Family Secrets and Genealogy

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As family historians we sometimes find ourselves in possession of other people’s secrets. Whether this is from a first-person account or through the availability of more records online. How we handle these can be a dilemma. Let’s look at ideas.

You may have examples in your own family research of these “secrets.”  I have a couple that come to mind. One involves a pregnancy and an unwed mother. It wasn’t a secret in the family that she had the child, but she never revealed the father’s name…even to her child. Since she married and had a family after this child’s birth, the only mention in our family records is that this child had her maiden name. Years later after her death, a grandchild used DNA to find out who the father was. While their immediate family now has this information, I would not be comfortable including it in my family records. Others might feel different.

Another example is of a short marriage which ended in divorce in the 1920s. The bride remarried and while a family member shared that information with me, her descendants did not know this information. I exclude this data when sharing history with others because that was requested of me. As more records are available online, the information is readily available for others to discover. I still have not shared that information.
Introduction - Family Secrets: Emotional Fallout from Genealogical Research - Research Guides at Library of Congress
How to Handle Family Secrets and Surprises in Your Genealogy
Family secrets and skeletons in the closet - Genealogy Gems
Jane Seymour has a new program titled Relative Secrets on Acorn that helps families research and resolve and bring closure regarding family secrets. In the first episode the client’s father was a serial killer. Yikes! And her wish was to find an ancestor she could be proud of in her father’s family line. Watching this series helps put the impact of family secrets into perspective.

My personal opinion regarding family secrets is if the information would be damaging for a family to learn or if you’ve been asked not to share the information, respect that. Of course, things we find many generations back may still reveal family secrets but the impact is not on someone living today. If we think about how we’d feel if it were our immediate family, it might help us to make the best call. As you think about writing your family story, take some time to ponder those family secrets before you choose to share them.