My family name is Apple, but I am not related to anyone by that name.
Well, legally, yes. And by marriage. But genealogically no. So the old adage is definitely NOT true. At least not genetically.**
My paternal grandfather Larry Apple died in 2013, but my other paternal grandfather died ten years prior in 2003, and my maternal grandfather died twenty years before that, in 1983.
My three grandfathers.
In elementary school, I had no idea that Grandpa Larry, my Dad’s Dad, wasn’t my “birth” grandfather. To me, though, he was all I knew. I still think of him as my “real” grandfather, because he and his family were what I knew growing up and to whom I remained close after I got married and had children of my own. I still think of myself as an Apple. Despite—or maybe because of—all the crap I had to put up as a kid over the name.
Apple. Apple sauce. Apple pie. Corey apple. Johnny Appleseed. Rotten apple. Apple for the teacher. Aaaaaaaaappplle.
When, at the age of 11, I first met my Grandpa Tom, it was confusing—not the least since his children at the time were younger than me, and yet technically my aunt and uncle. Thomas Nelson Bushnell had been married three times and possibly had children with at least two unmarried mistresses, as well. I wound up with something like a dozen aunts and uncles spread across the Capital District. (And yes, I need to use his middle name. There are at least four Thomas Bushnells in this family forest…)
My mom’s family was much easier to figure out. At least, I thought so at the time. At least, there were just the two uncles. Oh, and the extended family. The Irish. And the great-grandfather who was disinherited for marrying a Catholic. But more on that in a later post.
My Dad is the one who started the family history investigations. This is no doubt due to his being told as a teenager that his father wasn’t his “real” father. Of course, it was traumatic. Divorce is much more common in the US these days than in 1949. Still, not telling a kid that he’s adopted is close to child abuse. I had to wonder what on earth the relatives were thinking.
My grandmother, still using her married name from the first husband when engaged to the second in 1951. Confusing!
Now I know. But I also have to be careful how I write about it. Family is family. Adopted, divorced and remarried, separated or together again. Family is still family.
After my paternal grandmother passed away last year, I decided to start my own project on family history. All three of my granddads were in the military during WWII. (As it turned out, nearly every male member of both sides—all three sides?—of the family tree were involved in the military at that time; probably so was everybody else’s family, around the world.) My granddads were different ages, and came from very different family backgrounds. I wanted to write about them while relatives’ memories were still fresh.
Let the Memory Study Begin!
Memories are precious. They can also confuse, exaggerate, and be difficult to change even with ample evidence.
And contradicting memories can also cause pain and anger. Which is why I stopped the project. My mother’s memories of her father (my grandfather) weren’t borne out by the evidence I was finding. My paternal grandfather’s sexual behavior still alienates family members, and many of them refused to talk to me about the family past. Other relatives have become serious Trumpelstiltskins, and I really don’t want to get too close to that particular brand of familial insanity.
So at any rate, the stories I’ll be publishing will be restricted to relatives long since passed away, in an attempt not to offend those still living. I’ll try to only write about direct ancestors, since of course there are of loads of distant cousins and so forth (for example, King George V and FDR, among others).
Because, as it turns out, there are way more than three families involved in my tree/forest. That’s history!
**UPDATED. I should have said that I’m not related to people named Apple *outside my family who were born before my father.* After my grandmother remarried, she had four children (Linda, Gary, David, Walter) all of whom are my “half”-aunts/uncles. And their children are thus “half”-cousins to me.
What I meant was I’m not related to people like Max Apple (fiction writer) or R.W. Apple, Jr. (New York Times journalist). Sorry!
PS. Also, attention Apple Company. Ahem. I was born first.
Names Are Us
Here are some of the names that will appear (eventually). I’ll probably make this post into a static page to link to so readers can keep track of all of them.
Bennett
Connally
Fones
Hubbard
Leary / O’Leary
MacCallum
North
Nurse
Oldham
Rescott
Traphagen
Twiss
Vanderpool
West
Winthrop
M Thomas Apple Author Page 
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November 12, 2018 at 4:49 am
Interesting blog…thank you. A couple of corrections — I was age 14, not age 17, when it was made clear to me that my dad was technically my step-father. I think my parents had assumed I had already known, but we were naive in those days, as sex education, as we know it today, really didn’t exist. To my awareness, it was never deliberately hidden or withheld that this man was not my birth father. My mother revealed it, as in an exasperated retort, in response to my own rebellion against wasting a full week of summer vacation to visit my sister, a 15-year old girl I could hardly relate to, who lived far away. I had defiantly challenged why “that girl,” supposedly my sister, had never come to visit our own family, and why she wasn’t living with us in the first place. Yes, I was completely shocked that “Dad” wasn’t dad. Still, it later served to explain a lot of our relationship over at least the first 14 years. Second, concerning my sister and me, “bio-dad,” definitely had a daughter to a girlfriend between his first and second marriages, and another daughter to a different girlfriend between his second and his third marriage. We have all met at family gatherings. There is a family rumor of a child borne to yet another, third, girlfriend during his third and final marriage.
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November 12, 2018 at 5:31 am
I see. I will make a few changes. I was under the impression that this information wasn’t made known until after the move to Troy, but obviously my own memories are fallible. All the more reason to be careful about what I write.
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December 19, 2018 at 12:19 pm
need to clear something up.. daughter born not between 1st and 2nd marriage but born during 2nd marriage, daughter 2 not between 2nd and 3rd marriage but during 3rd marriage, 2nd marriage ended in 1972.
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