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Re: What do you say? esp for C&U archivists



A couple of years ago we helped a genealogist find some potentially
disturbing court records regarding her g-g-grandfather. We located an 1860s
divorce case file, in which Mrs. Ancestor sued Mr. Ancestor for divorce on
the grounds of adultery and abandonment. The documents in the case file
revealed that Mr. Ancestor was the son of a prostitute, and had in fact been
raised in a brothel. Thus, he leaned from an early age the (nuts and bolts?
Ins and outs?) of the business. Here in Springfield Mr. Ancestor met a
madam, who was so impressed by his peculiar business skills that she paid
him $500 to leave his wife and elope to Kansas to help her run a brothel
there. Mrs. Ancestor was granted a divorce by the court.

Luckily, rather than be insulted, the researcher seemed delighted that
gramps had been so, um, colorful.


Thomas J. Wood
Archivist
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
P.O. Box 19243
Springfield IL 62794-9243
217-206-6520 | wood@uis.edu | http://www.uis.edu/library/lib-arch

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