after the next battle. It was the somme, he died.
The same grandmother did not know how old she was, by the time she obtained a copy of her birth certificate later in life, she found out she was a year older than she thought she was.
My Dad's Grandfather was an advertising artist, semi famous at the time, there is an original of his passed down in our family, it is with my dad's oldest brother now. It is of a boy running down a famous road in my northern city past a famous theatre still being used to this day.
