I had a great-aunt who fell in love with one of the Dillingers -- Frank -- got pregnant and wanted to marry him. My great grandfather was so mortified that she would think she could marry into the mobster family (when John Dillinger was Public Enemy Number 1) that he refused and made her give the baby up for adoption. This destroyed her; she was never the same again.
Isn't that sad that she would have to give up the love of her life and her baby because of public opinion against the family? I wonder what happened to her child. She must have worried about the baby for the rest of her life.
What happened with her and the Dillinger boy was considered so terrible, however, that no one spoke of it in the family, and it wasn't until the funeral of one of the elder members of my family that someone told me so I would keep the information alive for another generation.
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And this could easily have been hushed up so no one would know.
How many stories are there like this, that might be embarrassing at the time, but are part of the family history that would fascinate future generations?
Mel, I think there is a lot of this going on. I know someone who was in love with a famous politician (over 40 years ago) and had a child with him that was given away (after a lot of deceit including telling people the baby was born dead). I don't think anyone would be keen of any discussion of it even now, although bits leak out to the rest of us every now and again.
I even have a set of my grandmother's fingerprints from when she was (obviously) arrested in NYC. She knew a *lot* of people and the police station had no record of her arrest so we always presumed she had a friend get rid of the evidence, *except* that she personally held on to the fingerprints, and we didn't find them until after she died and had no idea what any of it was about.
Of course these were scandals (or would have been had they gotten out), but now they are just the social geneology of a family and people are very interested in knowing about them!
And it's usually too late to tell the family once one is dead...
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