What's in a Name?

Senior Chronicle: July 2024

My father and his mother. 1903.

What's in a name? A vitally important clue, as it turns out.

When we were old enough to think about such things, my brother John and I often wondered why our father’s relationship with his family was so turbulent. He had a volatile love-hate relationship with his mother Amy, wanted nothing to do with his older brothers and sister, and never spoke of his father Fred, who died before we were born. Ancient history, but a dark and omnipresent issue in our family until Dad’s death.

John and I are in our 80s now, but we still wonder. Were his problems a result of his intermittent alcoholism, some version of the bipolar disorder he seemed to suffer from (before such things were diagnosed), or just the residual angst of the Depression and the chaotic war years? Whatever the cause, his pervasive bitterness and worsening behavior infected our whole family. As adults, both my brother and I were estranged from him—I to the point where I kept my first husband’s surname (Wittig) when we divorced.

But by that time, Harold (a cousin-in-law and close friend) had already confided a family whisper: that Dad wasn’t Granddad Fred’s son. He was rumored to be the son of a close family friend whose photo Granny Amy had kept on her mantel for years. In some families, gossip like this might have been a bombshell, blowing things apart. But for John and me, then at mid-life, Harold’s rumor came as an enormous relief. If this were true, wouldn’t it go a long way toward explaining our father’s unhappiness—and ours?

Those questions prompted me to begin working on our genealogy. That was difficult at best, but it got a lot easier when I discovered Ancestry.com. I began adding more details to the trees I’d created from sparse family records—including, of course, Fred’s family line. He was, after all, still our “official” grandfather. John and I were intrigued by the rumor but all the people involved were dead. Even assuming we would get an answer, there was no one to ask.

But there was that name. The cousin’s rumor contained just one intriguing hint: Dad was named after his biological father, a prominent man in that small Midwestern city. But rumor is . . . well, rumor. It’s hard to confirm. Now what?