any criminals in your family history?

We Campbells have been known to take in or marry the occasional MacDonnell and MacGregor over the last thousand years or so, which means the clan has criminal history by association

My grandfather was a professional conman...

...I mean U.S. Congressman.

(Actually, all the stories of the shenanigans my grandfather pulled, he basically was a conman who used his powers for good. His uncle was a moonshiner and bootlegger though. Technically, my grandfather was only ever considered a criminal by the Cuban government.)

Toyman01 wrote: I'm also related to Daniel Boone, so in my book that offsets it.

So am I, on my Mom's side.

I'd have to check into my dad's genealogy research to know which last name to search for, since mine was seemingly made up in the Caribbean. You had to be convicted of something to be sentenced to indentured servitude though...finding out whether it's because you actually committed a crime or because somebody powerful wanted your land would be far tougher to figure out at this point.

Grandmother was related to the Hatfields. One of her brothers used to knock off gas stations after WWII for kicks. He became a preacher for the free food and housing - also had a stroke in the pulpit and dropped dead on the spot.

Had a great great etc. uncle who was involved in vaudeville around the turn of the previous century. It's not clear exactly what sort of shenanigans he got into, but it was bad enough that playing musical instruments or acting beyond school plays was banned in the family for two generations.
On the other side, my great great grandfather loaded the boys on a boat and headed to Canada (US was closed to more Irish at the time) saying he'd send for mom and the girls once they got settled. They snuck across the border and settled in Michigan. Once there he decided that it was easier and more enjoyable to just find a new wife and not send for the old one. I'm descended from illegal immigrants.

The most note-worthy one was probably my biological great-grandfather who was pretty chummy with Bugsy Siegel around the time "Murder, Inc" was going on.

Somewhere along the line on my dads side we are related to John Dillinger. Or so I've been told.

Looks like my great great great great grandpa murdered someone in 1771.

Interesting site, but I don't think the ones it finds under my family name are related. But there was a bit of an interesting "how my family got here" story that does kind of fit in with this thread. According to an uncle who's compiled a genealogy for the family, that first Cramer may have been a Hessian mercenary who was taken prisoner at the Battle of Trenton and decided not to go back to Hess.

It also appears that I'm somehow related to Typhoid Mary.

And my wife's grandmother served as a bookkeeper for Jimmy Hoffa.

oldtin wrote: One of her brothers used to knock off gas stations after WWII for kicks. He became a preacher for the free food and housing - also had a stroke in the pulpit and dropped dead on the spot.

now thats karma

my family is squeaky clean compared to you lot.

Evidently no criminal gene in our family, no jailbirds. We got the smarts/ work ethic gene... but somehow along w/ that the drinking gene. Still, some damn good stories of carryin' on back in the day.

Had one that came to America because he tried to kill his brother for an inheritance thing, late 1700s. Grandmother (dads side) told us she was part of a scam when she was 6 or 7. She was cute and helpless and a couple of big men robbed folks that tried to help, early 1900s. Found Grandmas letters and she tells of the trouble with my Mom when she stole a bunch of money from the depot and ran away with her guitar playing boyfriend to be a movie star. She was 15 and rode a Harley from Oklahoma to Arizona before she got caught, 1935!

Seems I was named after a fellow who was killed by a jealous husband. Got a cousin and a niece that have been adding to the list for future generations.

Bruce

My Uncle was nicknamed "The Rattler."

I assumed he shared some characteristics with a snake, but nope, he habitually checked every doorknob he walked past to see if it was unlocked.

EvanB wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: I'm also related to Daniel Boone, so in my book that offsets it.

So am I, on my Mom's side.

Been told that I am too, also on my mother's side. But in looking into it, not really that uncommon for southeast Missouri area. Daniel Boone had something like 10 kids, mostly girls and they each had several kids and so on each generation and there are probably somewhere in the thousands related to him.

First page of results reads witness witness victim witness... there is one guy who stole among other things a few hundred pounds of nails and got 7 years transportation though...

I know I have a relative who was a sea captain in good repute in England, but was hung by the Spanish as a privateer.

Anytime genealogy was brought up around my grandfather, he would say:
"Don't look too far up the family tree. You will find some hanging by their necks and others by their tails."

Supposedly my family worked in the stables of King George. One day some of his horses went missing...and we went to America.

More verifiable...My great great grandfather on my Dad's side lived in the hills of NW Georgia. One day whilst on the train with the family, GGGrandad got into an argument with a neighbor about someone's cow getting into someone's corn. It's unclear if the corn was still grain or had already been..uh..refined. GGGrandad shot the guy in the back as he was walking away. The family just didn't get off the train. They stayed on headed south until the tracks ended - which at the time was in Fitzgerald, Georgia, a tiny farming town not far north of Florida. They took the family and the one trunk they happened to have with them and started a new life, living as share croppers.

None listed on that site, but I know there has been a little criminal history.

Way back many generations, my father's ancestors and my mother's ancestors had a quarrel. My father's side was primarily illiterate and my mother's side made a land deal with them. The verbal deal was basically, "I'll buy this land for X dollars." They took advantage of their illiteracy and the paperwork they signed actually said zero dollars, so they got cheated out of their land.

There is also a direct line back to a terrible criminal that I don't even mention since I don't want to be associated. But my ancestor immigrants didn't want to be associated with him either which is why they came here.

Well, considering French ancestry, probably nothing in the UK. LoL

don't have to search the web site ... I've hesitated ever since this thread went up ...

as a teenager, I was pretty much a E36 M3head/shiny happy person ... I shoplifted, I stole a couple of cars (so called joy rides.... but theft none-the-less), later can't blame teenager BS on all the drugs I bought/sold/used

no one to blame but myself ... don't know what was in me that allowed this behavior to show out ... the upbringing I received couldn't have been better ... non of the more modern ... they were reasonably strict ... it could have been tougher, it could have been much more lenient ... it was very typical of the '50s raising ... so all on me ... looking back has been tough for me to do ... though lately (last 20+ yrs) I've really done a lot of that .... even tried to figure ways to make up to some/any of those I wronged ...

about the only way I've been able to come up with is to live how I KNOW I should have been all along ... show with my actions, the way I treat others ...

it's something that I'll never be without (the looking back and the remorse I feel) ...

maybe I shouldn't have posted this ... but for some reason I felt like putting a little bit of a downer on what has been a pretty good thread ... sorry guys

if enough of you beat up on me for it, I'll pull it ...

Nothing is known, but my Great, Great Grandfather just sort of showed up in the US. Never told anyone where he came from, not even his wife. Leaves the question if our surname really is what it is.

Here’s a family photo of my cosines “The Dalton Brothers” taking an exceptionally long nap.

Oh E36 M3, Aircooled, somebody you guys don’t know, and I all got Red Ryder BB guns for X-Mas…just need one more good shot to bring the brotherhood back to life.

I don't know anything about my family beyond my great grandmother.

Black privilege lol