My maternal Grandfather, Albert A. Beckman, by all appearances, wasn't a man of good character.
I never knew Alf (as he apparently was called) when I was growing up. Nor did my Mom. He married at least six women (that I've found) over the course of his life, some at the same time. He was a convicted criminal at a relatively young age (early 20's) and spent time in jail for auto and electronic theft. I've found newspaper clippings of this from the Springfield Mass newspapers.
It pains me a bit to write this section, because I believe strongly in forgiveness and redemption, however it doesn't make me happy that my maternal Grandmother, Marion Frances Bee and my Mom, Virginia May Beckman were his victims. My grandmother married him at a very young age and had two children with him very very early in their marriage. After a year and a half of marriage, though, my Grandmother found out he was married to another woman when she found a letter addressed to him from his other wife.
What a horrible thing. My poor grandmother decided to move across the country from California back home to Cambridge Massachusetts in the dead of night (by train!) with my infant Mom and Aunt (who were barely a year apart) to live again with her parents. It's hard to imagine the pain and the shock my Great Grandparents (John and Lilla Bee) felt having their daughter return back home with the babies. My Great Grandparents were victims too, as they had to help pick up the pieces of the devastatingly broken marriage of their beloved daughter.
Because of this, my mom never knew her father, but I suppose that wasn't a bad thing in this case. I have yet to locate the divorce decree between my Grandmother and Alf. Since he was married to two women at the same time, I guess it's possible the marriage was annulled, but I'll probably never know.
Thankfully my grandmother met and married another man named Bernard Andrew Grady Jr. (I called him Uncle Bernie) who I knew growing up as my grandfather. I am still searching for their marriage certificate but have yet to find one. He wasn't my "blood" grandfather, but he was a good man, and he certainly felt like my grandfather. My grandmother deserved it.
There are consequences to our actions, both for evil and for good and Alf did not choose well. Unfortunately his actions affected many others as well. An interesting aside is that through ancestry.com I met a woman online who was Alf's daughter from another marriage. So she was my Mom's stepsister that she never even knew. She told me that she never knew her birth father just as my Mom didn't, so they had that horrible fact in common. I shared with her pictures of my Mom when she was younger and she shared some of her, and the resemblance was striking. They did end up connecting once or twice as well.
That is all the “ink” I will give Alf Beckman, mostly because he doesn't deserve it, but also because I don't know a whole lot more, except for the names and divorce decrees of the other women he married. My Mom did tell me that she knew that Alf's parents (who emigrated to Massachusetts from Sweden) were very good Christian, God-loving people, so that is some comfort.
I get my Swedish DNA from Alf Beckman, and have been able to make contact with a 10th cousin in Sweden who made contact with me searching for information about my Grandmother. In fact, my wife Jan and I will be traveling to Sweden on a cruise next year and plan to visit with my cousin who actually knows quite a bit about the Beckman lineage.
How do I summarize all this? As young Donny Osmond and the Osmonds once sang, "one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl". Thankfully, one troubled ancestor doesn't spoil my whole Swedish lineage, so I intend to continue to learn as much as I can.