52 Ancestors Week 16: Should be a Movie

Question

From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 16 is "Should Be a Movie." What is family history without the stories? (It's a bunch of cold, lonely facts, that's what!) What story in your family should be up on the silver screen? Write about it this week!

It's almost time for those summer blockbusters to drop! Let's see what you've got, Wikitree! Any Oscar contenders? 

Comments

Want an Italian movie without the Mafia involved? https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2023/04/52-ancestors-week-16-should-be-movie.html

Hollywood, call me!!

Answer 1

My wife's 2nd great aunt (half aunt actually) led a pretty interesting life. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Linderman-308

She was born 5 months after her wealthy father died. As a young woman, she trained to be a nurse, and began working in a Long Island hospital. On the outbreak of WWI she volunteered for the Red Cross, and was on the first American Red Cross mercy ship. The unit she was in traveled from England through Sweden and Finland to Russia, and finally to a field hospital near Kyiv. Within a year her unit returned to the US. Before long, she volunteered again, and ended up in working in Belgian field hospitals near the front until the end of the war. While there, she met a Belgian entrepeneur whom she married. They lived in a chateau near Liege, and participated in Belgian society. When the Nazis invaded Belgium, they removed to Brussels, where her husband died a few months after Belgium fell to Germany. Now a widow in her 50's, instead of returning to the US while it was still a neutral county, she returned to Liege. She joined the Belgian underground and worked helping downed allied airmen escape capture. Eventually the Gestapo broke up these underground cells of mostly ordinary citizens. Her cell was broken and many of the members were executed. She was eventually arrested and spent time in prison/concentration camps. She survived the war, and spent the rest of her life split between visiting the US and living in Belgium. A more detailed version of her story is in her wikitree profile.

Comments

Wow, Steve, you nailed it. If ever there was a story for a movie this is it.  My grandmother's cousin Dr. Catherine Travis left Connecticut with the Red Cross in 1914 for Serbia and was in many countries helping the wounded soldiers, including Russia until 1916 but then she went off to China as a medical missionary with the Church of England and never married.  It made a good life for her but not good movie material, not like your amazing story.

Answer 2

I subscribed to Amy's mails about the new topics. They always arrive on Fridays this year. So I went already on Friday into the category "Hollywood Actors". There I found several unconnected actors. One of them was Buddy Ebsen. I was able to connect him via his second wife to an ancestor of hers.

Answer 3

A recent ancestor was a victim of the notorious British Home Child program, removed from or given up by his mother in London, England and shipped to Canada at the age of eight. He ran away from his abusive first placement farm, survived his second placement but left early to join WW1 at the age of 14. He got as far as England before his true age was discovered, shipped back to Canada where he immediately enlisted again; by now he was 16. He was injured in France at Vimy and recovered to fight again at Passendale. When the Great War ended he was involved in the soldiers riot in England while they waited in unforgivable conditions for ships to transport them back to Canada. While on guard duty at a Canadian base he went AWOL for a short time around New Years but eventually returned to base. Not long after there was a wedding and he had several children. During the depression they travelled all over Western Canada and in the USA; the children attended school for as long as he could find work, then they would move on. When WW2 began he finally returned his family to live with his inlaws and enlisted once more. While he was overseas his mother-in-law managed to end her daughter's marriage and he didn't see his children again until they were adults and tracked him through his military records. A side plot: his sister (also a Home Child) came to Canada a few years after him and she managed to find her brother; their reunion was a positive one.

He was an intelligent, quiet, proud fellow but with little respect for authority and strong opinions about government - a character. We are still discovering more about him through DNA matches and hope to identify his father one day. He has been mentioned in several books about the Great War including Vimy by Pierre Burton. I think it would be an interesting movie. His life spanned several interesting historical settings starting with the turn-of-the-century overcrowded streets of London, as well as some major historical events including both World Wars and showing his children the wreck of the Hindenburg a week after it crashed. He lived a very long life and visited the Vimy Memorial in France one Remembrance Day as a guest of the Canadian government.

Answer 4

My father‘s cousin, Otto Ostermann, went missing in the 1980s under suspicious circumstances. The details have never been disclosed by the enquiring detectives, but I am sure Hollywood could fill in some intriguing fiction in a script to produce a fast moving thriller. What I’ve been told goes as follows:

Uncle Otto was a mathematical genius who worked in early IT starting in the 1970s. He hadn’t married. Then one day around 1985, he showed up at his sister‘s home in a distraught state, asking whether her children were safe. He hinted at some threat from dangerous people. „Just make sure that they are safe,“ he implored her, „I cannot tell you more right now.“ That was the last time that he was seen. The family called the police after he didn’t show up again, also telling them about his fears that his young nephews might be harmed. It’s assumed that he witnessed some crime. He may have been murdered or entered a witness protection programme. Who knows? But the story, if the truth ever came to light, sure sounds like movie material.

Comments

Of course, another possibility is that he developed a mental health problem which made him paranoid, i.e. the threat to his sister's family was never a real one but more his imagined one. In that case, it may still make for a movie along the lines of "A Beautiful Mind", yet I'm afraid, Uncle Otto met a more immediate tragic end than John Nash.

Answer 5

I'm selecting my grandfather Charles Reuben Miller http://wikitree.com/wiki/Miller-56462 as a life with movie possibilities.  In the late 1800s he was a marching band leader, youngest in Canada, cornet soloist, musician and song writer in the then wild Owen Sound, Ontario, a port city on Georgian Bay, part of Lake Huron.  Saloons, a brothel, sailors, merchants, moonlight boat cruises, the band marching through town by torchlight, and Charlie's deeply religious uncles trying to install prohibition. No more booze, they say. Charlie and his brother Harry decorate the town (the daytime business) hotels, churches, private homes, swirling designs on ceilings.   Charlie's beautiful first wife dies giving birth to Charlie's first son. The uncles succeed in shutting down Owen Sound's free-flowing booze and Charlie secretly brews dandelion wine.  Could have possibilities. The time periods of the late 1800s and early 1900s are beautiful to look at and add a prominent sister-in-law spinster school teacher, interested in women's rights and a vote for women. Apparently (death bed secret) Charlie asked the school teacher to be his second wife and she said no, ask my sister, the nurse.  The nurse said yes and she was my grandmother.  Thank you for saying yes.

Answer 6

I think my family from my parents down could be a dramatic movie. Unfortunately I can’t tell all the details as most people are still living.

Comments

I think mine would fall more under "comedic farce" than drama.  
I'm sure someone could work out some kind of script from what is known of the life of my gr-grandfather Ole — the one I now refer to as "the great liar". 

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Melanie, Mine would have some comedy too, like how my brother’s second wife H is the sister of his first wife’s SIL BD My brother is N and he married D, they had two children, then eventually divorced. D’s brother is BT. BT married BD. My brother eventually married H, sister to BD. Plus, C, daughter of N & D, is a grandmother x2 at 43. I could keep going on.

Answer 7

My cousin Molly Ogle had a kind of Cyrano situation.  She was wooed by the governor but married his secretary.  I wrote about her here: https://annesgenealogyadventures.blogspot.com/2023/03/52-ancestors-2023-week-16-should-have.html

Answer 8

Well, I don't know about a movie, but maybe a short story or two. 

One is about John Bowles Longan, my 3rd great grandfather. There were stories that he was a bank robber. I have found documentation that he attempted to rob a bank when he was younger, with some other men, but got caught. 

His grandaughter, my great-grandmother, Jessie Longan, told stories about her and her siblings going over to their Longan grandparent's home (John Longan & Eliza (Cook) Longan). Jessie described how they would jump up and down on their grandparent's feather bed until it would explode with feathers. Her grandmother would "just laugh and laugh" at the kids doing this. She wasn't upset with them at all about it. Jessie also described how her grandfather wouldn't chop wood for the fireplace, but "bring in the whole tree, and he would sit in his rocking chair and push it into the fireplace with his boot when the fire got low". Jessie also described that she never remembered seeing her grandmother wash clothes, but that "they would go buy new clothes when they got dirty". So the stories seem to show that they weren't hurting for money.

There were other rumors that John Bowles Longan ran with the Jesse James gang, but I can't prove it (or at least not yet).

So was he at some point a successful bank robber? Maybe. Who knows?

Answer 9

I haven't proven relationship yet, but I'm working on it, John Harwood Pierce. 1848-1925. Some of what I have read is hard to believe, but it must be true because it was written. Was raised on the edge of Canada's frontier. Left home at 11- 12 yoa after accusations of sexual misconduct. Served in the Civil War as a child, is said to have enlisted 3 times. Married at least 4 times, at least two at the same time. A world traveler, poet, showman, (the second-best Wild West Show next to Buffalo Bill's) a lawyer, a preacher-pretty much a charlatan of the first order; that part I do believe. It is said Santa Clause was his favorite character to portray. I consider him the Johnny Appleseed of genealogy. Lots and lots of NPE's.

Answer 10

I'll mention a couple: one from my tree and one from the USBH project.

My father came from a lush farming community and wanted to see the world after he graduated from high school. His parents had a radio so that can listen to the news and gospel music. They survived the depression thanks to his hardworking parents who were able to grow vegetables and fruits on their land. He was very successful in the military and did not deny his ethnicity (he could have passed for being white). He was a world traveler. From 1939 to 2015, he has lived through 13 US presidents. He parented 2 boys and 1 girl; he was married 4 times. He was musically inclined and listened to the blues, doo wop, Elvis, Paul Simon, and Spin Doctors. Those songs would be the soundtrack. 

Sam Jackson's story is full of stories like my father. A movie could be made of how he found out that he has ancestry in Gabon (Benga people). He was also an usher at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral. 

Answer 11

I just about passed this one up as unlikely for my generally cautious relatives, but after turning away, remembered a very distant cousin, Sara Sherman Wiborg who married Gerald Clery Murphy. They were attributed as influencing many literary works, including having a major influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night.

The following Wikipedia quotes give some sense of their impact:

"Gerald Clery Murphy and Sara Sherman Wiborg were wealthy, expatriate Americans who moved to the French Riviera in the early 20th century and who, with their generous hospitality and flair for parties, created a vibrant social circle, particularly in the 1920s, that included a great number of artists and writers of the Lost Generation.” And …

"Gerald and Sara Murphy are considered by many to be one of the most beautiful couples of the 1920s. The Murphys have influenced many art and literature heroes such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, Philip Barry's play Hotel Universe, John Dos Passos' Big Money, and Pablo Picasso's neoclassical masterpiece Woman in White.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night was made into a movie, Tender_Is_the_Night_(film) in 1962. So “should be a movie” becomes, “was made into a movie."  Who'd have thought?  I'll have to share this at the family reunion this summer.  

Answer 12

My family's "Hollywood Story": "The Drapers: A Legacy of Strength and Perseverance"]

 https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Space:Draper_Family_Stories_by_The_Draper_Family&public=1#Ira_Dillingham_Draper_1814_-_1891

Movie Trailer  (this is just pretend)

[Scene opens to a sweeping view of the rolling hills of Missouri, with the sound of horses galloping in the distance.]

Narrator: In a time of darkness and oppression, one man stood up against the tyranny of slavery.

[Cut to a close-up of Ira Dillingham Draper, a determined look on his face, as he helps a group of slaves escape to freedom.]

Narrator: Ira Dillingham Draper, a pioneer and station master on the Underground Railroad, risked everything to help those in need.

[Cut to a tense scene of Missouri bounty hunters chasing after Ira's family, who are desperately trying to escape to safety.]

Narrator: But when their family was chased by Missouri bounty hunters into Nebraska, Ira's sons rose up to continue their legacy.

[Cut to a montage of Ira's sons working for the Pony Express, fighting in the Indian Wars, and building the western towns of Dawson, Nebraska and Sundance, Wyoming.]

Narrator: Their determination and hard work would pay off, as their children would go on to become the biggest ranchers in Wyoming.

[Cut to a sweeping shot of the beautiful Wyoming countryside, with herds of cattle grazing in the distance.]

Narrator: From the depths of slavery to the heights of ranching, the Draper family's legacy is one of strength, perseverance, and hope.

[Cut to a shot of Ira Dillingham Draper, standing tall and proud, surrounded by his family.]

Narrator: This is their story. This is the story of the Drapers.

[End with the title card: "The Drapers: A Legacy of Strength and Perseverance"]

The sons of Ira Dillingham Draper (grand daughter Grace and great grandson Dean)

Comments

Your wanted poster image will not show in g2g while it is only attached to your own profile.  It needs to be on an open profile (green lock, or open lock) for g2g to accept it.

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Thanks Mel, I uploaded to the wrong Free Space page....It should be working now.

Answer 13

This is a photo from the Oklahoma Historical Society taken of the 1893 Land Run for the Cherokee Strip. My great great grandfather Luveous Morris https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Morris-15998, his brother, and all of their children made this land run. My great grandmother and her sister made the run together in a covered wagon; she later married my great grandfather, who made the run on a horse. 

The 1992 American epic Western adventure drama “Far and Away” staring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman was about there leaving their homeland and making this land run. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_and_Away 

I think that my great grandfather’s becoming sick trying to survive in a land by himself and my great grandmother finding out about him, nursing him back to health and their marriage would make a wonderful movie. 

Answer 14

G Grandfather John Hogan would be a fun bio pic!

Born to (presumedly) not well off parents, John left home at about age 15 to join the Royal Navy.  He was stationed aboard the HMS Cleopatra sailing from New Zealand to Japan.  In the autumn of 1885, his ship was caught in a typhoon off the coast of Japan.  The ship suffered major damange, but no lives were lost and it managed to limp into port in Yokahama.  

In 1887, he jumped ship Devonport, England reappearing five years later in Boston, MA.

In 1892 he joined the Boston Fire Department.  In 1897 he was awarded a Medal of Gallantry while a horseman attached to Engine 4. He married a lovely Irish lass at St. Joseph's Church in Boston in 1903, and in 1904 he received a Distinguished/Special Service Award from the Boston Fire Department. John and his wife had four children who survived to adulthood, and twin boys who died as infants.

John stayed with the Boston Fire Department for the rest of his career, retiring after 44 years of service.  He spent his retirement doting on his grandchildren and regaling them with thrilling tales of his adventures at sea and driving a horse-drawn fire wagon through the cobbled streets of Boston.

John died in 1947 and is buried in lot 129, Fireman's Lot, at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.

Answer 15

It would probably be a comedy, I am not giving the details of it because I don't want to embarrass members of the family, but the title would be "The 50th Wedding Anniversary Party you will Never Forget"

One scene would be my cousin and I talking our younger cousins into poking holes in the bottom of Styrofoam cups.