Going nowhere

[Frederator]

I realize this is more letting off steam than anything else because there's really nothing practical to be done about something like this, but:

Just finished some correspondence with an expert on the extended family of one of my autosomal matches. I'm pretty sure I'm not getting any more from this guy because I seem to have inadvertently uncovered some skeletons in their collective closet. Referring to the family of my match he actually wrote:

"There have been instances of procreation with the poor. Please do not judge by today's standards."

What an incredible #5$!. I'm judging someone alright, but not the ancestors of my match.

[The_Contemplator]

Yes, that doesn't sound very good. Some people can't handle the idea that their ancestor(s) may have been terrible people. Is it possible this person just misspoke while trying to "protect" the ancestor(s)?

[Frederator]

Yes, that doesn't sound very good. Some people can't handle the idea that their ancestor(s) may have been terrible people. Is it possible this person just misspoke while trying to "protect" the ancestor(s)?

I don't know. Whatever. That's a pretty bad attempt to cover if it is. That seems to me much worse than what must have actually happened. This isn't a slavery situation or anything.

I think part of it is this person can't handle that his ancestors weren't exalted lords. They were merchants, lawyers and land agents, which inevitably led in those days to the acquisition of some property and very often marriage with families of old aristocratic lineage, but there's no record of this family before the mid 1700s. So I think it's more likely that he didn't want to be "contaminated" by his family's working class origins.

I think he would have been much more comfortable with an old fashioned rape.