re: Ever discovered a ancestor or relative was a very bad person

My grandfather was a very bad person

My grandfather and great uncle were both police officers under Bull Connor here in Bham during the 50's and 60's. My uncle was on tv when they integrated Ensley high school throwing rocks and bottles at the black students as they tried to go to school.

Related to Benedict Arnold

I found out that my great grandmother lost 3/4 of the family homestead to unpaid property taxes. She owed less than $3.00 We got parts of it back, but still don't have about 1/3.

My fathers father(Dad was put up for adoption, thankfully, so I've personally never even thought to call the man Grandpa) was a pretty big POS.

One story being: My dad was around 7-8 years old and was told to stack the firewood in the backyard. When he was finished, his father "informed" him that he'd done it incorrectly by shooting his dog and forcing him to bury it.

My dad may have had some drinking problems through life, but I honestly don't know how he didn't become a serial killer after a lot of what he went through before/during the time he spent in foster care.

Luckily, my grandmother was a saint and decided adoption was the route she wanted to go in having a child.

One of my (somewhat) distant cousins has been identified as a member of the lynch mob that hung Leo Frank in the aftermath of the Mary Phagan case. After that he went on to be mayor of Marietta, GA.

I have multiple Confederate soldiers in my line (and a few Yankees too), and can place someone at most every major action of the war from 1st Manassas on through the siege of Petersburg.

Strangest story I have come across in my research is from my wife's side. I found a death certificate for two of her distant cousins and it said they died from gunshot wounds within a day of each other in the same small town. I researched it a bit and found out that a father and son had been out drinking at a bar and were walking home drunk. They get in an argument and both pull guns and shoot each other, and both end up dead from the wounds.

Bootleggers through the Natchez is all I know of. And even that isn't evil. That was doing an honest job for honest people.

My lineage on my Dad's side is great (pastors and war veterans) until you hit my grandfather. Never met him. He was a traveling vaudeville actor and had two wives, one in Florida and one being my grandmother. Worse is my grandmother and his children with her was the family he had "on the side." And supposedly my grandmother's father was convicted for embezzlement in the 19th century.

Mother's lineage is pretty normal - just a lot of Irish, Germans and French who came through the Port of New Orleans in the 19th century.