They Had a Secret

In the 1980s I got interested in family history. As a practical matter that meant my mother's family. They were a "blended" family long before the term was coined. Culturally they were Irish Catholic with a French-Canadian presence. This was the result of my grandmother's three marriages, only two of which I was supposed to know about.

I learned a lot about my mother's people. They were a colorful bunch. Aren't we all when the truth comes out? I got a tremendous archive of photos from my Aunt Bea, as well as a ton of stories. I passed a number of very pleasant afternoons with her and Uncle Bill in Milltown, the decaying industrial city where both sides of my family had settled.

Dad heard about my research. He grew up on the other side of Milltown--the end near the Park and The Country Club. He wanted me to run down his family. There was a significant problem. His family was close to non-existent, at least in the States. His only brother was dead. His father was an only child. His mother had a sister. When his mother died, in 1966, there was a big collection of photo albums and documents in the basement. I was 12, but already interested in these things. Not Dad. He was adamant that it all be dumped, which it was. Years later I can only wonder at the rage that made him want to do this. It must have been considerable. His mother was not an easy, or nice, person to deal with. And I say that as her favorite grandchild.

But this isn't about her. It's about his dad's parents, Carl and Louise, who came to this country after the turn of the century. According to family legend, (i.e., Grandma) he was a draft dodger. He did not want to serve in the Kaiser's army. He and Louise settled in Milltown and lived long productive lives. Their only son married in 1923 and went on to raise two boys, one of whom is my Dad.

They did take a trip back to Germany in the early days of the Weimar Republic. This was during the terrible inflastion. Grandma still had a few of the Reichmark notes, with their huge denominations, as a souvenir of their visit.

Dad called me one summer day in 1987 and asked me over. He had a box of documents, some dating back to the 1880s, all in German. It was a tiny fraction of the stuff he had tossed two decades before. He asked me if I could get them translated. I took the box and told him I would try.

I found a man, a business owner, in a neighborhood called the Jewelry District. He could translate German. One slow, sultry day I left City Hall, where I worked for The Kid, and made the short walk over to this man's office.

He worked out of one of the 19th century mill buildings that cover our city. I can't remember his name, but he was very amiable and enthusiastic as he worked his way through the papers.

I took notes, but my Dad's treasure trove was mostly a disappointment. This was a box full of basic documents like their birth certificates. There were a lot of vacination documents. We were almost done, when my friend of the hour picked up one of the last documents.

"What's this?" he said.

It was different. It was from the 20th century, the early 1920s to be exact. It was Carl and Louise's marriage certificate. They apparently had unfinished business when they left Germany. They returned home, which was Berlin, to get married. I told my translator, briefly, the story of my great-grandparents. He thought the trouble they took to return to Germany and formalize their relationship, out of sight of their longtime friends and neighbors in Milltown kind of romantic. So did I. They would have been in their early 40s then.

Dad didn't think it romantic at all when I returned the papers to him a week later. He was surprised and not pleased at all. I guess this was because, strictly speaking, that made his Dad a bastard. I didn't see it that way, as Carl and Louise had had a perfectly valid common law marriage in this state. And who card really, now that everyone involved was dead?

Carl and Louise must have cared very much. Nobody knew in their lifetimes. Based on my Dad's reaction they must have thought they were taking their big secret to their graves. And they would have, had not one random piece of paper escaped destruction.



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