We can only hope and pray that she had biological family to help, or that her estranged husband's family took responsibility for her & the kids. Dreadful, dreadful thing to have happened.
My grandfather did the same thing by leaving his family which included 6 children and moved across the county looking for work. He said he would send money. And as soon as he got established he would send for my grandmother. Neither of those things happened. Instead he started a whole other family and never sent any money. My grandmother was instantly thrown into poverty. My mom would tell my how she would try to make soup that was just a broth and would have to eat mustard sandwiches. That's a really selfish thing to do. Nothing to be proud of when an ancestor does something so cruel.
@@samanthaestrada4373 I agree. She wasn't proud- she just said it's nuts. It's simply a fact that if they hadn't done what they did, she wouldn't be here. There is literally nothing you can do about where you come from. You can't feel guilty for what they did, and you can't take credit for their accomplishments. Just proves that things weren't so peachy back then either. People are always people.
I have an uncle who did this to at least 3 different known families (and possibly a 4th family that hasn't come to light). The children are all wonderful people, but bear that heavy shadow of abandonment that colors their personalities.
That's what my grandfather did. He has 14 children that we know of. And just like you say, the children bear the heavy shadow of abandonment, a psychological trauma that never goes away.
So don t say that all his abandoned children grew up to be wonderful people because I m from abandonment circumstances myself and recently heard my own father who did the abandoning say the same thing about me and my siblings - and I stood up to him & said nothing could be further from the truth. The people who run out on their families don t want to admit their guilt. So do not dpeak for children you don t know!!!
@@jenvalla4670 you don't know ALLL abandoned children of the world, so don't speak for children you don't know. People are so different and everything is possible. Why can't they be wonderful people, I wonder?
My grandfather did something similar: in 1921 he abandoned my grandmother with five children and road the rails west. He joined the Merchant Marines and got married again (without benefit of divorce, making him a bigamist) and had another family. My grandma couldn't remarry because she was still married to him. It wasn't the Depression yet, but times were hard. She struggled until FDR was elected and a social safety net came to be.
had a great uncle that in the 1920s completely disappeared. He was from out west, but had travelled to the Midwest and vanished. Years later his mother moved to LA and while shopping her sister pointed out a pharmacy clerk that looked like her son, and it turned out to be him. He had changed his name and never told anyone, not even his wife why he had done it. There were rumors' that he was involved in bootlegging or the mob. However, through research I found he had been married in Canada during this time so I suspect he was skipping out on the marriage. You find little stories like this all the time.
I admittedly want to know what happened to the wife and kids left behind in Cologne. Ancestry comes with good and the bad sometimes, I would have to know, they are part of the man that is in my lineage.
Happened a lot. It was very easy for men to do this. My grandfather’s father did this to him. Left them in WV. He was also a white passing black man, so I think that had something to do with him leaving his family in the WV mountains to start a new life, never to be heard from again.
@@jamretro1336 You need to read about The one-drop rule is a legal guide of racial classification recognised in the 20th-century United States. It declared that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry, "one drop" of "black blood", was considered black (Negro or colored in historical words)
When completing a DNA test any family skeletons will come out. That’s what is to be expected if you’re honest with yourself. Mine showed that I had two half sisters and brother I never knew about. Also a close family member who was told about as being dead for many years was actually alive. This tale was only shared among very close family members so was blown apart as a pack of lies when two DNA tests were done. The perpetrator of the lies has caused untold mental and physical damaged to those involved over many years. They still will not admit their guilt because it will lead them to a criminal prosecution for the physical damaged done.
Through submitting my DNA I was linked to an unknown 1st cousin. Turns out my uncle, my Mothers only sibling, had an affair and fathered this cousin. He was married at the time. She's was adopted from WV. She started looking for her biological parents after her adoptive parents died. She's yet to find her biological mother. She learned that she has a half sister and a half brother by her biological father. I'd love to help her find her biological mother, but WV has closed adoption records.
Something like this happened in my family for two different people. My g-g-g grandfather was born in Ohio and started a family, then randomly went off to Canada and married twice more there. In a strange twist of fate, on a different line, my g-g grandfather immigrated to Canada as a kid, then went off to Ohio and later Illinois with a second wife. He may have even gone back to Wales after this but I’m still working that out.
My great-great grandfather was justing roaming around Dutch and English colonies, although he came back to the Netherlands for short periods of time. What he did there is very unclear (probably something colonial). After a while he just went to Indonesia and started a new family there. We only found out a couple of years ago we had Indo (dutch and indonesian mixed) family, but we're in very good contact and we have a much bigger family now. I even got to meet my great-grandmothers half-sister a few years before she died. She told us that my great-great grandfather was a very sweet man. It's still very strange to just leave your family
@@SwtTeaLdy We know he was a colonist in Indonesia, but what he actually did in English colonies is very unclear. I realise that it looks like I'm am downplaying the effects of colonialism, which is not something I wanna do!
I suspect my grandparents married in Canada (from Michigan) because my grandfather was not legally divorced from his first wife. My grandfather's first wife moved to the Upper Penisula calling herself a widow, while my grandfather declared himself a widower in the Flint area. Of course, I also suspect my grandmother didn't actually divorce her 2nd husband to marry my grandfather. She never mentioned #2...it was a surprise in my research. Our ancestors were not without their secrets.
Doing my genealogy, I found a cousin who did this same thing to at least three women! He had three or four wives, though he never divorced any of them, and children by at least three of them. He left his first (or was it his second? It's unclear) wife in America in about 1910. She was a Jewish woman from Lithuania, stuck in Colorado with three children, and grieving two baby daughters who had recently died of TB. Meanwhile, her husband, my cousin, was in the UK, "married" to a new woman, with whom he had children. He then cheated on her with yet another woman, and had kids with her! Meanwhile, there was another woman who used his name and had two daughters with his name who may or may not have been his kids. She appeared to have followed him, first with her husband, and then without, from their home town in Lithuania, to New York, then Colorado, then the UK, where he set her up as a shop keeper. The man was a cad, and the shock waves of the way he treated his children reverberate down the generations to this day.
There’s a crimean lady in Florida a former lawyer that shared her story how her husband went to another country for a job and went missing three. After decades she moved to Florida and wanted to marry her boyfriend so she had to legally declare her husband dead. and court did that in ukraine. after a few years in the middle of the night her daughter calls from ukraine and says dad came back 🤣🤣. that story was so tragic and absurd at the same time. that bastard left his family, small kids and went on living his life without ever bothering to let them know hey by the way I’m not coming back. now after 20 something years just pops in front of the door? the audacity of those kinda men never stops shocking
my great grandfather born in 1904 abandoned his wife and 4 kids in mid-1930s and never saw them again. He died in 1978, all his kids would have been under 10 when he left.
Decades ago….a friend asked for help doing her genealogy…..sadly, we discovered her grandfather had been married with 5 children,,,,left to go forge a life in America, the plan was to send for his family when he got settled…..well….he met a woman, fell in love, married her, had 6 children…..but NOBODY ever knew of the wife and children in Poland he left behind 😞😞. Until that day!
I really love the work of Mr Louis and his team. I would have never thought that my hometown Cologne would be mentioned on this show. What an amazing story. The place, Ehrenstraße, is very busy street with lots of shops, bakeries, restaurants etc. There are also plenty of old buildings from the 19 century and more way back It would be interesting to know what happened to family in Germany
It's a great example of how small the world truly is and how we are connected to so many places and people we don't know about! One person's decision can determine so much.
My great great grandfather moved from England to Scotland with his wife and children about 1900. Then in 1907 he moved by himself to Canada and remarried and had children . No sign of a divorce from his first wife. I have no idea if they kept in touch. One of his sons died in WW1 in France in 1914, no idea if he knew.
I would have loved if they actually found some of Kathryn's long lost relatives from Germany (the great-great-great-grandchildren from that other family).
Yeah, my mother's father did this. Left my gran and 3 year old mom at home, saying he was going to his sister in another town. Instead he boarded a ship to England and never returned. He married, had two daughters. My gran married and had 3 kids with her new husband, a man I have always known as grandpa. He was just the best.
I have the same exact story! My grandfather, who my mother later forgave and connected with and the end of his life, went one one winter night saying he was going to go get my mom a snowsuit. He never came back! My mom was 3. He remarried one or two times, but my mother was the one who cared for him when he was dying. And he left everything in his will to my mother, which seemed to make her feel better about the whole thing. Towards the end of his life, he gave her a key to a bank safety deposit box. She asked "what's in the box?" To which, he replied "Cash! What do you think??" She said, I thought you used to gamble a lot, and he answered, "I guess I won more than I lost!" He was a funny guy. And was clearly a good gambler, as it turned out...😁
That's amazing and mind-boggling that her 3rd great grandfather would leave his wife and kids in Germany, start over in the US creating another family, and never mention his family in Germany. Yes, we know about it now but you know how this may play out in the families. A family member in the US will meet and marry a family member in Germany. Someone in one of the families will make the connection that both sides who are married (possibly with kids) are descendants of Friedrich Wilhelm "William" Lunenschloss. Talk about kissing cousins. Wow!!!
Yea my great grandfather did the same thing. He had 3 children, one of which was my grandfather. But decided to leave out of no where and move from Canada to England. Thanks to ancestry I found he married a woman in England and had a child. He then married another woman a few years later and had four kids with her. They moved to Australia where he passed away in 2002. He never saw my grandfather or spoke to him again and my father had to warn me not to ask my grandfather about his family because it made him violent after all the years had passed.
But by now, all of William's descendants are only distant cousins so it wouldn't matter if they married each other. I believe that in the USA it's okay to marry your second cousin, meaning you had a shared set of great-grandparents and that's not all that distant.
@@npiontek The US is pretty massive and I spent 5 months in college having lunch with my cousin before we figured it out. He and I and the school were in 3 different states. Odd things do happen and more often than expected.
I would want to know more. What happened to the first wife and the six children? Are they in the records after 1854? It is possible the first wife died and the children were left with relatives and Wilhelm remarried to the girl next door and moved to America. I don't say this DID happen, but I would want to do further research.
My great-grandfather and great-grandmother only met each 4 times throughout their entire marriage and life. He was in the United States, while she and the rest of the family were back in China. At the time, the US had anti-immigration laws in place that prohibited Chinese men from bringing their wives to the country. As a result, he had a string of affairs and possibly kids while he was a "bachelor" in the US.
I remember my 10grade history teacher doing a timeline as a project… i was studying her timeline while doing mine and ask a question “ so your husband is your cousin 🤔… she put me out her class
This TH-cam video was really helpful and gave me a lot of useful information. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more. It was well-structured and easy to follow. S
WOW! I think she should at least try to trace the descendants of his first family and find-out what they know about it. That would be an interesting follow-up.
i love thisssss. this make me want to continue my research forever. ughhhh the dream to be able to have access to every archive. oh my worddddd. it'd be so amazing.
My family history I love whether good or bad they are part of us and history. It’s important we learn from them so we do not make the same mistakes and we can find joy in our past and future
Ancestry channel... Please please... could you please put up full episodes of this show? TH-cam regular is the only way I get to watch any shows. I can not afford anything above my internet cost, so that means no cable, no satellite, no streaming services... no going to the movies, no anything. I would be so ever grateful to be able to watch decent television shows on TH-cam. Thank you so much! Look forward to seeing them, hopefully.
Your ancestor’s choices can make all the difference in who you are today! Learn more about your family history with Ancestry® now: www.ancestry.com/s119580/t45174/rd.ashx
I'm still trying to find out who my real father is. The one who is said to be him denies it because he was married to another woman when he messed around with my mother, which is a bummer because he has kids that could be my half siblings and I've never met him or them even though I know where he lives. There's more to it because there was some things happening I don't want to say, but needless to say, there is no father listed on my birth certificate.
@@Queenjessa22 Please try the guest account through the Mormon Church. Then, of course, if you determine you have to pay someone check with your local genealogy service, at your library or court house.
@@Artisticmonkey2 yeeeeah, he issued a judgment by saying the coward followed his heart and fell in love. That’s a judgment too, and a very wrong one. The truth is that he abandoned an entire family and left Lord knows how many years of trauma and poverty in his wake: this is also a judgment, and an accurate one.
In Cologne the Ehrenstrasse 50 address of course still exists (although not the buildings): Ehrenstrasse is nowadays the fashionable shopping street :)
It's unfortunate we didn't keep better records before the 19th century. We can keep religious doctrines alive for millennia, yet we fall short everywhere else.
My friend in Cordoba Argentina is the daughter of a Polish immigrant and a Spanish immigrant. She is one of several siblings, one day his previous Polish wife showed up with all his previous children! He said I thought you all died in the war! ( WW2) . Now They all live in the same town near each other. 😲.
Just throwing this out - perhaps so,etching happened to the first wife and children in Germany - perhaps there was something (illness, etc.) that caused them to die. Not surprising if that did happen. On the other hand, since there is no record (that was shown) about the family back in Germany, perhaps they split and divorced amicably. Or maybe the first wife left him? So many questions still to discover - fascinating! If this was my family, I would be curious enough to start ,poking at the records of Cologne (Koln) in Germany - couldn’t add the umlaut for Koln!!!
I wonder if he had divorced the first wife. Or did he just move to America and married the young girl. This could account for no acknowledgement of his former family upon his death.
My Gr. Grandmother’s first husband left her and their infant son in rural Ukraine to “go find work on Germany”, and that he was going to send for them once he found a job. She heard nothing and after 6 months her parents (and younger siblings) were moving to Canada and they forced her (along with her son of course) to come with them because they knew the truth (that he had no intention of sending for them. My gut tells me that he ran off to the US either with someone or met and married someone once he got there. The child of that marriage died about 2 yrs after the family arrived in Canada at the age of 4 so there is no blood relative to test that theory against.
I too have story like this my grandfather left his wife and family in Canada and married my Grandmother half his age if he had not my father and his family would not exist!!!
I have discovered a divorce between 1900 and 1910 census and have no idea how to find the records for that in Houma, Terrebonne, LA. Please help with guidance
From what I have learned from these ancestry shows, sometimes it is fruitless to look for one single record. Eventually, you have to find multiple, seemingly unrelated records and combine snippets of information to come up with the complete picture. Some of these might be insurance policies, professional organizations, parish records, old cemeteries and such. Good luck.
I have great-great grandfathers who had simultaneous families...they left one family and moved down the holler and got them a new bride. My paternal 2x great grandfather left his first family to nearly starve to death. My 5x great grandfather shot a judge in Wise, VA, got on a horse, leaving his wife and family, and rode into Kentucky and started over. Apparently, this wasn't uncommon.
Those are some astounding discoveries to make! Had you uncovered them in your research, or were these insights family stories that were passed down? It would be great to learn more!
My great-grandfather married three times in the same small town. On one of the marriage certificates the name is scribbled over and was able to find the original one. Also, cannot pinpoint his age since every document has a different year of birth. Oh and have found all of his siblings' birth certificates except his. Definitely a shady dude
In 1910, my great grandmother ran away with her lover, my great grandfather’s best friend and left behind her 4 children, the youngest being six. Her lover left his wife and newborn baby. They fled to another country, got married in the church (illegally) and had 2 children together. He eventually left my g grandmother for another woman. They destroyed lives for their selfish desires. I have no sympathy for them. This kind of thing was more common than people know.
In the 19th century, it was still very common for older men to marry teen girls. One of the better-known examples is the Right Reverend H.H. Montgomery KCMG. In 1879, the 31-year-old cleric proposed to 14-year-old Maud Farrar, his Archbishop's daughter, and they married two years later. The marriage is only noteworthy because of their son Bernard, born in 1887, who became Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.
This man was messing with his neighbor’s child because she was easy access (close and young). Something tells me she got pregnant in Germany, so he ran with her because he didn’t want to face the scandal. But…Where’s the record of marriage to her? Where’s the divorce decree? Did he have a headstrong wife and a pushover child “bride”? Either way, what he did was despicable. He left his wife and *_SIX KIDS_* for her to feed and clothe on her own. People who do that are the lowest of the low.
I heard stories like this one before. All these people (men) who to the Americas and left their families in Europe and never came back for the rest of their family.
If he was living in Ehrenstrasse 50 and she was living in Ehrenstrasse 48, they would have been direct neighbors. In Germany houses are counted with even numbers on one side of the street and uneven numbers on the other side. So they would have lived literally next door!
Would love to dig into my ancestry, my last name "huhn" goes why back in German history to a chicken farmer hence the meaning of my name means "chicken" and I too am a farmer and I believe their were ties to a "huhn" in a clan in Germany that started what became the midevel times but not sure if it's relation. my grandfather was a farmer and his dad was a farmer and that's all I know..
You know what’s kinda gross to think about? If he had 6 kids with his first wife, I think I can safely assume they lived there for about 10 years and he was about 30ish when he ran away with his second wife (neighbors daughter) when she was 17… he likely saw her grow up from about the age of 7… I dunno man, it’s Woody Allen level weird to me.
Can somebody please tell me if the name Mary Cuglu is truth? I don’t think the last name is spelled correctly. The only record I can find with that last name was her marriage certificate.
It can help to check if there is a scan of the record where it's spelled Cuglu, because there are often small spelling mistakes. The name could be Cuglu, but it also could be Cogle or something else entirely. In my own searches for my family, I regularly found records in genealogical databases where there were a few letters off, particularly when the original document was written in cursive. Hope this helps. Good luck!
The cursive writings on documents are often very hard to read. My grandmother's name is listed as Jennie on a census record. He name was June, she was called Junie by her father.
Also remember in the not too distant past education was not available to everyone especially females or poor people. If that were the case their name may have been spelt phonetically by the person transcribing their details. Another thing is they may change a letter or two to distance themselves from their past. My stepfather is Spanish and did just that. You just change one letter and you are a different person.
I am from Chile, in South America, and my country, like all of Latin America, received hundreds of thousands of European immigrants, and those immigrants also left families behind in Europe and here when they arrived. It is common for all of us who have grandparents from different parts of Europe to find out later that they left many children and families out of wedlock, whom they never recognized by giving them their last name, much less supporting them financially. In fact, about 20 years ago I found out that when my grandfather arrived in Chile, back in 1907, he had a son with a woman he never recognized. That son grew up and in turn signed a family with his mother's last name, which we never knew. The same goes for other friends who have German, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, English, etc. grandparents. All had illegitimate children out of wedlock and none recognized them. That is enormous damage to a society. Children without a father, or paternal image, or affective, intellectual, material support, etc. They are miserable bastards. They have no forgiveness for abandoning their children and those poor women, many of them people who worked in their homes as cooks, etc.
We did NOT see that family scandal coming! Has your family tree revealed any surprising stories?
I feel so bad for the family he left behind. Were they able to survive without his support? What a thing to do, especially back then.
We can only hope and pray that she had biological family to help, or that her estranged husband's family took responsibility for her & the kids. Dreadful, dreadful thing to have happened.
My grandfather did the same thing by leaving his family which included 6 children and moved across the county looking for work. He said he would send money. And as soon as he got established he would send for my grandmother. Neither of those things happened. Instead he started a whole other family and never sent any money. My grandmother was instantly thrown into poverty. My mom would tell my how she would try to make soup that was just a broth and would have to eat mustard sandwiches. That's a really selfish thing to do. Nothing to be proud of when an ancestor does something so cruel.
So so sad. Ya I was surprised there was no guilt
I don't think she said she was proud but also why would she feel guilty? It's not her fault her ancestor did terrible things
@@samanthaestrada4373 I agree. She wasn't proud- she just said it's nuts. It's simply a fact that if they hadn't done what they did, she wouldn't be here. There is literally nothing you can do about where you come from. You can't feel guilty for what they did, and you can't take credit for their accomplishments. Just proves that things weren't so peachy back then either. People are always people.
Mustard
It was a different time , I don't thin she was making light of their sacrifices
I have an uncle who did this to at least 3 different known families (and possibly a 4th family that hasn't come to light). The children are all wonderful people, but bear that heavy shadow of abandonment that colors their personalities.
That's what my grandfather did. He has 14 children that we know of. And just like you say, the children bear the heavy shadow of abandonment, a psychological trauma that never goes away.
So don t say that all his abandoned children grew up to be wonderful people because I m from abandonment circumstances myself and recently heard my own father who did the abandoning say the same thing about me and my siblings - and I stood up to him & said nothing could be further from the truth. The people who run out on their families don t want to admit their guilt. So do not dpeak for children you don t know!!!
@@jenvalla4670 you don't know ALLL abandoned children of the world, so don't speak for children you don't know. People are so different and everything is possible. Why can't they be wonderful people, I wonder?
My grandfather did something similar: in 1921 he abandoned my grandmother with five children and road the rails west. He joined the Merchant Marines and got married again (without benefit of divorce, making him a bigamist) and had another family. My grandma couldn't remarry because she was still married to him. It wasn't the Depression yet, but times were hard. She struggled until FDR was elected and a social safety net came to be.
You guys, I'm in shock right now: I'm from Germany and for University moved to Cologne. I LIVED IN EHRENSTRASSE 50!!! O.o
had a great uncle that in the 1920s completely disappeared. He was from out west, but had travelled to the Midwest and vanished. Years later his mother moved to LA and while shopping her sister pointed out a pharmacy clerk that looked like her son, and it turned out to be him. He had changed his name and never told anyone, not even his wife why he had done it. There were rumors' that he was involved in bootlegging or the mob. However, through research I found he had been married in Canada during this time so I suspect he was skipping out on the marriage. You find little stories like this all the time.
Thank you for sharing your discoveries with us!
I admittedly want to know what happened to the wife and kids left behind in Cologne. Ancestry comes with good and the bad sometimes, I would have to know, they are part of the man that is in my lineage.
Wow!! So true!!
You're so right, Billy. It's amazing what you may uncover when it comes to your family history!
Many wars and conflicts...
Through ancestry DNA i found out my biological grandparents are half siblings! 😩😳Yay, thanks Ancestry! 😂
😂😂😂
@@bluebird7557 if my grandma knew that i found out and told the rest of her kids, id catch them hands im sure of it
What??? I-
@@marah3298 youre telling me!
Ummmm…I know you were like WHAT THE????!!!
Bigger question is what happened with wife and kids in Germany. There are her family and finding them ( ancestors of course)would be amazing.
Happened a lot. It was very easy for men to do this. My grandfather’s father did this to him. Left them in WV. He was also a white passing black man, so I think that had something to do with him leaving his family in the WV mountains to start a new life, never to be heard from again.
theres no such thing as white passing. he's white.
@@jamretro1336 You’re quite ignorant.
@@jamretro1336 You need to read about The one-drop rule is a legal guide of racial classification recognised in the 20th-century United States. It declared that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry, "one drop" of "black blood", was considered black (Negro or colored in historical words)
Why would a white man pass as black back then?
Do you mean a person with African ancestry "passing" as white?
When completing a DNA test any family skeletons will come out. That’s what is to be expected if you’re honest with yourself. Mine showed that I had two half sisters and brother I never knew about. Also a close family member who was told about as being dead for many years was actually alive. This tale was only shared among very close family members so was blown apart as a pack of lies when two DNA tests were done. The perpetrator of the lies has caused untold mental and physical damaged to those involved over many years. They still will not admit their guilt because it will lead them to a criminal prosecution for the physical damaged done.
Through submitting my DNA I was linked to an unknown 1st cousin. Turns out my uncle, my Mothers only sibling, had an affair and fathered this cousin. He was married at the time. She's was adopted from WV. She started looking for her biological parents after her adoptive parents died. She's yet to find her biological mother. She learned that she has a half sister and a half brother by her biological father. I'd love to help her find her biological mother, but WV has closed adoption records.
Something like this happened in my family for two different people. My g-g-g grandfather was born in Ohio and started a family, then randomly went off to Canada and married twice more there. In a strange twist of fate, on a different line, my g-g grandfather immigrated to Canada as a kid, then went off to Ohio and later Illinois with a second wife. He may have even gone back to Wales after this but I’m still working that out.
That must have been a lot to figure out in your research, DD! We hope you'll uncover more details about this in time, thanks for sharing!
My great-great grandfather was justing roaming around Dutch and English colonies, although he came back to the Netherlands for short periods of time. What he did there is very unclear (probably something colonial). After a while he just went to Indonesia and started a new family there. We only found out a couple of years ago we had Indo (dutch and indonesian mixed) family, but we're in very good contact and we have a much bigger family now. I even got to meet my great-grandmothers half-sister a few years before she died. She told us that my great-great grandfather was a very sweet man. It's still very strange to just leave your family
he was a pirate
@@cecilsharps it was in the early 1900s, so that doesn’t really make sense sadly :(
"Probably something colonial"?
@@SwtTeaLdy We know he was a colonist in Indonesia, but what he actually did in English colonies is very unclear. I realise that it looks like I'm am downplaying the effects of colonialism, which is not something I wanna do!
@@iemand2612 I think she just meant that "probably something colonial" doesn't make any sense.
This happened alot. My Great Great Grandfather left his wife and 15 kids. Went to live in California and remarried.
I suspect my grandparents married in Canada (from Michigan) because my grandfather was not legally divorced from his first wife. My grandfather's first wife moved to the Upper Penisula calling herself a widow, while my grandfather declared himself a widower in the Flint area.
Of course, I also suspect my grandmother didn't actually divorce her 2nd husband to marry my grandfather. She never mentioned #2...it was a surprise in my research.
Our ancestors were not without their secrets.
Doing my genealogy, I found a cousin who did this same thing to at least three women! He had three or four wives, though he never divorced any of them, and children by at least three of them. He left his first (or was it his second? It's unclear) wife in America in about 1910. She was a Jewish woman from Lithuania, stuck in Colorado with three children, and grieving two baby daughters who had recently died of TB. Meanwhile, her husband, my cousin, was in the UK, "married" to a new woman, with whom he had children. He then cheated on her with yet another woman, and had kids with her! Meanwhile, there was another woman who used his name and had two daughters with his name who may or may not have been his kids. She appeared to have followed him, first with her husband, and then without, from their home town in Lithuania, to New York, then Colorado, then the UK, where he set her up as a shop keeper. The man was a cad, and the shock waves of the way he treated his children reverberate down the generations to this day.
There’s a crimean lady in Florida a former lawyer that shared her story how her husband went to another country for a job and went missing three. After decades she moved to Florida and wanted to marry her boyfriend so she had to legally declare her husband dead. and court did that in ukraine. after a few years in the middle of the night her daughter calls from ukraine and says dad came back 🤣🤣. that story was so tragic and absurd at the same time. that bastard left his family, small kids and went on living his life without ever bothering to let them know hey by the way I’m not coming back. now after 20 something years just pops in front of the door? the audacity of those kinda men never stops shocking
What happened to the family in Germany
my great grandfather born in 1904 abandoned his wife and 4 kids in mid-1930s and never saw them again. He died in 1978, all his kids would have been under 10 when he left.
Decades ago….a friend asked for help doing her genealogy…..sadly, we discovered her grandfather had been married with 5 children,,,,left to go forge a life in America, the plan was to send for his family when he got settled…..well….he met a woman, fell in love, married her, had 6 children…..but NOBODY ever knew of the wife and children in Poland he left behind 😞😞. Until that day!
Through DNA ancestry my Dad at 70 yrs old found out he was adopted .
wow, I'm guessing he had at least some suspicions? Haven't done DNA testing yet but have enough to go through a lot of records first.
Could have been a switched at birth story also!
😮wow
Can't imagine next generations 100s years from now how much info and data they could pull about us.
I really love the work of Mr Louis and his team. I would have never thought that my hometown Cologne would be mentioned on this show. What an amazing story.
The place, Ehrenstraße, is very busy street with lots of shops, bakeries, restaurants etc. There are also plenty of old buildings from the 19 century and more way back
It would be interesting to know what happened to family in Germany
It's a great example of how small the world truly is and how we are connected to so many places and people we don't know about! One person's decision can determine so much.
@@AncestryUS So true. Keep up this amazing work👍 Who knows what incredible lifestories you will reveal.
@@altanreis1616 Thank you so much! We look forward to continuing to amplify stories as they come!
@@AncestryUS I'm sure it will be awesome. Can't wait to see your projects ☺️
My great great grandfather moved from England to Scotland with his wife and children about 1900. Then in 1907 he moved by himself to Canada and remarried and had children . No sign of a divorce from his first wife. I have no idea if they kept in touch. One of his sons died in WW1 in France in 1914, no idea if he knew.
I would have loved if they actually found some of Kathryn's long lost relatives from Germany (the great-great-great-grandchildren from that other family).
Yeah, my mother's father did this. Left my gran and 3 year old mom at home, saying he was going to his sister in another town. Instead he boarded a ship to England and never returned. He married, had two daughters. My gran married and had 3 kids with her new husband, a man I have always known as grandpa. He was just the best.
Hi Jan, thanks for watching.
I have the same exact story! My grandfather, who my mother later forgave and connected with and the end of his life, went one one winter night saying he was going to go get my mom a snowsuit. He never came back! My mom was 3. He remarried one or two times, but my mother was the one who cared for him when he was dying. And he left everything in his will to my mother, which seemed to make her feel better about the whole thing.
Towards the end of his life, he gave her a key to a bank safety deposit box. She asked "what's in the box?" To which, he replied "Cash! What do you think??"
She said, I thought you used to gamble a lot, and he answered, "I guess I won more than I lost!"
He was a funny guy. And was clearly a good gambler, as it turned out...😁
My grandfather also did the same, but raised all but two of his children in the new country.
That's amazing and mind-boggling that her 3rd great grandfather would leave his wife and kids in Germany, start over in the US creating another family, and never mention his family in Germany. Yes, we know about it now but you know how this may play out in the families. A family member in the US will meet and marry a family member in Germany. Someone in one of the families will make the connection that both sides who are married (possibly with kids) are descendants of Friedrich Wilhelm "William" Lunenschloss. Talk about kissing cousins. Wow!!!
Yea my great grandfather did the same thing. He had 3 children, one of which was my grandfather. But decided to leave out of no where and move from Canada to England. Thanks to ancestry I found he married a woman in England and had a child. He then married another woman a few years later and had four kids with her. They moved to Australia where he passed away in 2002.
He never saw my grandfather or spoke to him again and my father had to warn me not to ask my grandfather about his family because it made him violent after all the years had passed.
But by now, all of William's descendants are only distant cousins so it wouldn't matter if they married each other. I believe that in the USA it's okay to marry your second cousin, meaning you had a shared set of great-grandparents and that's not all that distant.
Germany is not a village. Meeting someone like that would be very unlikely. At least by chance.
Technically we're all related in some way so we're all basically kissing relatives.
@@npiontek The US is pretty massive and I spent 5 months in college having lunch with my cousin before we figured it out. He and I and the school were in 3 different states. Odd things do happen and more often than expected.
I would want to know more. What happened to the first wife and the six children? Are they in the records after 1854? It is possible the first wife died and the children were left with relatives and Wilhelm remarried to the girl next door and moved to America. I don't say this DID happen, but I would want to do further research.
My great-grandfather and great-grandmother only met each 4 times throughout their entire marriage and life. He was in the United States, while she and the rest of the family were back in China. At the time, the US had anti-immigration laws in place that prohibited Chinese men from bringing their wives to the country. As a result, he had a string of affairs and possibly kids while he was a "bachelor" in the US.
Thank you for taking the time to share with us.
Were you able to track what happened to the first family?
I remember my 10grade history teacher doing a timeline as a project… i was studying her timeline while doing mine and ask a question “ so your husband is your cousin 🤔… she put me out her class
I cannot 🤣🤣
This TH-cam video was really helpful and gave me a lot of useful information. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more. It was well-structured and easy to follow. S
WOW!
I think she should at least try to trace the descendants of his first family
and find-out what they know about it.
That would be an interesting follow-up.
i love thisssss. this make me want to continue my research forever. ughhhh the dream to be able to have access to every archive. oh my worddddd. it'd be so amazing.
Thank you for sharing, Steph. We're so glad this show inspires you to research your family history. 😊
My family history I love whether good or bad they are part of us and history. It’s important we learn from them so we do not make the same mistakes and we can find joy in our past and future
Ancestry channel... Please please... could you please put up full episodes of this show? TH-cam regular is the only way I get to watch any shows. I can not afford anything above my internet cost, so that means no cable, no satellite, no streaming services... no going to the movies, no anything. I would be so ever grateful to be able to watch decent television shows on TH-cam. Thank you so much! Look forward to seeing them, hopefully.
@Millicient Aspinet I know. I've seen all that they have to offer already. They need to put up new ones. LOL
Your ancestor’s choices can make all the difference in who you are today! Learn more about your family history with Ancestry® now: www.ancestry.com/s119580/t45174/rd.ashx
Our own choices also determine who we are and who we become. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't be here, and if I didn't care, I wouldn't stay here.
I'm still trying to find out who my real father is. The one who is said to be him denies it because he was married to another woman when he messed around with my mother, which is a bummer because he has kids that could be my half siblings and I've never met him or them even though I know where he lives. There's more to it because there was some things happening I don't want to say, but needless to say, there is no father listed on my birth certificate.
@@patriciajrs46 You're absolutely correct! One decision can be life-altering and have an impact on future generations.
@@Queenjessa22 Please try the guest account through the Mormon Church. Then, of course, if you determine you have to pay someone check with your local genealogy service, at your library or court house.
It was Wilhelm all along 😂
Oh come on Gates "well, he followed his heart and fell in love" like it is ok to leave your wife and kids for younger bootie. What a horrible man
Yeah that was really weird of him to say.
I think his job is not to facilitate judgement but just to explain the facts of the time and let the family member react
@@Artisticmonkey2 yeeeeah, he issued a judgment by saying the coward followed his heart and fell in love. That’s a judgment too, and a very wrong one. The truth is that he abandoned an entire family and left Lord knows how many years of trauma and poverty in his wake: this is also a judgment, and an accurate one.
@@PearlsandRoses thanks Dominique, I don’t agree. Have a nice day.
@@Artisticmonkey2 👍👍anytime bro!😊 enjoy your day.
In Cologne the Ehrenstrasse 50 address of course still exists (although not the buildings): Ehrenstrasse is nowadays the fashionable shopping street :)
Living in Cologne and knowing this street pretty well! Very cool neighborhood as of today!
She is so much fun! ♡
It's unfortunate we didn't keep better records before the 19th century. We can keep religious doctrines alive for millennia, yet we fall short everywhere else.
Really sad especially considering that other countries (Japan, China) keep records thousands of years in the past!
I love her, so of course I clicked ❤️
We hope you enjoyed this tidbit into her family's history!
@@AncestryUS yes I did. It’s amazing to see what events lead us here
Love Kathryn Hahn! Her character in Step Brothers was pretty much the perfect woman
My friend in Cordoba Argentina is the daughter of a Polish immigrant and a Spanish immigrant. She is one of several siblings, one day his previous Polish wife showed up with all his previous children! He said I thought you all died in the war! ( WW2) . Now They all live in the same town near each other. 😲.
Just throwing this out - perhaps so,etching happened to the first wife and children in Germany - perhaps there was something (illness, etc.) that caused them to die. Not surprising if that did happen. On the other hand, since there is no record (that was shown) about the family back in Germany, perhaps they split and divorced amicably. Or maybe the first wife left him? So many questions still to discover - fascinating! If this was my family, I would be curious enough to start ,poking at the records of Cologne (Koln) in Germany - couldn’t add the umlaut for Koln!!!
I wonder if he had divorced the first wife. Or did he just move to America and married the young girl. This could account for no acknowledgement of his former family upon his death.
Probably the latter.
My Gr. Grandmother’s first husband left her and their infant son in rural Ukraine to “go find work on Germany”, and that he was going to send for them once he found a job. She heard nothing and after 6 months her parents (and younger siblings) were moving to Canada and they forced her (along with her son of course) to come with them because they knew the truth (that he had no intention of sending for them. My gut tells me that he ran off to the US either with someone or met and married someone once he got there. The child of that marriage died about 2 yrs after the family arrived in Canada at the age of 4 so there is no blood relative to test that theory against.
I too have story like this my grandfather left his wife and family in Canada and married my Grandmother half his age if he had not my father and his family would not exist!!!
Thank you for sharing your story, Lynne! It's amazing how one decision can truly be life-altering!
My mom 's grandfather spent a lot of time between the US and Germany too. Maybe they were homesick.
I live in Cologne. Should I search for the left behind relatives?
I have discovered a divorce between 1900 and 1910 census and have no idea how to find the records for that in Houma, Terrebonne, LA. Please help with guidance
From what I have learned from these ancestry shows, sometimes it is fruitless to look for one single record. Eventually, you have to find multiple, seemingly unrelated records and combine snippets of information to come up with the complete picture.
Some of these might be insurance policies, professional organizations, parish records, old cemeteries and such. Good luck.
I have great-great grandfathers who had simultaneous families...they left one family and moved down the holler and got them a new bride. My paternal 2x great grandfather left his first family to nearly starve to death. My 5x great grandfather shot a judge in Wise, VA, got on a horse, leaving his wife and family, and rode into Kentucky and started over. Apparently, this wasn't uncommon.
Those are some astounding discoveries to make! Had you uncovered them in your research, or were these insights family stories that were passed down? It would be great to learn more!
I guess this is what people mean when they are talking about traditional family values, back in the good old days.
How can you watch full episodes? Is it on any apps?
Absolutely! You can find Kathryn's full episode of Finding Your Roots at www.ancestry.com/c/finding-your-roots
Back in the past men would pack up and leave the old family and start over somewhere else.
My great-grandfather married three times in the same small town. On one of the marriage certificates the name is scribbled over and was able to find the original one. Also, cannot pinpoint his age since every document has a different year of birth. Oh and have found all of his siblings' birth certificates except his. Definitely a shady dude
@@stereomois Wow! Scary! In that community one might be marrying a half sibling and not know it!
I love this show.
We're so glad to know you are enjoying it!
In 1910, my great grandmother ran away with her lover, my great grandfather’s best friend and left behind her 4 children, the youngest being six. Her lover left his wife and newborn baby. They fled to another country, got married in the church (illegally) and had 2 children together. He eventually left my g grandmother for another woman. They destroyed lives for their selfish desires. I have no sympathy for them. This kind of thing was more common than people know.
hi ancestry love your videos!
In the 19th century, it was still very common for older men to marry teen girls. One of the better-known examples is the Right Reverend H.H. Montgomery KCMG. In 1879, the 31-year-old cleric proposed to 14-year-old Maud Farrar, his Archbishop's daughter, and they married two years later. The marriage is only noteworthy because of their son Bernard, born in 1887, who became Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.
Lol
This man was messing with his neighbor’s child because she was easy access (close and young). Something tells me she got pregnant in Germany, so he ran with her because he didn’t want to face the scandal. But…Where’s the record of marriage to her? Where’s the divorce decree? Did he have a headstrong wife and a pushover child “bride”? Either way, what he did was despicable. He left his wife and *_SIX KIDS_* for her to feed and clothe on her own. People who do that are the lowest of the low.
What happened to the other family?
Most Germanys moved to US for farmland did they?
Alot of them did including my own german ancestors. I'd like to know what happened to them as well.
@@lightyagami3492 most likely their descendants died during the second world war
Not most Germans, or the country would be pretty empty now, but many Germans indeed settled in the US.
I heard stories like this one before. All these people (men) who to the Americas and left their families in Europe and never came back for the rest of their family.
If he was living in Ehrenstrasse 50 and she was living in Ehrenstrasse 48, they would have been direct neighbors. In Germany houses are counted with even numbers on one side of the street and uneven numbers on the other side. So they would have lived literally next door!
It was *AGETHA ALL ALONG*
Wow something similar happened in my family too
Oh my they came from my hometown in Germany. Düsseldorf.😅
I ve always thought that Kathryn Hahn was Ashkenazi..
Would love to dig into my ancestry, my last name "huhn" goes why back in German history to a chicken farmer hence the meaning of my name means "chicken" and I too am a farmer and I believe their were ties to a "huhn" in a clan in Germany that started what became the midevel times but not sure if it's relation. my grandfather was a farmer and his dad was a farmer and that's all I know..
My 2 great grandmother is Haln
I need to know what lipstick Kathryn is wearing lol 🤷🏻♀️
It was Agatha's great grandfather all along!
yes i had men in my own family members who walked away from family
He could have faked his death with no press. Different times. We have it in my husband's tree, but his relative was the stranded single mom.
You know what’s kinda gross to think about? If he had 6 kids with his first wife, I think I can safely assume they lived there for about 10 years and he was about 30ish when he ran away with his second wife (neighbors daughter) when she was 17… he likely saw her grow up from about the age of 7… I dunno man, it’s Woody Allen level weird to me.
“Followed his heart”
The title: Blow away
She: Oh wow...[SERIOUSLY]
Man can you imagine just deserting your kids like that?
People keep those same crazy secrets today. DNA is providing us the truth.
Can somebody please tell me if the name Mary Cuglu is truth? I don’t think the last name is spelled correctly. The only record I can find with that last name was her marriage certificate.
It can help to check if there is a scan of the record where it's spelled Cuglu, because there are often small spelling mistakes. The name could be Cuglu, but it also could be Cogle or something else entirely. In my own searches for my family, I regularly found records in genealogical databases where there were a few letters off, particularly when the original document was written in cursive. Hope this helps. Good luck!
The cursive writings on documents are often very hard to read. My grandmother's name is listed as Jennie on a census record. He name was June, she was called Junie by her father.
Also remember in the not too distant past education was not available to everyone especially females or poor people. If that were the case their name may have been spelt phonetically by the person transcribing their details.
Another thing is they may change a letter or two to distance themselves from their past. My stepfather is Spanish and did just that. You just change one letter and you are a different person.
So they ran away together?
I love her, she's one of the most beautiful women in the world to me.
She is beautiful and hilarious!
Maybe it was a even trade.
Who's been pulling every little string it was Kathryn all along🤣😂🤣😂🤣❤
I wanna be on that show
you can say the A word about him Kathryn Hahn
Was the end of the Germany wedding? No infectious disease deaths?
Wondering is Wilhelm divorced Katerina before he sped off to the US with Eliza!
My time now fam..🇯🇲
It was Agatha all along.
So, it really was Agatha all along.
I am from Chile, in South America, and my country, like all of Latin America, received hundreds of thousands of European immigrants, and those immigrants also left families behind in Europe and here when they arrived. It is common for all of us who have grandparents from different parts of Europe to find out later that they left many children and families out of wedlock, whom they never recognized by giving them their last name, much less supporting them financially. In fact, about 20 years ago I found out that when my grandfather arrived in Chile, back in 1907, he had a son with a woman he never recognized. That son grew up and in turn signed a family with his mother's last name, which we never knew. The same goes for other friends who have German, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, English, etc. grandparents. All had illegitimate children out of wedlock and none recognized them. That is enormous damage to a society. Children without a father, or paternal image, or affective, intellectual, material support, etc. They are miserable bastards. They have no forgiveness for abandoning their children and those poor women, many of them people who worked in their homes as cooks, etc.
I thought she descended from a coven of witches.
she's so beautiful.
My great uncle murdered my 18th great grandfather, yes his uncle murdered him.
Those generations would put the ages too far apart for this to have happened.
What is MCU?
Marvel Cinematic Universe
@@noellemichon Ah, thanks!
@@CaliWeHo Katherine plays Agatha Harkness in the Wanda Vision show.