2024, Family, Uncategorized, work

Well, That Explains It!

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Tuesday at work I had a giggle during a meeting with the crisis team for a case I was involved with. Two of the crisis team members are locals who grew up in a small community about 10 miles from here. A third crisis team member asked why the client’s family member involved in the case was acting in a particularly unhelpful way. This family member also was from the same community as the two crisis team members. The crisis team members replied “Well, you know, she was a Hapsburg before she got married!” (name changed to protect privacy) as though that explained everything about the family member’s behavior.

The funny thing about that exchange is that it did explain everything! One delightful thing about working in a sparsely populated rural area for 36 years has been getting to know all the quirks and peculiarities of local families. By local, I mean people who live in an 80 mile radius of where i work. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree out here. It isn’t even necessarily pathological. It’s just that if someone is a so and so from Belfield or a such and such from South Heart, they often act the same as the other members of their families, and you can predict how they might respond to you. “Oh, she was a Hapsburg” gives us all sorts of information to know how to proceed.

What is your family known for? Any interesting peculiarities or quirks? Where do you look to for answers?

31 thoughts on “Well, That Explains It!”

  2. When I was a boy, living in Robbinsdale, which had at one time been a self-contained small town but was then a suburb, there were indeed family dynasties. Generations carrying the same name had occupied the same neighborhoods and certain families did carry certain characteristics, such as the families that seemed to consider themselves superior or the especially sports-obsessed or religious families.
    But now, and for decades past, families are more dispersed. Few of the people familiar with our daughters know Robin and I and few of those who know us really know our daughters and their families. Even Robin and I are, I suspect, known for our own individual quirks and those are not conflated as a family trait. Here in the city, families as quirky dynasties are rarely recognized.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    On my dad’s side there is a story about my grandfather five or six generations back who fought in the Revolutionary war as a “Free Quaker.” In other words, as a pacifist Quaker he took up arms against the practice of slavery. Those folks were kicked out of the regular Quaker Meeting in Philadelphia and made their own Meeting house that stands next to the National Park area there. His granddaughter from Virginia met him when his visited, and wrote about that meeting when she herself was old in the 1850’s. She said, “He was a tall, quiet distinguished old man who was dignified, but who held firm opinions.”

    This description fits so many of dad’s relatives. They are talkers, but quiet talkers with firm (often very progressive) opinions. I have always resonated with this side of the family, feeling I am one of them. My dad was not a quiet talker. He was an extroverted, prolific talker like his mother’s side. But his opinions were firmly progressive and landed in the abolitionist camp.

    More later I hope. I have to take Lou to his class at the gym.

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    1. Through your research into your family’s roots, you have probably studied this a lot closer than I have, Jacque, but I’m wondering whether it’s accurate to say that as a Free Quaker, your grandfather five or six generations back, “took up arms against the practice of slavery” to fight in the Revolutionary War? To the best of my knowledge, the issue of slavery was not addressed in the Revolutionary War.

      Of course, the fact that he fought in the Revolutionary War, doesn’t preclude that he later on expressed anti-slavery sentiments, but they couldn’t have been his motivation for fighting in the Revolutionary War. Or am I missing something?

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      1. Among the Quakers slavery was a primary issue for the Revolutionary War. However, the founders bargained that issue away which put off the issue until it became the crisis that led to the Civil War. Daniel Stratton took up arms as a Free Quaker solely as his statement against the British merchants who were dealing in the practice of Slavery. He believed it was immoral. (The bargain by the founders agreed to continue to allow slavery in the South, and to count each enslaved person as 3/5 of a person for the census dictated by the Constitution. In the musical, “Hamilton”, this is the bargain of the song, “The Room Where it Happened.”). The practice of slavery was the issue that nearly ended that Constitutional effort.

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  5. I didn’t grow up in a small community, but I would have to say in terms of my family, the word that covers all of us is probably stubborn. My mother denies this, but she, of course, is the queen of that land.

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  7. My mom’s side was known for friendliness and hard work. They were pretty average southern Minnesotans, Presbyterians, farmers, gardeners, and good cooks. Grandpa still had some vestiges of his Catholic upbringing, but his love for Grandma won out and he pretty much behaved according to my Grandma’s rules. They were both a little mischievous, and loved a good-hearted practical joke.

    My dad’s side is very different. I remember hearing that my Grandma had been an orphan and came to Minnesota from Nebraska. She was critical and demanding, and she tried to make up for it by giving us money. A kid learns a lot from a message like that. My grandpa was the town doctor in Morristown, then Nerstrand, then they moved to Owatonna. He was a dark soul, and became addicted to his own medical stash of morphine. After he died, my uncle and my dad flushed loads of narcotics down the toilet. My dad was my Grandma’s favorite target for criticism. He could never live up to my uncle Conrad’s success. Uncle Con was the head of research microbiology at the Mayo Clinic and my dad was a humble dentist. That led Dad to alcoholism. He was highly critical of us as kids, especially me, since I had been born a girl. So… we’re kind of dark people with a tendency to bouts of depression. All of us are introverts.

    I don’t think we’re known for those traits though. Like Bill said, I don’t think people think of our family as one unit, but rather they think of our traits in an individual sense. I’m very different from my brothers; I was the one most affected by my dad’s criticism. My brothers are highly successful in their careers and families, but they lack the ability to be intimate. I’m an open book. I’ve tried to do a lot of work on myself, but I’m far from perfectly cured. I do have that tendency to become depressed, but it passes, and I recognize it for what it is. It isn’t my permanent state, and I always hold onto hope.

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  10. My dad’s family were also known as very mechanical, operating steam thresher businesses and stills. We also have sheep shearers in the family. They lived in northwest South Dakota.
    My mother’s family were devout German Lutherans who had beer occasionally, but who never played cards.

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  11. I’m learning about my Massachusetts Fairbanks family. At the same time, I’m studying Roger Williams of Rhode Island. Greatpa x9 doesn’t seem to have been particularly Puritan. I’m hoping that he had liberal (for his time in the middle 1600’s) sensibilities.

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    1. Don’t count on it. Those early guys had specific goals, Puritan or not. A grandfather of that generaltion, Dr. John Green, became a territorial governor of Rhode Island. Another grandfather was a servant on the ship they emigrated on. Those class lines were pretty strong until they got here.

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  12. My Grandmothers on both sides were known for their outstanding economic and homemaking skills. A cousin of that generation told me that everyone would find out what Josie (my grandma) was doing and follow her lead because she was so skilled. This included canning, food preservation of other kinds, child management. The crowning achievement was that my Uncle Leo was the 4H state Health King of the late 1930s and my mother was the Pipestone County “health queen” in the early 40s. This all was an Extension Service program to promote good health in farm children. The children of the frontier had health problems such as worms, that affected health through the years and the Extension service addressed that.

    Both of my siblings and I are also known for similar skills that were passed down–sewing, food preservation, and money management are things from my mother and her mother. Dad’s mom also excelled at this.

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    1. Jacque, I’m impressed by the detail of your familial information. Where did you find this information? Was it handed down in letters or other written records and passed on from generation to generation? Or did you have to scrounge it up from public records of various kinds. I sure hope your family appreciates all of the work that has gone into collecting it.

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      1. Well, I knew my Grandma very well and we would talk and tslk, so much of it came from her. She would tell me about whatit took to raise all those kids. My sister and I visited Grandpa’s cousin about ten years ago because she collected her Grandfather’s Civil War letters which are in UC Berkely Bancroft Museum. Cousin Muriel told us so much about the family. I now hold all her research into the letters. There is a “Book of Strattons” that holds all the info about that side. I have just always loved history and geneolgy.

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        1. Forgot one thing. There is a famous author in the family: Gene Stratton Porter. In a biography of her life, there is also rich info about that family.

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        3. Her father,Mark Stratton and my X3 grandfather, William Stratton, were brothers. Daniel Stratton of the Rev War was their Grandfather (I think, but that is close.)

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  13. My paternal grandfather had about 5 sisters. There were 12 children in total in his family. Their father was not a drinker and there was no history of alcoholism in the family, bu 4 of those women ended up with alcoholic husbands. Makes me wonder what else was going on family dynamic-wise. I know their mother was very harsh with them.

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  14. I don’t know how widely my ancestral families were known for these traits, but:
    – Mom’s family was kind of zany, funny, sometimes loud – Grandma and 2 of her 3 sisters were pretty boisterous… one of her brothers was a real jokester… I wish I could post this one reunion photo with them all laughing
    – Dad’s family was more staid, traditional Scandinavian, but they also knew how to laugh at times, esp. his older sister.
    More later if I find time.

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