Got a phone call from the daughter of one of my mother's many, many cousins. (Really! There are at least 50 first cousins and when you add in the seconds and the removeds, {a word Spellcheck will never accept, but exactly what I meant to say}, that number goes right past 100.) This one particular cousin was one I don't think I ever met since he died when I was pretty young, and I know I've never met his daughter. She was very interested in tracing the history of the French half of the family and had gotten as far back as the 1700's. She asked about the possibility of my possessing any really old pictures of our family. I explained about the plane crashing into my grandparent's house and how somehow the pictures hadn't survived. Fire or flood, the pictures are always the first to be destroyed.
But, back to her phone call. our It wasn't until we began contrasting our branches of the family tree, (her branch was more into real estate, mine was farming and music), and she mentioned that her father was originally an actor, that I figured out exactly who her father was - John Meehan, the art director on the Leave It To Beaver Series. Wow! I was always impressed when my mother pointed out that her cousin worked on the show. He also won three Academy Awards -one for The Heiress, one for Sunset Blvd, (you know, the one with Norma Desmond in it) (Norma Desmond being big enough stuff that Carol Burnett did a parody of her), and the mind-blowing 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Good Times!
Just found a cute afterword - in Hollywood his nickname was "Frenchy". How would we know? To my mother and his other cousins, that would have just been redundant!
Gosh, what a great thing to find in your family tree! I laughed when I saw your post title. I realised I'd married into a different culture when I attended a family reunion in Wisconsin with my second husband. He was the eldest of five, his father was one of six, his mother one of two sets of twins in a family of thirteen. He had 75 first cousins. I didn't even try to figure them out. An only child with a total of three cousins has no chance against the weight of a family that size. His culture prevailed in our house and I never managed to fit in. Clearly your family's French identity has been important to you all.
ReplyDeleteHi Shelley - My husband is also an only child, but it has been his culture that has prevailed in our family. Any other way makes him unhappy and my siblings and I have spent our lives compromising, so it's no big deal not to get our way. The joke has always been that if any of us married someone like us, we'd never figure out where to go for dinner, since if everyone compromises, you end up just staying home. John and I are a great team! He decides where to go, and I come along. It's really bliss!
ReplyDeleteCousins; it's amazing how they increase exponentially in families such as yours and mine, and we aren't even Catholic!Each of my parents were from families of eight children, and my grandfather was one of 12! You can imagine how many cousins I have as well! What a great conversation you must have had with your cousin. I can never figure if after 2nd cousins; all that once-removed business makes me crazy.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting! I'm always a bit wary of distant relatives who attempt to contact me through ancestry.com. I guess a phone call is different.
ReplyDeleteHi Sanda - Wow, you've got a big family. Maybe it's because we have so many first cousins that we've never worried about the subtleties of second cousins.
ReplyDeleteHi Terri - She actually found me through a funeral she crashed while visiting from Arizona, if I understand correctly. I have never been contacted from Ancestry.com - but I'm not a member so how could they know my contact information? It's been years since I was listed in a phone book.
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