Family Myths, Skeletons and Secrets

        ‘We’re descended from Royalty.’ My Father told me once. As a Darwin girl this seemed improbable and I didn’t believe him. It did turn out there was a seed of truth in that story way, way, way back. Often family myths do turn out to have a grain of truth, handed down orally from generation to generation. 
             Skeletons and secrets are an important and potentially treacherous area for researching your family history. All sorts of ‘hidden’ information about ancestors can be revealed. The further back in time the less traumatic the secrets are likely to be.  Bringing minor misdemeanours and misbehaviours to light can really help us to connect to our ancestors as interesting and flawed people.  Just like us.  However, sometimes what is uncovered can have more serious repercussions. 

Cultural Lineage, Parentage, Illegitimacy, Addictions, Violence, Mental Illness, Crimes, Atrocities, Sexuality, Identity

There are many great memoirs and biographies written dealing with secrets, skeletons and myths and the impact of how discovering and uncovering can deeply affect those still living.
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Here are a few of my favourites:

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What are your family myths?  Is there a seed of truth or is it completely fabricated or are you yet to find out?  I’d love to read your experiences so please share.

My family has its share of secrets, skeletons and myths.  I have written about one of them that precipitated my foray into genealogy. Read on.

​               THE FLOWER AUNTIES  
Our family was an island floating in a sea of loneliness.  No Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles or Cousins sailed in our waters but the Flower Aunties bloomed strongly in my imagination.    My Grandmother had died when Mum was born and, according to my mother, she came from a large family of girls all named after flowers. The details were scant however and Mum was always elusive when I asked for concrete facts.

‘How many are there?  What are their names Mum?’ I’d plead.  Eventually I stopped asking questions and in my childish mind they remained ethereal; pale outlines of floating flower heads with ghostly bodies draped in diaphanous fabric. 

By the time I was a teenager, the Flower Aunties had gained more substance.  Somewhere along the way they became six women; Poppy, Daisy, Lily, Jasmine, Alyssa and Rose.  I could see them in my mind’s eye; prim dark haired women, immaculately dressed in pastel silk tea dresses with matching purses, together on a day out in town.  Their heads bobbing in unison agreeing over a purchase, leaning together to whisper over a handsome gentleman, giggling in delight.  
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​The years passed and the Flower Aunties faded in and out of my mind in the bedlam of life.  There came a time though when I determined to find these absent elders.  

  One by one I located the details of all of my Grandmother’s siblings.  There were three sisters and six brothers and not a flower to be picked among them; Leslie, Edna, Robert, Lyle, Clarence, Oliver, Aubrey, Mary and Lillian.  I felt both saddened and strangely relieved.  These were flesh and bone. These were real people and they belonged to me.

Photos and anecdotes emerged to show that my mother had indeed known at least her Aunties, right into adulthood.  At first I was furious with her.   These relatives were well and truly alive through my childhood and many into my adult years.  By all accounts their lives had not been easy and they were a resilient bunch.  I wondered how it might have helped me at times of struggle and challenge to know these tough and gritty people were behind me, a few still walking the earth. 
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Why my mother had kept these relatives secret I will never know and can only surmise.  Married to an esteemed lawyer, perhaps she was ashamed and had wanted to leave her rough and ready relatives behind.  We grew up in the Northern Territory and they lived in Sydney so there was no risk of contact. 

What I do know is that losing her own mother left a deep wound in my mother that would permeate her whole life and that of her own children.   Violet her mother’s name was.  My Grandmother Violet … the seed of the Flower Aunties myth.