Jumping to Judgment

I've been doing some genealogical research, mostly on my father's side. One line can be traced all the way back to the United Kingdom, with various stops outlined on their movement west. Lots of details, even a couple books. Little books. Except for one historical book in which they appear throughout, usually in the role of scoundrels or worse. Not what I expected to find, but intriguing and inspiring in an odd way. At least they made names for themselves, till they got banished. Then they apparently found religion in this country, even founded a Presbyterian church at one stop.

But the other side of the line was mostly mystery, till recently. All we knew about my paternal great-grandfather (let's call him Oscar because that was his name) was that he showed up, married a young daughter of the known family, then they moved to another city. We knew he also later left her and the kids for the mountains of the wild west, only to return 10 years later and died of "consumption." I pictured him as carefree young adventurer who found himself in a shotgun wedding, got tired of that and left, only to spend his time carousing till he got sick.

Not a nice picture, though not a source of pride. A bit tawdry. But as I dug into the records -- scant and scattered they were -- I think I learned better. I believe (records are so spotty back then) that he was born in wedlock to a couple, the younger of two sons. His dad died of "consumption" (TB) when Oscar was about 3, and Oscar was raised by his mother's extended family -- the mother remarried, to a very respectable man who apparently didn't want or couldn't afford to raise my Oscar or his brother (who doesn't show up nearby and being older may have gone off on his own).

Anyway, the brothers moved to my hometown, where they both had respectable jobs for their age -- warehouse work and clerking and stayed in a boarding house. Until Oscar made his trip south and found a wife. They may well have moved back north (to my home town again) simply because they wanted to, and he had contacts there already. Or, since the wife had an extended family all around, Oscar may simply have felt smothered. Anyway, they left.

Then Oscar took off for Colorado. Under this new scenario, he may well have had a respectable rational. He may well have gotten latent TB from his deceased father, which for some reason became active sometime after his marriage, and in those days the preferred treatment for TB was to high-altitude cities. Not long before Oscar came back home, his oldest daughter died around the age of 10. The obit doesn't say, but there's a good likelihood she died of TB, which of course would likely have devastated Oscar. In any event, he returned to his wife's hometown to die (perhaps demonstrating that he had no roots of his own).

If you're still with me, reader, is a point to this recitation and it is this: I was so quick to paint Oscar black based on a few surface facts, but the real story appears to be so much more complex and, well, tragic. I don't know if one can insult a person long after that person's death, or how to apologize to an insulted ancestor if that is required, but, "I'm sorry Oscar. I apologize for wrongly judging you, and hope that by digging up all this I can maybe make your story little more clear and a lot more positive -- God knows we have enough trouble with the other line, those banished bastards."