Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

Uncovered secret

I don’t have any relevant pictures for this post since it does not come from my own family tree. This one was also a little hard for me because I don’t feel like I’ve uncovered and secrets in my own family tree. At least none that are memorable.

For a long while, my partner and I would have coffee most weekends with an older gentleman from South Dakota. He and I had become besties from work and we stayed in touch. He knew I was interested in genealogy and gave me his parents’ names to plug in to see what I could find.

I found pretty quickly that his last name was not really his last name. His grandfather had embezzled money from a bank that he worked at, if I recall. He fled and eventually settled in South Dakota where he changed his name. This was on the paternal side, so the last name my friend had carried for 70+ years was not really his name.