TheBanyanTree: Family matters

[NancyIee at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/15/2011 5:35:57 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
pmon3694 at bigpond.net.au writes:

It's  hard now to remember why I started.  Probably, like most people, I  
just
wanted to know where I came from 


So interesting when we search out the family secrets and convoluted  lives.
 
I dug into ancestory,com awhile back and found I was not only related to  
Robert E Lee, but to several hung horse thieves, and to the grand "Madam"  of 
Omaha who took up with the then Mayor and thus continued the family line,  
creating any number of offspring and grand offspring, while protecting her  
"career" from police involvement.
 
Interesting side story about the Madam, who I met when I was about four.  
During a war when things were rationed, she brought a case of steaks to a 
family  gathering. She was about ninety at that time. She was scandously rich, 
of  course, and into her hundreds when her greedy son lusted after his 
inheritance,  and forced her to sell all her holdings and move in with him in 
California. She  had the last laugh. She sold all her jewels and holdings and 
gave them away to  others, boarded the plane to Ca, and took an overdose of 
sleeping potion while  in the air. She arrived in Ca, quite dead, penniless, 
and leaving her greedy son  nothing but the shell. My "aunt Dody" always 
ruled her own fate so well.
 
Your story will continue to grow more interesting as you search. I never  
fail to learn just how people survived in those tough times: the mail-order  
brides shipped by rail into the wild west, the Great Depression, when the  
survivors sold apples on street corners rather than leap out of tall 
buildings,  and the bootleggers in the Appalachian Mountains (of Scottish descent, 
and  another branch of my own family tree). The bootleggers, and their custom 
of  outrunning the law in sooped up vehicles, by the way, were forerunners 
of  NASCAR.
 
It was all those lifestyles that brought us where we are today.
 
NancyLee