Kathryn Hahn Blown Away by a Long Lost Family Scandal on Finding Your Roots | Ancestry® 

We did NOT see that family scandal coming! Has your family tree revealed any surprising stories?

I feel so bad for the family he left behind. Were they able to survive without his support? What a thing to do, especially back then.

My grandfather did the same thing by leaving his family which included 6 children and moved across the county looking for work. He said he would send money. And as soon as he got established he would send for my grandmother. Neither of those things happened. Instead he started a whole other family and never sent any money. My grandmother was instantly thrown into poverty. My mom would tell my how she would try to make soup that was just a broth and would have to eat mustard sandwiches. That's a really selfish thing to do. Nothing to be proud of when an ancestor does something so cruel.

I have an uncle who did this to at least 3 different known families (and possibly a 4th family that hasn't come to light). The children are all wonderful people, but bear that heavy shadow of abandonment that colors their personalities.

My grandfather did something similar: in 1921 he abandoned my grandmother with five children and road the rails west. He joined the Merchant Marines and got married again (without benefit of divorce, making him a bigamist) and had another family. My grandma couldn't remarry because she was still married to him. It wasn't the Depression yet, but times were hard. She struggled until FDR was elected and a social safety net came to be.

You guys, I'm in shock right now: I'm from Germany and for University moved to Cologne. I LIVED IN EHRENSTRASSE 50!!! O.o

Through ancestry DNA i found out my biological grandparents are half siblings! 😩😳Yay, thanks Ancestry! 😂

had a great uncle that in the 1920s completely disappeared. He was from out west, but had travelled to the Midwest and vanished. Years later his mother moved to LA and while shopping her sister pointed out a pharmacy clerk that looked like her son, and it turned out to be him. He had changed his name and never told anyone, not even his wife why he had done it. There were rumors' that he was involved in bootlegging or the mob. However, through research I found he had been married in Canada during this time so I suspect he was skipping out on the marriage. You find little stories like this all the time.

I admittedly want to know what happened to the wife and kids left behind in Cologne. Ancestry comes with good and the bad sometimes, I would have to know, they are part of the man that is in my lineage.

Bigger question is what happened with wife and kids in Germany. There are her family and finding them ( ancestors of course)would be amazing.

Decades ago….a friend asked for help doing her genealogy…..sadly, we discovered her grandfather had been married with 5 children,,,,left to go forge a life in America, the plan was to send for his family when he got settled…..well….he met a woman, fell in love, married her, had 6 children…..but NOBODY ever knew of the wife and children in Poland he left behind 😞😞. Until that day!

Can't imagine next generations 100s years from now how much info and data they could pull about us.

There’s a crimean lady in Florida a former lawyer that shared her story how her husband went to another country for a job and went missing three. After decades she moved to Florida and wanted to marry her boyfriend so she had to legally declare her husband dead. and court did that in ukraine. after a few years in the middle of the night her daughter calls from ukraine and says dad came back 🤣🤣. that story was so tragic and absurd at the same time. that bastard left his family, small kids and went on living his life without ever bothering to let them know hey by the way I’m not coming back. now after 20 something years just pops in front of the door? the audacity of those kinda men never stops shocking

Happened a lot. It was very easy for men to do this. My grandfather’s father did this to him. Left them in WV. He was also a white passing black man, so I think that had something to do with him leaving his family in the WV mountains to start a new life, never to be heard from again.

Something like this happened in my family for two different people. My g-g-g grandfather was born in Ohio and started a family, then randomly went off to Canada and married twice more there. In a strange twist of fate, on a different line, my g-g grandfather immigrated to Canada as a kid, then went off to Ohio and later Illinois with a second wife. He may have even gone back to Wales after this but I’m still working that out.

Through DNA ancestry my Dad at 70 yrs old found out he was adopted .

This happened alot. My Great Great Grandfather left his wife and 15 kids. Went to live in California and remarried.

My great-great grandfather was justing roaming around Dutch and English colonies, although he came back to the Netherlands for short periods of time. What he did there is very unclear (probably something colonial). After a while he just went to Indonesia and started a new family there. We only found out a couple of years ago we had Indo (dutch and indonesian mixed) family, but we're in very good contact and we have a much bigger family now. I even got to meet my great-grandmothers half-sister a few years before she died. She told us that my great-great grandfather was a very sweet man. It's still very strange to just leave your family

Doing my genealogy, I found a cousin who did this same thing to at least three women! He had three or four wives, though he never divorced any of them, and children by at least three of them. He left his first (or was it his second? It's unclear) wife in America in about 1910. She was a Jewish woman from Lithuania, stuck in Colorado with three children, and grieving two baby daughters who had recently died of TB. Meanwhile, her husband, my cousin, was in the UK, "married" to a new woman, with whom he had children. He then cheated on her with yet another woman, and had kids with her! Meanwhile, there was another woman who used his name and had two daughters with his name who may or may not have been his kids. She appeared to have followed him, first with her husband, and then without, from their home town in Lithuania, to New York, then Colorado, then the UK, where he set her up as a shop keeper. The man was a cad, and the shock waves of the way he treated his children reverberate down the generations to this day.

Through submitting my DNA I was linked to an unknown 1st cousin. Turns out my uncle, my Mothers only sibling, had an affair and fathered this cousin. He was married at the time. She's was adopted from WV. She started looking for her biological parents after her adoptive parents died. She's yet to find her biological mother. She learned that she has a half sister and a half brother by her biological father. I'd love to help her find her biological mother, but WV has closed adoption records.

my great grandfather born in 1904 abandoned his wife and 4 kids in mid-1930s and never saw them again. He died in 1978, all his kids would have been under 10 when he left.

When completing a DNA test any family skeletons will come out. That’s what is to be expected if you’re honest with yourself. Mine showed that I had two half sisters and brother I never knew about. Also a close family member who was told about as being dead for many years was actually alive. This tale was only shared among very close family members so was blown apart as a pack of lies when two DNA tests were done. The perpetrator of the lies has caused untold mental and physical damaged to those involved over many years. They still will not admit their guilt because it will lead them to a criminal prosecution for the physical damaged done.

It was Wilhelm all along 😂

I really love the work of Mr Louis and his team. I would have never thought that my hometown Cologne would be mentioned on this show. What an amazing story. The place, Ehrenstraße, is very busy street with lots of shops, bakeries, restaurants etc. There are also plenty of old buildings from the 19 century and more way back It would be interesting to know what happened to family in Germany

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I suspect my grandparents married in Canada (from Michigan) because my grandfather was not legally divorced from his first wife. My grandfather's first wife moved to the Upper Penisula calling herself a widow, while my grandfather declared himself a widower in the Flint area. Of course, I also suspect my grandmother didn't actually divorce her 2nd husband to marry my grandfather. She never mentioned #2...it was a surprise in my research. Our ancestors were not without their secrets.

This RU-vid video was really helpful and gave me a lot of useful information. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more. It was well-structured and easy to follow. S

I would have loved if they actually found some of Kathryn's long lost relatives from Germany (the great-great-great-grandchildren from that other family).

My great-grandfather and great-grandmother only met each 4 times throughout their entire marriage and life. He was in the United States, while she and the rest of the family were back in China. At the time, the US had anti-immigration laws in place that prohibited Chinese men from bringing their wives to the country. As a result, he had a string of affairs and possibly kids while he was a "bachelor" in the US.

My grandfather also did the same, but raised all but two of his children in the new country.

i love thisssss. this make me want to continue my research forever. ughhhh the dream to be able to have access to every archive. oh my worddddd. it'd be so amazing.

Yeah, my mother's father did this. Left my gran and 3 year old mom at home, saying he was going to his sister in another town. Instead he boarded a ship to England and never returned. He married, had two daughters. My gran married and had 3 kids with her new husband, a man I have always known as grandpa. He was just the best.

My great great grandfather moved from England to Scotland with his wife and children about 1900. Then in 1907 he moved by himself to Canada and remarried and had children . No sign of a divorce from his first wife. I have no idea if they kept in touch. One of his sons died in WW1 in France in 1914, no idea if he knew.

She is so much fun! ♡

What happened to the family in Germany

That's amazing and mind-boggling that her 3rd great grandfather would leave his wife and kids in Germany, start over in the US creating another family, and never mention his family in Germany. Yes, we know about it now but you know how this may play out in the families. A family member in the US will meet and marry a family member in Germany. Someone in one of the families will make the connection that both sides who are married (possibly with kids) are descendants of Friedrich Wilhelm "William" Lunenschloss. Talk about kissing cousins. Wow!!!

My family history I love whether good or bad they are part of us and history. It’s important we learn from them so we do not make the same mistakes and we can find joy in our past and future

Living in Cologne and knowing this street pretty well! Very cool neighborhood as of today!

I remember my 10grade history teacher doing a timeline as a project… i was studying her timeline while doing mine and ask a question “ so your husband is your cousin 🤔… she put me out her class

hi ancestry love your videos!

Oh come on Gates "well, he followed his heart and fell in love" like it is ok to leave your wife and kids for younger bootie. What a horrible man

In Cologne the Ehrenstrasse 50 address of course still exists (although not the buildings): Ehrenstrasse is nowadays the fashionable shopping street :)

I would want to know more. What happened to the first wife and the six children? Are they in the records after 1854? It is possible the first wife died and the children were left with relatives and Wilhelm remarried to the girl next door and moved to America. I don't say this DID happen, but I would want to do further research.

I love her, so of course I clicked ❤️

Were you able to track what happened to the first family?

WOW! I think she should at least try to trace the descendants of his first family and find-out what they know about it. That would be an interesting follow-up.

I love this show.

It's unfortunate we didn't keep better records before the 19th century. We can keep religious doctrines alive for millennia, yet we fall short everywhere else.

My friend in Cordoba Argentina is the daughter of a Polish immigrant and a Spanish immigrant. She is one of several siblings, one day his previous Polish wife showed up with all his previous children! He said I thought you all died in the war! ( WW2) . Now They all live in the same town near each other. 😲.

My mom 's grandfather spent a lot of time between the US and Germany too. Maybe they were homesick.

Ancestry channel... Please please... could you please put up full episodes of this show? RU-vid regular is the only way I get to watch any shows. I can not afford anything above my internet cost, so that means no cable, no satellite, no streaming services... no going to the movies, no anything. I would be so ever grateful to be able to watch decent television shows on RU-vid. Thank you so much! Look forward to seeing them, hopefully.

Just throwing this out - perhaps so,etching happened to the first wife and children in Germany - perhaps there was something (illness, etc.) that caused them to die. Not surprising if that did happen. On the other hand, since there is no record (that was shown) about the family back in Germany, perhaps they split and divorced amicably. Or maybe the first wife left him? So many questions still to discover - fascinating! If this was my family, I would be curious enough to start ,poking at the records of Cologne (Koln) in Germany - couldn’t add the umlaut for Koln!!!

How can you watch full episodes? Is it on any apps?

I too have story like this my grandfather left his wife and family in Canada and married my Grandmother half his age if he had not my father and his family would not exist!!!

Wow something similar happened in my family too

Love Kathryn Hahn! Her character in Step Brothers was pretty much the perfect woman

Back in the past men would pack up and leave the old family and start over somewhere else.

I have discovered a divorce between 1900 and 1910 census and have no idea how to find the records for that in Houma, Terrebonne, LA. Please help with guidance

I live in Cologne. Should I search for the left behind relatives?

I wonder if he had divorced the first wife. Or did he just move to America and married the young girl. This could account for no acknowledgement of his former family upon his death.

I guess this is what people mean when they are talking about traditional family values, back in the good old days.

I have great-great grandfathers who had simultaneous families...they left one family and moved down the holler and got them a new bride. My paternal 2x great grandfather left his first family to nearly starve to death. My 5x great grandfather shot a judge in Wise, VA, got on a horse, leaving his wife and family, and rode into Kentucky and started over. Apparently, this wasn't uncommon.

In 1910, my great grandmother ran away with her lover, my great grandfather’s best friend and left behind her 4 children, the youngest being six. Her lover left his wife and newborn baby. They fled to another country, got married in the church (illegally) and had 2 children together. He eventually left my g grandmother for another woman. They destroyed lives for their selfish desires. I have no sympathy for them. This kind of thing was more common than people know.

Oh my they came from my hometown in Germany. Düsseldorf.😅

If he was living in Ehrenstrasse 50 and she was living in Ehrenstrasse 48, they would have been direct neighbors. In Germany houses are counted with even numbers on one side of the street and uneven numbers on the other side. So they would have lived literally next door!

My 2 great grandmother is Haln

In the 19th century, it was still very common for older men to marry teen girls. One of the better-known examples is the Right Reverend H.H. Montgomery KCMG. In 1879, the 31-year-old cleric proposed to 14-year-old Maud Farrar, his Archbishop's daughter, and they married two years later. The marriage is only noteworthy because of their son Bernard, born in 1887, who became Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.

I heard stories like this one before. All these people (men) who to the Americas and left their families in Europe and never came back for the rest of their family.

I need to know what lipstick Kathryn is wearing lol 🤷🏻‍♀️

It was *AGETHA ALL ALONG*

Would love to dig into my ancestry, my last name "huhn" goes why back in German history to a chicken farmer hence the meaning of my name means "chicken" and I too am a farmer and I believe their were ties to a "huhn" in a clan in Germany that started what became the midevel times but not sure if it's relation. my grandfather was a farmer and his dad was a farmer and that's all I know..

It was Agatha's great grandfather all along!

“Followed his heart”

I ve always thought that Kathryn Hahn was Ashkenazi..

He could have faked his death with no press. Different times. We have it in my husband's tree, but his relative was the stranded single mom.

WOW!

yes i had men in my own family members who walked away from family

Who's been pulling every little string it was Kathryn all along🤣😂🤣😂🤣❤

I wanna be on that show

My time now fam..🇯🇲

You know what’s kinda gross to think about? If he had 6 kids with his first wife, I think I can safely assume they lived there for about 10 years and he was about 30ish when he ran away with his second wife (neighbors daughter) when she was 17… he likely saw her grow up from about the age of 7… I dunno man, it’s Woody Allen level weird to me.

The title: Blow away She: Oh wow...[SERIOUSLY]

This man was messing with his neighbor’s child because she was easy access (close and young). Something tells me she got pregnant in Germany, so he ran with her because he didn’t want to face the scandal. But…Where’s the record of marriage to her? Where’s the divorce decree? Did he have a headstrong wife and a pushover child “bride”? Either way, what he did was despicable. He left his wife and *_SIX KIDS_* for her to feed and clothe on her own. People who do that are the lowest of the low.

What happened to the other family? Most Germanys moved to US for farmland did they?

Maybe it was a even trade.

People keep those same crazy secrets today. DNA is providing us the truth.

She is beautiful and hilarious!

I love her, she's one of the most beautiful women in the world to me.

It was Agatha all along.

Man can you imagine just deserting your kids like that?

Wondering is Wilhelm divorced Katerina before he sped off to the US with Eliza!

“PONCHO!”

We all know her ancestor is Agatha Harkness from Salem lol 🧙‍♀️

I thought she descended from a coven of witches.

So, it really was Agatha all along.

you can say the A word about him Kathryn Hahn

So they ran away together?

Was the end of the Germany wedding? No infectious disease deaths?

she's so beautiful.

lol maybe crazy for her to think about in her own family’s history but she’s a hollywood actress and comedienne and all that sort of crap is unfortunately commonplace so maybe she shouldn’t have been that surprised. Fun story though! Lol but anyway, yah my great great grandpa done the same sort of thing in Texas; our family’s story goes, he had 2 kids with great great Grandma Scott and she was mean and crazy and then he up and runn-oft to New Mexico to find a different wife and have another ten kids with her. Lol so I have a bunch of far-distant fourth and fifth and sixth cousins in New Mexico somewhere.