To say that some people have skeletons in their closet is an understatement. When you are searching through family trees you will find something that makes you have that WTF moment. If its happened farther in the past it probably doesn’t bother you as much as something that has happened in the last hundred years.
So in the past on my husbands family tree he has both sides of the Salem witch trials but we all understand that it was mainly because people wanted land. So understand this is better than say the child being scalded to death by the cloths washer. The whole thing sounded so weird you can rationalize it. Or the two boys out back of the house shooting at a propane tank attached to the house and Grandma is burned to death when the house goes up in flames.
The most unusual happening in 1900 of a women throwing a baby into a well. The newspaper comment on the trial was so weird cause there was no confirmation of the child’s murder and the whole thing did not make sense. Or the twin who disappeared when the mother gave birth at home.
The rational is to make the best of the unusual things you find in your family history.
Hunting through the family closet. 