Comedy and Entertaining within the family - Ancestors in 52 Weeks

This year's challenge is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

Topic Info:
Have you found something humorous in your research? Perhaps something funny happened while you were researching? Tell the story this week.

Growing up, myself and one of my nieces, Becky, were clowns. When they moved to upstate New York, Becky kept us laughing for most of the 5 hour trip which was good after we lost radio over the mountains. We always thought she'd grow up to be a comedian, but we were wrong.

My brother and I, as I've written in an earlier blog, always told jokes to each other but they were of a "colorful nature" and we both had a really warped sense of humor. This always made us laugh especially when one of us upped the other one.

My brother and I in 2000 telling jokes. This is when he got me with one of his zingers. Credit: J. Fitzgerald

My oldest sister and I used to pick up my nieces and dance with them around the living room while trying to belt out a song. We all agreed we did not/could not sing but we kept on trying. I really stopped trying after I got pulled aside in chorus in school and asked not to sing any longer and to please just stand there and mouth the words. Yep, that bad.

My sister thought my younger nieces was very beautiful and even entered her into a beauty pageant when she was 3 or 4. She didn't win the event, it annoyed me because she didn't want to be there and my sister was boastful about her entering.After the event, I looked at my sister and told her bluntly we were never doing that again because it was awful the way people were, my niece didn't want to be there and everyone in our group was annoyed. We never did another one either. If my nieces wanted us to do something, we did try and figure out a way to do it with little to no money.

July 23 2015 Music Man Jr. In Rouses Point at the Civic Center. Credit R. Greenhaw

May 15 2017 My niece's daughter in gymnastics
Credit R. Greenhaw

2017 My niece's daughter in dance. Credit R. Greenhaw

Then when my nieces had children, they wanted to do dancing things and show business. Then one of my nieces said they always wanted to do something like this which stunned me because they never said anything. Anyhow, their children are now in plays, ice skating and stuff.

I found some of my other cousin, who live closer to where I grew up, were actually into dancing and singing too.

Newspaper articles about other Gauquie cousins who danced and went to Theatre school. Credit as above.

I didn't know about these cousins until after 2000 when I started to really research the family and was stunned they had a whole dance school, but my mother never talked about them.

Then when I continued my research, I found my 2x great grandmother's death certificate and it gave me a clue as to who else had these skills.

Florentina Van Rompaye's Death certificate which lists her husband as a cabaretier. Credit

As you can tell it's (above) in French. I only got to take beginner French in high school (it was many years ago now), so I couldn't read the entire entry. However, when I posted it in one of my Facebook groups for the Gauquie's, one of my cousins responded.

The discussion about what a cabaretier is. 

Imagine my shock to learn my 2x great grandfather liked to show off and entertain. This links into the dance school my other cousins run or used to run!

Then to also learn my cousin Chris has been in the entertainment industry was interesting and very unexpected.

Cousin Chris in 2009. Credit: Chris

2015 Cousin Chris with friends in play. Credit: Chris

2012 Chris as Madame Hortense. Credit: Chris

I'm not sure where we got it from, but the entertainment bug is definitely there. However, it's not shared by all of us. Even after getting up in front of crowds to speak over the past 8 or so years, it's not something I'm still not comfortable with, so I didn't get that gene unfortunately!