July 11, 2023 • 51 mins
What do Albert Einstein, Jesse James and Saddam Hussein have in common? Like many notable figures throughout history, these men ended up marrying their first cousins. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the stories of how these historical figures ended up in romantic relationships with members of their extended families.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for a super producer
who might as well be a member of the family,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Who all in the family here. No, that sounds weird.
That's wrong, That's not what I meant. I take it
all back. Yeah, I don't know. Look, first of all,
maybe not trigger warning, I guess. But you know, sometimes
on a show called Ridiculous History, we do brush up
against topics that aren't inherently ridiculous or they're like sad
(01:00):
or are just kind of you know, messed up in
some way, shape or form, and then we often follow
these well, it was a different time, but today we
are talking about incests. Let's just get it out there
to a degree, and we're not saying like, wow, that's
some wacky stuff, these wacky cousin marrying geniuses, historical figures.
That's not the take that we're offering up at all.
(01:22):
But it is an interesting story or an interesting series
of stories just the same. And yeah, it was a
different time.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I'm Ben or Noel, and today we are talking about
people who married their first cousins throughout history. You know,
as we said, we wanted a little bit of a
disclaimer at the top, and we are going to explore
this respectfully because as we'll see throughout the years, there
were often a lot there were a lot of social pressures,
(01:52):
and there were a lot of intervening variables or conditions
that will make more sense as we continue. Look, you know,
and shout out to research associate Max for this. There
are a lot of people in the world and if
you look at it, if you've ever done some of
those distant cousin quizzes and things like that, you know
that humanity is at least somewhat related to each other,
(02:14):
every member of it, right, and it increases exponentially the
further away go, and like cousinship, But we also want
to add as a disclaimer, there are very serious, proven
scientific reasons why you should not marry or procreate with
people who are too closely related to you. And what
(02:36):
we're going to see today is that whether you are
a world renowned scientist, a infamous dictator, or an outlaw,
there are plenty of folks from so many demographics across
history who have not just married a cousin, which happens
still in the modern day, but married a first cousin
(02:57):
a pretty immediate relationship the one.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And you know, you did mention that this does still
happen from time to time to this day. But we
also historically have massive precedent for this in the form
of royalty, you know. I mean they were marrying all
kinds of closely related blood relatives in an effort to
maintain a semblance of some sort of bloodline, you know.
(03:21):
And we also know that over time, sometimes not very
many generations, marrying within one's family in this way can
cause some serious issues and thinking of the Habsburg defects,
you know, problems with you know, things like hemophilia, all
kinds of issues. Yes, exactly, Ben the habsburgs. We're not
really talking about royalty today because those are sort of
(03:42):
the obvious ones, right, We're talking about folks who you
might not think of, like Albert Einstein, Yeah, famous braini.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Act I had a theory of relativity that goes outside
the world of physics. Of not walking away from that joke,
he had a turbulent relationship when he married his first cousin.
And we want to shout out Kara Goldfarb. Over All
this interesting, she said, quote, you don't have to be
(04:10):
Einstein to make a marriage work. In fact, you probably
shouldn't be. So let's talk about Elsa Einstein. She's often
thought of as Albert's ryder die, you know, his number
one person. She knew how to handle this brilliant, at
times difficult physicist. She nursed him back to health in
(04:33):
nineteen seventeen when he got very very ill. She also
once he became a global celebrity, she was always with him,
trotting across the globe. But once you cut past the
surface level info and the headlines and all that stuff,
you see a darker picture. So Elsa was born Elsa
(04:55):
Einstein on January eighteenth, eighteen seventy six. Father is a
guy named Rudolph. He is the cousin of Albert Einstein's father.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But it does get a little weirder. Her mother and
Albert's mother were also related, like I, as closely related
as two women can be. They were sisters, and so
Elsa and Albert were first cousins. Yeah, that's right, they're
(05:25):
first cousins. Some of this lineage stuff gets makes your
head spin a little bit, but sure to make sure
where yes, the in fact they were first cousins.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
My brain is still hurting from researching some of the
tangents in trivia later on.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
It is rough, it gets rough.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But we're in this together. And so when Elsa gets
married to Einstein, it's not her first marriage. She actually
marries another guy named Max Lowenthal in eighteen ninety six,
and this couple goes on to have three children before
they divorced in nineteen oh eight. And Elsa Rique's her
maiden name at that time. So during her marriage, her
(06:03):
first marriage, she's Elsa Loenthal. After the divorce, she's Elsa Einstein,
and she marries Albert Einstein. Now, of course the couple
was aware of their relationship. Having the same last name
is you know, it's a bit of a clue. And
Einstein also had a marriage previous to this. He married
(06:24):
a lady named Meliva Maria, a Serbian mathematician, in nineteen
oh three, and it looks like they had a honeymoon period.
They were charmed with each other, impressing each other. But
if you go back through an archive of letters Einstein
wrote during his lifetime, more than fourteen hundred, then it
(06:46):
looks that over time he became detached, aloof and even
a little bit cruel to his first wife, Meliva.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
That's right. I mean, you know, we often hear about
how difficult and at times vicious, brilliant human beings can be,
and Albert Einstein was no different. During this period, he
was starting to get closer and closer to Elsa. This
is nineteen twelve we're talking about here, and he was
(07:17):
still married to his first wife, Maria, who he apparently
treated abominably. He and Elsa had grown up together, you know,
so there was some fondness there already. You know, you
would think familial cousinly fondness that I guess was reassessed
in a somewhat bizarre fashion. But it was only around
(07:38):
that time that we mentioned, nineteen twelve, that they started
to develop a kind of a letter writing relationship, right,
that began to eat its way into romantic territory. Yeah,
courting via post and which was a thing people used
to write letters. Massive beautiful romances were forged when people
(08:01):
couldn't be there face to face through letters. We have
tons of record of this in history.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I like Simone de Beauvier, that's a great correspondence real
ky of course. So Einstein falls sick like I said earlier,
and Elsa shows up and she takes care of Albert,
she nurses him back to health. In nineteen nineteen, he
divorces his first wife, and then he marries Elsa shortly
(08:31):
after in the same year, on June second, nineteen nineteen,
like pretty much right after his divorce is finalized. And
we've got a quote from him that shows he is
a little bit he's not quite Tinto's down on this.
He says, quote, the attempts to force me into marriage
come from my cousin's parents and is mainly attributable to
(08:53):
vanity through moral prejudice, which is still very much alive
in the old generation. So he's saying, they're making me
marry her because they think we're living in sin.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And that was often a prime factor, you know, and
what led to people getting married in those days, the
idea of making an honest man out of you or whatever,
you know, living in sin in the eyes of God
and doing right by that. So, yeah, we see a
lot of marriages that were not desired by both parties
(09:25):
as well, right.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Lots of social pressure and you know, Albert repeats the
same pattern that he did with his first wife. Over time,
he becomes increasingly distant from Elsa. He in fact, has
a series of affairs with a number of women, younger women.
And even though we know that Elsa's children from her
(09:49):
previous marriage thought of old al as a father figure,
it turns out he also kind of had a budding
like Allen thing with his eldest stepdaughter. Oh good, he
actually thought of At one point he was like, I'm
(10:10):
I know, I'm engaged to Elsa, my cousin, but I
might break it off and propose to her daughter instead.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
Okay, wow, Albert Einstein, you know, the more you dig
into some of these folks, the less they deserve to
be on the cover of a children's book with a
giant head.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
You know what I mean. It's theory or relativity.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Indeed, yeah, it's interesting. But again, like you know, the
idea of becoming isolated and becoming distant, and you know,
we see this with artists, We see this with you know,
folks who are just obsessed and consumed by their work.
And again, not to psychoanalyze Albert Einstein on a podcast,
but like I could see how a guy like that
would see a woman as someone that was there for
(10:59):
his gratification, you know, someone that is there to distract
him from his stressful existence and his toilings, you know,
mental toilings.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
You know, it happens. It happens a lot, you know,
very driven people. Isaac Asimov did not have a happy
marital life. A lot of authors didn't, and a lot
of scientists didn't, you know. And at the same time,
nothing happens in a vacuum. As we always say, it's
the nineteen thirties, let's fast forward to their anti Semitism
(11:29):
is on a dangerous rise, and a lot of right
wing groups start targeting Albert Einstein. So eventually he and
Elsa say, we're going to have to relocate the family.
It's nineteen thirty three. Things are not looking good in Germany,
so we're going to move to the United States, and
they put down roots in Princeton, New Jersey. The disasters
(11:52):
keep coming because shortly after they move, Elsa gets news
that her daughter Ilsa has developed cancer. She was living
in Paris at the time, so her mom goes to
France to be with her in her final days. This
is definitely terminal condition. She comes back to the US
nineteen thirty five, and Elsa now has health issues, medical
(12:15):
conditions of her own heart and liver problems that just
keep getting worse. And what does Albert do. He closes
the door to his study figuratively, and he keeps click
clacking away on his work.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
And sadly, Elsa passed away on December twentieth of nineteen
thirty six in that home in Princeton, New Jersey. And
you know, for as much of a sob as Einstein
comes off in the story, it is reported that he
was genuinely at a loss over her passing, and a
(12:51):
family friend, a guy named Peter Buckney, said it was
the first and only time he saw Albert Einstein cry.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And you know, everybody knows that any relationship, no matter
how beautiful, can have a lot of ups and downs,
and it can be difficult to maintain any long term relationship.
You know, you really have to show up every day
for it. And we're not saying, obviously that Elsa and
Albert had the perfect marriage, but it does show us
(13:24):
that he had emotional difficulties. Right, a brilliant physicist, but
not a super emotionally aware person. And we know this
because of a letter he wrote to the son of
one of his friends. His friend, Michelle Besso had passed away,
and Albert wrote this, what I admire and your father
(13:44):
is that for his whole life he stayed with only
one woman. That is a project in which I grossly
failed twice way to make it about you, bro. That's
really weird.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
That is a little weird. Yeah, there's no question. And
again shout out to Kara gold Farm for all that's interesting.
Who hipped us to a lot of these very interesting
facts about you know, ultimately a great man, not necessarily
a great husband, you know.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Yeah, and it jump in here.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I mean, so when I was writing this, there's a
lot of people who marry their first cousins, so I
try to pick people are kind of closer to us
in history and also ones that I could have that
there's plenty of research materials about, Like sure some of
these people can't find them about. When I picked these
three people, I did not expect to be grossed out
the most bi Albert Einstein. Of these three, I'm like,
this isn't gonna be the one that gross me out
(14:34):
the most, too.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Well, don't worry about this right, as you know, will continue.
We will continue by going to the Middle East. The infamous,
infamously bad romance novelist and also a dictator of rock
(15:00):
for some time. Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I see, he.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Kinda had a pull quote for me here, one of
history's few truly bad guys. I agree with that. We
have so many strange things to talk about when it
comes to Hussein. He did write a copy of the
Quran in his own blood, for instance. He also he
also married his cousin, he sure did.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And Saddam Hussein's a guy that kind of didn't really
have many guardrails on the things that he felt that
he could or could not do. That's sort of the
way of the of the dictator. And you know, it's funny.
A lot of these I feel like, these, these individuals
we're talking about today could be their own episode of
Behind the Bastards. Pretty sure Saddam's got a few. Yeah,
but it's true. We don't know a whole lot though
(15:45):
about the first marriage that Saddam Hussein had to Saji
Sajida Talfa. We get this from Gina de muro Over
at all. That's interesting as well. Quote here from this piece.
Given that it is hard to step the fact from
the hearsay, often the little that is known concerning his
wife is just as disturbing as the worst rumors. Was
(16:08):
often the case, once again for folks like this, a
lot of smoke probably an awful lot of fire too.
So Saddam Hussein and Sajita Talfa had an arranged marriage
that was arranged by their parents when they were only
ten years old. This was agreed upon. Sajita was also
(16:30):
a Saddam's uncle's daughter, which by the whole cousin math
thing comes back to first cousins, right.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, And we do have to say, you know, in
a place where people have arranged marriages, being related in
some way to your spouse or your would be spouse
was not considered necessarily a bad thing or a deal breaker. Oftentimes,
arranged marriages or negotiations between branches or clans of a
(17:02):
family right to further solidify some of the things we
mentioned earlier, you know, influenced lineage and so on. So
the couple gets hitched around nineteen sixty three. Even today
people aren't sure what the exact date was. They did
go on to have five different children, and by most accounts, Sajida,
(17:23):
who had been a school teacher before marrying Saddam, she
liked the marriage. She liked some of the side benefits
because her husband was high ranking in the government, of course,
and she enjoyed the social status. She was flexing with
designer clothes from Europe wherein jewelry. She dyed her hair blonde,
(17:46):
and she became the first lady of a rock right. So,
one woman who met her said she aspired to be
light skinned and coated her face with so much powder
that it looked like quote, someone had thrown flour on her.
That's a pretty pretty rude, body shamy thing to say.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Well, yeah, yeah, it's not great, but she wasn't super
pleasant either. That's that is that is what you hear
also been. I believe the of the five children they had,
two of them were like the worst ones, like the
ones that you heard like, you know, I think whipping
the losing soccer team on the bottoms of their feet,
ude and kuse during that period, you know, when they
(18:25):
are just absolute, absolute monsters. And I think there's there's
there's a couple of dramatized you know, kind of biopics
about them. If I'm not mistaken, it's like called like
the Devil's something or other.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
That's right, Yeah, he I know. I did some research
on Uday in particular, and he was just absolutely like
a King Jeffrey from Game of Thrones, that level of
cartoonishly evil. And he had the you're you're talking about
the national football team. That's whenever they lost a match,
(18:58):
he would he would have them arrested in Orchard. He
did that with Olympic athletes representing Iraq as well. Now
that has nothing to do with the fact that his
parents were cousins. He's just so bad that we're gonna
mention it.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, very bad that The film I was talking about,
by the way, it is called The Devil's Double. It
came out in twenty eleven and it is about a
about body doubles, exactly the body double or political decoy
for Uday Hussein, who is played in the film by
Dominick Cooper, who plays both Ouda and La tiff Yahia,
(19:31):
who is the double. I would like to see this
film and as an incredible poster, by the way, where
it's like oday sitting in a golden throne and everything's
gold and He's completely painted gold head to toe. It's
a really striking image. Reminds me of something like David
la Chappelle would do.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
I did see The Devil's Double. I enjoyed it. It
was during my I can't remeber what project it was
for nihilistic film viewing period. Researching, I can'mero which project
it was. Whereas researching a lot of dictators that time,
all of whom have really interesting and disturbing stories. Saddam
(20:07):
is no different. Oh, shopkeepers in Bagdad. By the way,
we're very scared of Saddam's wife because she refused to
pay full price for anything. She's apparently quite vindictive, and
opponents of the regime said she was just as violent
and greedy as her husband. But Saddam controls the press,
(20:29):
you know, and he and his forces go out of
their way to make sure anything about his family just
shows him in the best lie ever, A super doting father,
a very committed husband. There's an interview in nineteen seventy
eight where he says the most important thing about a
marriage is that the man must not let the woman
feel downtrodden, simply because she is a woman and he
(20:53):
is a man. That's pretty cool to say, right, that's
very I think that is a very human and realistic
thing to say. But how much of those, you know,
propagandist statements, like how true were they when the cameras
were rolling?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
But again back to dictators, they also you know, they
like to both f around and find out, but they
don't really have to reap any consequences. And when I
say f around, I just mean, you know, sleep around.
It is pretty common, open secret that anybody at that
level of power, absolute power, is going to do whatever
that person wants to do in terms of having multiple partners,
(21:35):
and Sadam was no exception. Despite that rosy image that
he would have had the press portray him as those
those rose colored glasses, you know, him as the doting
father of the family man and all that not the case.
The marriage was largely for show, Asidam carried on numerous affairs,
one mistress in particular that truly was kind of his
(21:58):
number one, some Shabunder. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, And they were both already married to other people.
That didn't stop them from having a secret wedding in
nineteen eighty six, and he and Shabandhar started appearing publicly
in the late nineteen eighties. Shajdah is super unhappy about this,
as is the rest of the family, including Saddam's brother
(22:24):
in law and Saddam's first cousin, due to the nature
of the marriage. They were talking about dishonor.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, I guess that's my question. Ben is like, why
do that, Like, why actually have a double marriage? Is
it literally just because you can? Because you know narcissism.
I would say it's classic rules shouldn't apply to me.
I am the main character of everything, and that's I mean,
that's a very simplistic way to put it, but there
(22:52):
it is. He clearly did not feel.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Bound by More's or by the strength of his word
in vows. This guy, Saddam's brother in law, a guy
named Adnan Kayirala, and we're not native speakers here, Thank
you for bearing with us. This guy is complaining a
little too much. He's starting to contradict the super happy,
(23:16):
faultless image Saddam spends so much time building, and so
ad Noon dies in a helicopter crash, a freak helicopter crash.
It's a freak crash because Saddam's bodyguards plant explosives on
the chopper.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, this is known, right man, This is not just
kiss confirmed. Okay, cool. Yeah, Saddam's bodyguards did admit that
they planted explosive devices on the helicopter under order from
Saddam himself. Of course, they weren't just doing it as
a little maybe i'll get an Ada boy here. Of course,
during the Gulf War, as we know, a lot of
(23:55):
members of the Hussein family had to leave Iraq, but
they came back after it concluded, and there was a
period during this time that Sajita had to give up
her lap of luxury kind of existence. But then she
ultimately had to do it, you know, for real in
(24:18):
two thousand and three. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, that's because this was just before the bombing of Baghdad,
like you know, like Outcast talks about. And she, according
to the reports, she sought asylum in Britain with two
of her daughters, and their official applications were never received.
But of course the British government is aware of her past,
(24:42):
and they went public with the following declaration. They said,
our country is under no obligation to give asylum to
people who've taken part in human rights abuses. They're saying
she's not an innocent. She's not a refugee. She actively
participated in some her horrific things. And another point that
came up with this was that she was living in
(25:05):
the lap of luxury. She had a very opulent life
during her heyday, and all this wealth they accrued came
at a tremendous, profoundly disturbing cost to people of Iraq
who were being thrown in prison by a police state
were often living in crushing poverty. So their argument was,
(25:27):
even if she was not directly involved in torture and
murder carried out by the regime, all the wealth she
had was blood money.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Right, and she was. I mean, look, we can't really,
we can't really attest to the exact levels of like
culpability or you know, what she knew when she knew it.
It's tough to get exact there or even rough but likely,
you know, living in that environment, it was known. And
(25:57):
I keep saying that game of throne style, But you know,
I mean, it's not difficult to figure out what's happening
and where this wealth is coming from if you're paying
even a small amount of attention. Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
She was surprised, right, if you had told her what
the regime was doing. I don't think it would have
been news to her. She's very much, if not a
willing participant, willing to profit from those acts of inhumanity.
And okay, we like Max set it up. We're talking
about three today. We didn't want to end on a
(26:30):
complete downer Game of Thrones villain style, So let's go
to a very famous person in deep mythos of America.
Let's go to Jesse James.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
What was that? Was it?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, cool film with a great soundtrack by Nick Cave
and in a long name, who's the other guy? Warren
ellis not the comic book writer, but the bearded mandolin
violin guitar playing outlaw countryman that hangs out with Nick
Ka all the time. Really really cool soundtrack and it's
(27:17):
a great film as well. But yeah, Jesse James, pew pew,
In case you missed it was the sound of his
six guns going off, because that guy was a real
ace shooter.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
He also was a real violent dude. And we're going
to talk about this phenomenon in an episode coming up
later pretty soon, about how Pirates became prolific in the Caribbean.
This guy wanted to join up in the Civil War,
so he was just a teenager when he connects with
(27:49):
Confederate gorilla forces in eighteen sixty four, and at the
close of the war, he never really stops basically pillaging.
He knows that the Confederates lose the Civil War and
he becomes an outlaw, and so he's out there knocking
over banks and trains and stagecoaches. Real red dead redemption
(28:12):
two style.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah. I mean, like you said, Ben, he was such
a young man when he kind of began this life.
It makes sense that he would just kind of, you know,
stay the course. And he also had some kind of
familial influences that we're going to get into shortly. But
according to a biography from American Experience, Jesse was born
in Clay County, Missouri, on September fifth, eighteen forty seven.
(28:35):
His parents, Zerelda It's a great name and Robert James,
were hemp farmers. Okay, but well, okay, that's a dang ah.
I mean, like you know, people, I joke. Hemp was
a very very popular cash crop because it was you know,
(28:56):
used to make incredibly strong ropes. In fact, a lot
of the ropes in chips and even in theaters, for example,
they're referred to as hemps. Still to this day. It's
sort of like an old timey term for like really
strong road because in the old days, hemp was a
very available and popular material for making these.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
And of course, you know, as we always want to
point out, this was not the kind of this was
not the kind of plant that you would smoke. It was,
as you said, mainly for industrial uses, making rope, making fiber,
sometimes for clothing and so on. So they grow up
on this hemp farm. Like you said, Jesse and his
(29:38):
older brother Frank watched the Civil War erupt and they
decide they're going to march off from Clay County, Missouri
to fight for the Confederate cause. At this point, Jesse
James is still probably too young to go to war,
but he tells his parents Robert James, and his mom is, look,
(30:01):
I'm gonna go. I want to fight for the Confederates.
Zerrella's full name, by the way, is Zerelda Elizabeth Cole,
James Simms, Samuel, Sorry, why why are we telling you that?
Because we want you to make up a silly song
about it. And also because this will come into play
with the with the cousin coupling later and.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
As we talked about, you know, with some kind of
familial bonds, perhaps leading to a sense of righteous indignation
on the part of young Jesse James, his brother, you know,
going off and supporting a band of pro Confederate militiaman
you know, gorillas actually brought down the iron fist of
(30:43):
the Union on Jesse and his family. Jesse and his
stepfather were beaten and tortured for information by these folks
because of what what Frank had done.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, and this punishment, this which very much was may
have been the spark that led Jesse ultimately to join
a group of garias led by a guy named Bloody
Bill Anderson in the spring of eighteen sixty four. He's
just sixteen, but he's seen things no sixteen year old
should ever have to see, and so he joins like
(31:21):
blood Meridian style and propagates this violence. They terrorize pro
Union folks sympathizers across the Missouri countryside. Jesse James participates
in a lot of deeply unclean stuff, including the Centralia
massacre in which twenty two unarmed Union soldiers at a
(31:42):
hundred other Union soldiers are utterly butchered. He has bathed
in blood, right, he has baptized into a life of
incredibly violent activity. And you know, when you look at
these biographies, like we mentioned PBS's American experience, these horrible
formative events created the man he would become when he
(32:05):
grew up.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, that's right. And at this point he starts kind
of canodling a little bit with a woman who would
become his wife, nicknamed z Mimes also known as these
names might be familiar to you, Zirelda Amanda Mimes.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I kind of like the internal rhyme.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Did's a very good one. Born on July twenty first,
eighteen forty five in Logan, Kentucky to a pastor John,
which I love. I just call him pastor John, Pastor
John W. Mims and Mary Mimes. The last name Memes
is just very charming to me for some reason. Yeah,
Mary Mims, Mary James Memes rather and Zirelda was one
(32:45):
of twelve children that they had together, and her mother
was Robert James's sister, right, Robert James, father of Jesse
James sister Let's do the cousin math real quick, right, Okay,
where are we at?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Cousin math sounds like a cool down south hip hop beat.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But this they're aware of this, by the way. Oh yeah,
first we're at first, right, first cousins.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
The first cousins Jesse and.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Easiest cousin Math. By the way, Yeah, Jesse and Z.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Are very well aware of their familial connection the relationship,
but they still fall in love. While Jesse is living
temporarily with his aunt and uncle. In eighteen sixty five
in Missouri, the couple gets engaged and the engagement lasts
nine years. During this time, our buddy Jesse is an
(33:41):
out and out outlaw, the James Younger Gang it was called.
They're in full swing. Eventually, amid all the crime, they
get married at Z's sisters home in Kearney, Missouri. This
is on April twenty fourth, eighteen seventy four, and fast
forward about a year a little more. In a year,
(34:02):
Z has her first child, Jesse Edward Tim James Fellow
August baby shout out bro August thirty first, eighteen seventy five.
The couple as twins. Later, just like three years later,
February twenty eighth, eighteen seventy eight. However, there's a tragedy.
The twins are still born, or according to some accounts,
(34:26):
they survive for a little bit, but they pass away
within twenty four hours of being born. You know, of course,
infant mortality very high at this time in American history.
Eighteen seventy nine. The next year, Z has a daughter.
She's named Mary Susan James. She survives, and she actually
(34:49):
outlives the James Younger Gang.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Right, Yeah, the James and Younger Gang, not to be
confused with the incredible I believe a funk band James Gang,
isn't that wasn't a funk band kind of music to
James Gang play sorry in a rock band James James Gang,
American rock band from Cleveland, Ohio, formed in nineteen sixty six.
(35:12):
Go Cleveland Cleveland Rocks. Yeah, that's right. The James Younger
Gang stopped being active when one of the younger brothers
last why yep were captured during a raid in Northfield, Minnesota.
Around the high damn polite over there, drinking their milk
(35:35):
and eating their cheeses, their fine cheeses. That's Wisconsin and Minnesota.
They like a good cheese in Minnesota as well. So
Jesse decided to start up a new gang, the James Gang. Yeah,
h burst of creativity. Yeah, I like it. And they
did continue a robin and a pillaging and uh, you know,
holding up trains and the like. And on September seventh
(35:58):
of eighteen eighty one, Glendale, Missouri, they had their last stand.
Yeah yeah, I mean in terms of not like death,
but like the last big, big heist.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, one last job. So they hold up this train
and then Jesse says, we're gonna move our family to
a different town, get away from the heat a bit.
It's Saint Joseph, Missouri. That's where they settle under Jesse's
assumed name. He calls himself Tom Howard. He has a
ten thousand dollars reward over his head. So they have
(36:32):
to they have to try to lie low or lay low.
And Z tries to talk Jesse into living the square life,
you know what I mean, like getting a solid job,
you know, maybe go to church once in a while.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
And Jesseward's a good square name, by the way.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah yeah, And Jesse says, you know what, Hunt, You're right,
I am definitely gonna settle down and have a square life,
right after one last bank rubber?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Oh, how is it gonna go?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
A bit?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Is it gonna go?
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Well, it.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Depends on what side of the robbery you're on, right,
So he's planning this robbery, it's so such a trope,
one last job. He hangs out with Charles and Robert
Ford or Bob Ford to his friends call it. And
while they're planning this robbery, Bob kills Jesse James on
April third, eighteen eighty two. Zee and her children are
(37:27):
in the kitchen when the fatal gunshot occurs, and the kid,
Jesse Junior, runs into the living room. He finds his
father on the floor clearly has been shot in the head.
Ze begins to scream. The little girl Mary starts crying.
This is just an absolutely horrific situation. Zee is on
(37:49):
herne He's trying to staunch the blood, but it is far,
far too late. Bob or Robert Ford may have been
a coward, but he was a good enough shot at
close range.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Strange exactly, but I always picture, or at least maybe
it's depicted off an in westerns, like someone will get
a head shot sometimes right and then not instantly die
or have like the whole side of their head blown
off if it's with like a maybe a lower caliber pistol. Obviously,
shotguns a different story, but we're handguns like less powerful
in those days. Could you be more likely to get
(38:21):
winged or even just like you know, even we hear
about people surviving head shots sometimes in these days.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Sure, there are a lot of variables, you know what
I mean. There's also not a lot of empty space
in the human body, so even a weak caliber is
gonna is gonna do some damage. It's a good question
because there are there are some pistols that were pretty strong,
and then there's some other ones that you would think
were maybe a little more lightweight. But that term shouldn't
(38:48):
even apply because guns can always be dangerous, you know.
So we could probably do an entire episode about Jesse
and Bob's relationship. It does make me want to rewatch
that film, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
I've honestly never seen it, and I would very much
like to. I think it's great.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
I enjoyed it. I enjoy If you're a history buff,
which I guess all three of us are, then you'll
enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
It's fine. History's okay, it's mids three out of five.
I give history.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
But when Jesse dies, a lot of people who are
aware that he is not really Tom Howard, and a
lot of people in the larger United States, they say, well,
this guy committed so many robberies. I bet is what
widow is set for life. But that wasn't the case.
(39:38):
Who was in a really dire straight The only stuff
they owned they had like a little bit of leftover
stolen jewelry. They had some weapons, and then they had
the things families have photos of each other, you know,
nice letters. Here's a blanket I knit you when you
were but a wee child. So they've got a lot
of debt, and pretty soon they sell almost everything in
(40:01):
the household at an auction to pay their creditors, and
Z and the kids have to move in with Z's
brother in Kansas.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
City, And as is often the case in these types
of situations, it's the children who really get the rough
end of it. Ze did not emerge from the death
of her husband Jesse unscathed. Despite not being harmed physically,
she suffered from serious depression and anxiety, crippling her ability
(40:33):
to take care of her kids. She wore black all
the time and apparently never changed out of this black garb.
She did not remarry. She became something of a hermit.
Jesse James Junior had to essentially much earlier than any
child should, become the primary earner for the household at
(40:58):
the age of eleven, to take care of his ailing
mother and his young sister.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
And Zie was, in her defense, a woman of integrity
in some regards. She refused for the rest of her life.
And he offers to publish books or give insight into
the criminal career of Jesse James, who was already becoming
larger than life posthumously, he's becoming part of American mythology.
(41:24):
And she could have made their lives easier if she
capitalized on the activities of her late husband, but she didn't,
and so she passed away on November thirteenth, nineteen hundred
in Kansas City. She was buried in Cemetery Mount Olivet
in Kearney, Missouri, and about eighteen months later people exhume
(41:47):
her husband and move him from his original gravesite on
the James family farm to place his remains next to her.
And you can find those graves today the next time
you're in Kurdie, Missouri.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
You're not a bummer ending, didn't we?
Speaker 4 (42:01):
Y'all?
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Well, we were going to deliver on that with some
tangents and trivia, some sort of nuggety little stories of
folks who fancied their cousins quite a bit. And I
think these ones we should lighten up the mood a
little bit, because, man, you know, dying in despair, wearing
all black and having your young eleven year old son
have to take care of you the rest of your
(42:24):
life ain't exactly the cheery ending that was promised.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about something something
mechs you found here where you said, wow, private secretaries
to the president sure loved their cousins. It's a very
specific font of knowledge that we're we're about to explore.
I want to give a shout out to nominative determinism
(42:49):
and a guy named Samuel L. Gouveneir g o u
v e r n e u r.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
That like a fancy governor.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a governor, but it's
six dollars more a counter, got it?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Got it?
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Our buddy sam is the private secretary for a guy
who is his daddy uncle and fifth president in US history,
James Monroe.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Ben I absolutely love that you said daddy uncle because
this just gets so confusing because his actual uncle, not
by blood, but James Monroe, was married to Elizabeth Monroe,
who was Samuel L. Gouvernor's mom's sister, So his aunt
by blood uncle by marriage, but his dad or daddy
(43:39):
or dad in law, because Gouvernor married Maria Hester Monroe,
the daughter of Elizabeth and James Monroe. But this is
even weirder when we started hearing all the names and
also how utterly confusing all this crap.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Is Samuel L. Gouverneur, his mother was named Hester Gouverneer.
His wife once they actually did get married, was Maria
Hester Gouveneer. It's confusing, extra confusing, as you mentioned, Max,
and researching a lot of us stuff, it gets a
little Quagmiriy. So Maria Hester Gouvenier is not to be
(44:15):
confused with his second wife, Mary Digs Gouvenier.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Totally different, totally different, right, And Sam's sister's maiden name
was Maria Charlotte Gouveneer. Two of his children were named
Samuel Lawrence Gouverneir Junior and James Monroe Gouveneir also shout out.
Shout out to Max and the research brief who called
(44:42):
Samuel L. Gouveneer America's number two most famous Samuel L.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Moving on to John Adams the Second, not to be
confused with our boy, John Quincy Adams, who Max you
referred to as the original sequel.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Explain, because there's John, there's John Quincy Adams, which is
his son, and there's John Adams the second. So John
Adams the Second is really kind of John Adams the third,
but he's not. Also, to get your heads up, is
really hard to find information about John Adams the Second,
because you type it into a search engine, it just
comes up with John Adams, second President of American history.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Max's with the facts of phone get backs.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
He drops the knowledge just for you.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
So good, there we got fat.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Indeed, John Adams was in fact the second president in
American history and was the successor to James L. Governaire,
holding the position of private secretary to John Quincy Adams.
John Adams the Second was the second son of John
Quincy Adams and Louisa Catherine Nae Helen Adams, with an
(45:59):
older brother named George Washington Adams, Get out of here,
and a younger brother named Charles Francis Adams. This is
like a Gabriel Garcia Marquezno, it's it's absurd. Later they
popped a scenior onto there, just to make things less
confusing more confusing. You mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Yeah, I don't know at this point, but all the
way the cadences as you're talking about, that makes me
think this is a situation where you could make a
really confusing school children's song that's supposed to help you
to remember but just becomes increasingly convoluted.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Let's put they might be giants right on it. Yeah,
there we go. We forget.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
We forgot to say, why is private secretary important? Secretary
back then does not mean the same thing as secretary
often means now. The private secretary in this day and
age was a position that was kind of expected to
be based on nepotism. Your private secretary was usually a
(46:57):
direct close family member filling in and as you know,
as Max points out, it's also a position that seemed
to have a lot of first cousin marriers and as
a patented Williams Street so Okay, no, he did a
beautiful job outlining the relationship here. John Adams two becomes
(47:18):
this private secretary for the entirety of his father's presidential
career starting eighteen twenty five ending in eighteen twenty nine,
and then somewhere along the way eighteen twenty eight, he
marries his wife, Mary Catherine Helen at the White House
super fancy. Johnny and Mary had known each other for
(47:38):
a while because when Mary Catherine Helen's parents died, Mary
Catherine Helen was a child and she moved in with
her mother's sister, whose name was Louisa Catherine Helen Adams.
To make everything a lot worse, immediately, all three Adams
(47:59):
brothers started an intense competition to win Mary's hand, and
they aggressively courted their cousin first custom first cousin. And
this is These are just a few examples. This goes on,
but as as we said, everybody you know, it can
be confusing to keep track of all the individuals, especially
(48:19):
as the names get similar, and it could be difficult
today for people often to trace their own familial relationships.
That's why there is there was at least a dating
app in Iceland. You guys heard about this that would
tell you whether or not you were related to someone
you were trying to date.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Do you guys know the Snel I say, Irish dating show.
I think it's Bill Hayter is like the Bachelor, and
it's eighty Bryant, Kate mckannon and Cecily Strong are like
the three like bachelors, and it turns out that two
of them are related to him.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That actually is a benefit.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Like Adie Bryan's the one that's not related to so
she's just kind of eliminated off quietly, right, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 4 (49:04):
Why that's where my brain's going with us right here.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
And again, you know, as we said at the top,
we're not here to vilify people or to you know,
to make a mockery of them in this regard. But
it turns out there are a lot of prominent historical
figures that did in fact marry their first cousins, from
outlaws like Jesse James to groundbreaking scientists like Albert Einstein,
(49:30):
because at the end of the day, they're all human
and humans are inherently fallible. But Noel, speaking of fallibility,
I think we did okay on this one. We held
our own things I don't think we falibated.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
No, wow, I'm salivating thinking of how little we falibated. Okay,
I think we've we've all collectively gone a little insane
from from naming and cousin math fatigue. But thanks for
bearing with us, y all ridiculous historians out there, and
thank you Max for this incredible and brain shattering research brief.
(50:05):
And thanks to you.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Ben behind the curtain, guys, behind the behind the gurkin. Yeah,
there's a lot of gurkhing in this episode.
Speaker 4 (50:13):
It's this brief took.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
An extra two weeks for me to get done because
once I started touching Adam's family, which the Adams family
is just.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Full of inbreeding.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
They're creepy.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
It's so creepy. Yeah, every time I opened it up
and I started researching, it broke my brain. I just
had to stop.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Well, thank you for your service, Max, and also thanks
to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist. Thanks to Christoph rassiotis
East Jeffcoat here in spirit Nol. Of course, thanks to you.
Are you excited about this weird Pirate episode?
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Oh gosh, ar maty boy boy boy am I EMM
see you nice time? Folks For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever did you
listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for a super producer
who might as well be a member of the family,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Who all in the family here. No, that sounds weird.
That's wrong, That's not what I meant. I take it
all back. Yeah, I don't know. Look, first of all,
maybe not trigger warning, I guess. But you know, sometimes
on a show called Ridiculous History, we do brush up
against topics that aren't inherently ridiculous or they're like sad
(01:00):
or are just kind of you know, messed up in
some way, shape or form, and then we often follow
these well, it was a different time, but today we
are talking about incests. Let's just get it out there
to a degree, and we're not saying like, wow, that's
some wacky stuff, these wacky cousin marrying geniuses, historical figures.
That's not the take that we're offering up at all.
(01:22):
But it is an interesting story or an interesting series
of stories just the same. And yeah, it was a
different time.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I'm Ben or Noel, and today we are talking about
people who married their first cousins throughout history. You know,
as we said, we wanted a little bit of a
disclaimer at the top, and we are going to explore
this respectfully because as we'll see throughout the years, there
were often a lot there were a lot of social pressures,
(01:52):
and there were a lot of intervening variables or conditions
that will make more sense as we continue. Look, you know,
and shout out to research associate Max for this. There
are a lot of people in the world and if
you look at it, if you've ever done some of
those distant cousin quizzes and things like that, you know
that humanity is at least somewhat related to each other,
(02:14):
every member of it, right, and it increases exponentially the
further away go, and like cousinship, But we also want
to add as a disclaimer, there are very serious, proven
scientific reasons why you should not marry or procreate with
people who are too closely related to you. And what
(02:36):
we're going to see today is that whether you are
a world renowned scientist, a infamous dictator, or an outlaw,
there are plenty of folks from so many demographics across
history who have not just married a cousin, which happens
still in the modern day, but married a first cousin
(02:57):
a pretty immediate relationship the one.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And you know, you did mention that this does still
happen from time to time to this day. But we
also historically have massive precedent for this in the form
of royalty, you know. I mean they were marrying all
kinds of closely related blood relatives in an effort to
maintain a semblance of some sort of bloodline, you know.
(03:21):
And we also know that over time, sometimes not very
many generations, marrying within one's family in this way can
cause some serious issues and thinking of the Habsburg defects,
you know, problems with you know, things like hemophilia, all
kinds of issues. Yes, exactly, Ben the habsburgs. We're not
really talking about royalty today because those are sort of
(03:42):
the obvious ones, right, We're talking about folks who you
might not think of, like Albert Einstein, Yeah, famous braini.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Act I had a theory of relativity that goes outside
the world of physics. Of not walking away from that joke,
he had a turbulent relationship when he married his first cousin.
And we want to shout out Kara Goldfarb. Over All
this interesting, she said, quote, you don't have to be
(04:10):
Einstein to make a marriage work. In fact, you probably
shouldn't be. So let's talk about Elsa Einstein. She's often
thought of as Albert's ryder die, you know, his number
one person. She knew how to handle this brilliant, at
times difficult physicist. She nursed him back to health in
(04:33):
nineteen seventeen when he got very very ill. She also
once he became a global celebrity, she was always with him,
trotting across the globe. But once you cut past the
surface level info and the headlines and all that stuff,
you see a darker picture. So Elsa was born Elsa
(04:55):
Einstein on January eighteenth, eighteen seventy six. Father is a
guy named Rudolph. He is the cousin of Albert Einstein's father.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But it does get a little weirder. Her mother and
Albert's mother were also related, like I, as closely related
as two women can be. They were sisters, and so
Elsa and Albert were first cousins. Yeah, that's right, they're
(05:25):
first cousins. Some of this lineage stuff gets makes your
head spin a little bit, but sure to make sure
where yes, the in fact they were first cousins.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
My brain is still hurting from researching some of the
tangents in trivia later on.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
It is rough, it gets rough.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But we're in this together. And so when Elsa gets
married to Einstein, it's not her first marriage. She actually
marries another guy named Max Lowenthal in eighteen ninety six,
and this couple goes on to have three children before
they divorced in nineteen oh eight. And Elsa Rique's her
maiden name at that time. So during her marriage, her
(06:03):
first marriage, she's Elsa Loenthal. After the divorce, she's Elsa Einstein,
and she marries Albert Einstein. Now, of course the couple
was aware of their relationship. Having the same last name
is you know, it's a bit of a clue. And
Einstein also had a marriage previous to this. He married
(06:24):
a lady named Meliva Maria, a Serbian mathematician, in nineteen
oh three, and it looks like they had a honeymoon period.
They were charmed with each other, impressing each other. But
if you go back through an archive of letters Einstein
wrote during his lifetime, more than fourteen hundred, then it
(06:46):
looks that over time he became detached, aloof and even
a little bit cruel to his first wife, Meliva.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
That's right. I mean, you know, we often hear about
how difficult and at times vicious, brilliant human beings can be,
and Albert Einstein was no different. During this period, he
was starting to get closer and closer to Elsa. This
is nineteen twelve we're talking about here, and he was
(07:17):
still married to his first wife, Maria, who he apparently
treated abominably. He and Elsa had grown up together, you know,
so there was some fondness there already. You know, you
would think familial cousinly fondness that I guess was reassessed
in a somewhat bizarre fashion. But it was only around
(07:38):
that time that we mentioned, nineteen twelve, that they started
to develop a kind of a letter writing relationship, right,
that began to eat its way into romantic territory. Yeah,
courting via post and which was a thing people used
to write letters. Massive beautiful romances were forged when people
(08:01):
couldn't be there face to face through letters. We have
tons of record of this in history.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I like Simone de Beauvier, that's a great correspondence real
ky of course. So Einstein falls sick like I said earlier,
and Elsa shows up and she takes care of Albert,
she nurses him back to health. In nineteen nineteen, he
divorces his first wife, and then he marries Elsa shortly
(08:31):
after in the same year, on June second, nineteen nineteen,
like pretty much right after his divorce is finalized. And
we've got a quote from him that shows he is
a little bit he's not quite Tinto's down on this.
He says, quote, the attempts to force me into marriage
come from my cousin's parents and is mainly attributable to
(08:53):
vanity through moral prejudice, which is still very much alive
in the old generation. So he's saying, they're making me
marry her because they think we're living in sin.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And that was often a prime factor, you know, and
what led to people getting married in those days, the
idea of making an honest man out of you or whatever,
you know, living in sin in the eyes of God
and doing right by that. So, yeah, we see a
lot of marriages that were not desired by both parties
(09:25):
as well, right.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Lots of social pressure and you know, Albert repeats the
same pattern that he did with his first wife. Over time,
he becomes increasingly distant from Elsa. He in fact, has
a series of affairs with a number of women, younger women.
And even though we know that Elsa's children from her
(09:49):
previous marriage thought of old al as a father figure,
it turns out he also kind of had a budding
like Allen thing with his eldest stepdaughter. Oh good, he
actually thought of At one point he was like, I'm
(10:10):
I know, I'm engaged to Elsa, my cousin, but I
might break it off and propose to her daughter instead.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
Okay, wow, Albert Einstein, you know, the more you dig
into some of these folks, the less they deserve to
be on the cover of a children's book with a
giant head.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
You know what I mean. It's theory or relativity.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Indeed, yeah, it's interesting. But again, like you know, the
idea of becoming isolated and becoming distant, and you know,
we see this with artists, We see this with you know,
folks who are just obsessed and consumed by their work.
And again, not to psychoanalyze Albert Einstein on a podcast,
but like I could see how a guy like that
would see a woman as someone that was there for
(10:59):
his gratification, you know, someone that is there to distract
him from his stressful existence and his toilings, you know,
mental toilings.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
You know, it happens. It happens a lot, you know,
very driven people. Isaac Asimov did not have a happy
marital life. A lot of authors didn't, and a lot
of scientists didn't, you know. And at the same time,
nothing happens in a vacuum. As we always say, it's
the nineteen thirties, let's fast forward to their anti Semitism
(11:29):
is on a dangerous rise, and a lot of right
wing groups start targeting Albert Einstein. So eventually he and
Elsa say, we're going to have to relocate the family.
It's nineteen thirty three. Things are not looking good in Germany,
so we're going to move to the United States, and
they put down roots in Princeton, New Jersey. The disasters
(11:52):
keep coming because shortly after they move, Elsa gets news
that her daughter Ilsa has developed cancer. She was living
in Paris at the time, so her mom goes to
France to be with her in her final days. This
is definitely terminal condition. She comes back to the US
nineteen thirty five, and Elsa now has health issues, medical
(12:15):
conditions of her own heart and liver problems that just
keep getting worse. And what does Albert do. He closes
the door to his study figuratively, and he keeps click
clacking away on his work.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
And sadly, Elsa passed away on December twentieth of nineteen
thirty six in that home in Princeton, New Jersey. And
you know, for as much of a sob as Einstein
comes off in the story, it is reported that he
was genuinely at a loss over her passing, and a
(12:51):
family friend, a guy named Peter Buckney, said it was
the first and only time he saw Albert Einstein cry.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And you know, everybody knows that any relationship, no matter
how beautiful, can have a lot of ups and downs,
and it can be difficult to maintain any long term relationship.
You know, you really have to show up every day
for it. And we're not saying, obviously that Elsa and
Albert had the perfect marriage, but it does show us
(13:24):
that he had emotional difficulties. Right, a brilliant physicist, but
not a super emotionally aware person. And we know this
because of a letter he wrote to the son of
one of his friends. His friend, Michelle Besso had passed away,
and Albert wrote this, what I admire and your father
(13:44):
is that for his whole life he stayed with only
one woman. That is a project in which I grossly
failed twice way to make it about you, bro. That's
really weird.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
That is a little weird. Yeah, there's no question. And
again shout out to Kara gold Farm for all that's interesting.
Who hipped us to a lot of these very interesting
facts about you know, ultimately a great man, not necessarily
a great husband, you know.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Yeah, and it jump in here.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I mean, so when I was writing this, there's a
lot of people who marry their first cousins, so I
try to pick people are kind of closer to us
in history and also ones that I could have that
there's plenty of research materials about, Like sure some of
these people can't find them about. When I picked these
three people, I did not expect to be grossed out
the most bi Albert Einstein. Of these three, I'm like,
this isn't gonna be the one that gross me out
(14:34):
the most, too.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Well, don't worry about this right, as you know, will continue.
We will continue by going to the Middle East. The infamous,
infamously bad romance novelist and also a dictator of rock
(15:00):
for some time. Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I see, he.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Kinda had a pull quote for me here, one of
history's few truly bad guys. I agree with that. We
have so many strange things to talk about when it
comes to Hussein. He did write a copy of the
Quran in his own blood, for instance. He also he
also married his cousin, he sure did.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And Saddam Hussein's a guy that kind of didn't really
have many guardrails on the things that he felt that
he could or could not do. That's sort of the
way of the of the dictator. And you know, it's funny.
A lot of these I feel like, these, these individuals
we're talking about today could be their own episode of
Behind the Bastards. Pretty sure Saddam's got a few. Yeah,
but it's true. We don't know a whole lot though
(15:45):
about the first marriage that Saddam Hussein had to Saji
Sajida Talfa. We get this from Gina de muro Over
at all. That's interesting as well. Quote here from this piece.
Given that it is hard to step the fact from
the hearsay, often the little that is known concerning his
wife is just as disturbing as the worst rumors. Was
(16:08):
often the case, once again for folks like this, a
lot of smoke probably an awful lot of fire too.
So Saddam Hussein and Sajita Talfa had an arranged marriage
that was arranged by their parents when they were only
ten years old. This was agreed upon. Sajita was also
(16:30):
a Saddam's uncle's daughter, which by the whole cousin math
thing comes back to first cousins, right.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, And we do have to say, you know, in
a place where people have arranged marriages, being related in
some way to your spouse or your would be spouse
was not considered necessarily a bad thing or a deal breaker. Oftentimes,
arranged marriages or negotiations between branches or clans of a
(17:02):
family right to further solidify some of the things we
mentioned earlier, you know, influenced lineage and so on. So
the couple gets hitched around nineteen sixty three. Even today
people aren't sure what the exact date was. They did
go on to have five different children, and by most accounts, Sajida,
(17:23):
who had been a school teacher before marrying Saddam, she
liked the marriage. She liked some of the side benefits
because her husband was high ranking in the government, of course,
and she enjoyed the social status. She was flexing with
designer clothes from Europe wherein jewelry. She dyed her hair blonde,
(17:46):
and she became the first lady of a rock right. So,
one woman who met her said she aspired to be
light skinned and coated her face with so much powder
that it looked like quote, someone had thrown flour on her.
That's a pretty pretty rude, body shamy thing to say.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Well, yeah, yeah, it's not great, but she wasn't super
pleasant either. That's that is that is what you hear
also been. I believe the of the five children they had,
two of them were like the worst ones, like the
ones that you heard like, you know, I think whipping
the losing soccer team on the bottoms of their feet,
ude and kuse during that period, you know, when they
(18:25):
are just absolute, absolute monsters. And I think there's there's
there's a couple of dramatized you know, kind of biopics
about them. If I'm not mistaken, it's like called like
the Devil's something or other.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
That's right, Yeah, he I know. I did some research
on Uday in particular, and he was just absolutely like
a King Jeffrey from Game of Thrones, that level of
cartoonishly evil. And he had the you're you're talking about
the national football team. That's whenever they lost a match,
(18:58):
he would he would have them arrested in Orchard. He
did that with Olympic athletes representing Iraq as well. Now
that has nothing to do with the fact that his
parents were cousins. He's just so bad that we're gonna
mention it.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, very bad that The film I was talking about,
by the way, it is called The Devil's Double. It
came out in twenty eleven and it is about a
about body doubles, exactly the body double or political decoy
for Uday Hussein, who is played in the film by
Dominick Cooper, who plays both Ouda and La tiff Yahia,
(19:31):
who is the double. I would like to see this
film and as an incredible poster, by the way, where
it's like oday sitting in a golden throne and everything's
gold and He's completely painted gold head to toe. It's
a really striking image. Reminds me of something like David
la Chappelle would do.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
I did see The Devil's Double. I enjoyed it. It
was during my I can't remeber what project it was
for nihilistic film viewing period. Researching, I can'mero which project
it was. Whereas researching a lot of dictators that time,
all of whom have really interesting and disturbing stories. Saddam
(20:07):
is no different. Oh, shopkeepers in Bagdad. By the way,
we're very scared of Saddam's wife because she refused to
pay full price for anything. She's apparently quite vindictive, and
opponents of the regime said she was just as violent
and greedy as her husband. But Saddam controls the press,
(20:29):
you know, and he and his forces go out of
their way to make sure anything about his family just
shows him in the best lie ever, A super doting father,
a very committed husband. There's an interview in nineteen seventy
eight where he says the most important thing about a
marriage is that the man must not let the woman
feel downtrodden, simply because she is a woman and he
(20:53):
is a man. That's pretty cool to say, right, that's
very I think that is a very human and realistic
thing to say. But how much of those, you know,
propagandist statements, like how true were they when the cameras
were rolling?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
But again back to dictators, they also you know, they
like to both f around and find out, but they
don't really have to reap any consequences. And when I
say f around, I just mean, you know, sleep around.
It is pretty common, open secret that anybody at that
level of power, absolute power, is going to do whatever
that person wants to do in terms of having multiple partners,
(21:35):
and Sadam was no exception. Despite that rosy image that
he would have had the press portray him as those
those rose colored glasses, you know, him as the doting
father of the family man and all that not the case.
The marriage was largely for show, Asidam carried on numerous affairs,
one mistress in particular that truly was kind of his
(21:58):
number one, some Shabunder. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, And they were both already married to other people.
That didn't stop them from having a secret wedding in
nineteen eighty six, and he and Shabandhar started appearing publicly
in the late nineteen eighties. Shajdah is super unhappy about this,
as is the rest of the family, including Saddam's brother
(22:24):
in law and Saddam's first cousin, due to the nature
of the marriage. They were talking about dishonor.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, I guess that's my question. Ben is like, why
do that, Like, why actually have a double marriage? Is
it literally just because you can? Because you know narcissism.
I would say it's classic rules shouldn't apply to me.
I am the main character of everything, and that's I mean,
that's a very simplistic way to put it, but there
(22:52):
it is. He clearly did not feel.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Bound by More's or by the strength of his word
in vows. This guy, Saddam's brother in law, a guy
named Adnan Kayirala, and we're not native speakers here, Thank
you for bearing with us. This guy is complaining a
little too much. He's starting to contradict the super happy,
(23:16):
faultless image Saddam spends so much time building, and so
ad Noon dies in a helicopter crash, a freak helicopter crash.
It's a freak crash because Saddam's bodyguards plant explosives on
the chopper.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, this is known, right man, This is not just
kiss confirmed. Okay, cool. Yeah, Saddam's bodyguards did admit that
they planted explosive devices on the helicopter under order from
Saddam himself. Of course, they weren't just doing it as
a little maybe i'll get an Ada boy here. Of course,
during the Gulf War, as we know, a lot of
(23:55):
members of the Hussein family had to leave Iraq, but
they came back after it concluded, and there was a
period during this time that Sajita had to give up
her lap of luxury kind of existence. But then she
ultimately had to do it, you know, for real in
(24:18):
two thousand and three. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, that's because this was just before the bombing of Baghdad,
like you know, like Outcast talks about. And she, according
to the reports, she sought asylum in Britain with two
of her daughters, and their official applications were never received.
But of course the British government is aware of her past,
(24:42):
and they went public with the following declaration. They said,
our country is under no obligation to give asylum to
people who've taken part in human rights abuses. They're saying
she's not an innocent. She's not a refugee. She actively
participated in some her horrific things. And another point that
came up with this was that she was living in
(25:05):
the lap of luxury. She had a very opulent life
during her heyday, and all this wealth they accrued came
at a tremendous, profoundly disturbing cost to people of Iraq
who were being thrown in prison by a police state
were often living in crushing poverty. So their argument was,
(25:27):
even if she was not directly involved in torture and
murder carried out by the regime, all the wealth she
had was blood money.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Right, and she was. I mean, look, we can't really,
we can't really attest to the exact levels of like
culpability or you know, what she knew when she knew it.
It's tough to get exact there or even rough but likely,
you know, living in that environment, it was known. And
(25:57):
I keep saying that game of throne style, But you know,
I mean, it's not difficult to figure out what's happening
and where this wealth is coming from if you're paying
even a small amount of attention. Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
She was surprised, right, if you had told her what
the regime was doing. I don't think it would have
been news to her. She's very much, if not a
willing participant, willing to profit from those acts of inhumanity.
And okay, we like Max set it up. We're talking
about three today. We didn't want to end on a
(26:30):
complete downer Game of Thrones villain style, So let's go
to a very famous person in deep mythos of America.
Let's go to Jesse James.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
What was that? Was it?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, cool film with a great soundtrack by Nick Cave
and in a long name, who's the other guy? Warren
ellis not the comic book writer, but the bearded mandolin
violin guitar playing outlaw countryman that hangs out with Nick
Ka all the time. Really really cool soundtrack and it's
(27:17):
a great film as well. But yeah, Jesse James, pew pew,
In case you missed it was the sound of his
six guns going off, because that guy was a real
ace shooter.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
He also was a real violent dude. And we're going
to talk about this phenomenon in an episode coming up
later pretty soon, about how Pirates became prolific in the Caribbean.
This guy wanted to join up in the Civil War,
so he was just a teenager when he connects with
(27:49):
Confederate gorilla forces in eighteen sixty four, and at the
close of the war, he never really stops basically pillaging.
He knows that the Confederates lose the Civil War and
he becomes an outlaw, and so he's out there knocking
over banks and trains and stagecoaches. Real red dead redemption
(28:12):
two style.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah. I mean, like you said, Ben, he was such
a young man when he kind of began this life.
It makes sense that he would just kind of, you know,
stay the course. And he also had some kind of
familial influences that we're going to get into shortly. But
according to a biography from American Experience, Jesse was born
in Clay County, Missouri, on September fifth, eighteen forty seven.
(28:35):
His parents, Zerelda It's a great name and Robert James,
were hemp farmers. Okay, but well, okay, that's a dang ah.
I mean, like you know, people, I joke. Hemp was
a very very popular cash crop because it was you know,
(28:56):
used to make incredibly strong ropes. In fact, a lot
of the ropes in chips and even in theaters, for example,
they're referred to as hemps. Still to this day. It's
sort of like an old timey term for like really
strong road because in the old days, hemp was a
very available and popular material for making these.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
And of course, you know, as we always want to
point out, this was not the kind of this was
not the kind of plant that you would smoke. It was,
as you said, mainly for industrial uses, making rope, making fiber,
sometimes for clothing and so on. So they grow up
on this hemp farm. Like you said, Jesse and his
(29:38):
older brother Frank watched the Civil War erupt and they
decide they're going to march off from Clay County, Missouri
to fight for the Confederate cause. At this point, Jesse
James is still probably too young to go to war,
but he tells his parents Robert James, and his mom is, look,
(30:01):
I'm gonna go. I want to fight for the Confederates.
Zerrella's full name, by the way, is Zerelda Elizabeth Cole,
James Simms, Samuel, Sorry, why why are we telling you that?
Because we want you to make up a silly song
about it. And also because this will come into play
with the with the cousin coupling later and.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
As we talked about, you know, with some kind of
familial bonds, perhaps leading to a sense of righteous indignation
on the part of young Jesse James, his brother, you know,
going off and supporting a band of pro Confederate militiaman
you know, gorillas actually brought down the iron fist of
(30:43):
the Union on Jesse and his family. Jesse and his
stepfather were beaten and tortured for information by these folks
because of what what Frank had done.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, and this punishment, this which very much was may
have been the spark that led Jesse ultimately to join
a group of garias led by a guy named Bloody
Bill Anderson in the spring of eighteen sixty four. He's
just sixteen, but he's seen things no sixteen year old
should ever have to see, and so he joins like
(31:21):
blood Meridian style and propagates this violence. They terrorize pro
Union folks sympathizers across the Missouri countryside. Jesse James participates
in a lot of deeply unclean stuff, including the Centralia
massacre in which twenty two unarmed Union soldiers at a
(31:42):
hundred other Union soldiers are utterly butchered. He has bathed
in blood, right, he has baptized into a life of
incredibly violent activity. And you know, when you look at
these biographies, like we mentioned PBS's American experience, these horrible
formative events created the man he would become when he
(32:05):
grew up.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, that's right. And at this point he starts kind
of canodling a little bit with a woman who would
become his wife, nicknamed z Mimes also known as these
names might be familiar to you, Zirelda Amanda Mimes.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I kind of like the internal rhyme.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Did's a very good one. Born on July twenty first,
eighteen forty five in Logan, Kentucky to a pastor John,
which I love. I just call him pastor John, Pastor
John W. Mims and Mary Mimes. The last name Memes
is just very charming to me for some reason. Yeah,
Mary Mims, Mary James Memes rather and Zirelda was one
(32:45):
of twelve children that they had together, and her mother
was Robert James's sister, right, Robert James, father of Jesse
James sister Let's do the cousin math real quick, right, Okay,
where are we at?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Cousin math sounds like a cool down south hip hop beat.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But this they're aware of this, by the way. Oh yeah,
first we're at first, right, first cousins.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
The first cousins Jesse and.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Easiest cousin Math. By the way, Yeah, Jesse and Z.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Are very well aware of their familial connection the relationship,
but they still fall in love. While Jesse is living
temporarily with his aunt and uncle. In eighteen sixty five
in Missouri, the couple gets engaged and the engagement lasts
nine years. During this time, our buddy Jesse is an
(33:41):
out and out outlaw, the James Younger Gang it was called.
They're in full swing. Eventually, amid all the crime, they
get married at Z's sisters home in Kearney, Missouri. This
is on April twenty fourth, eighteen seventy four, and fast
forward about a year a little more. In a year,
(34:02):
Z has her first child, Jesse Edward Tim James Fellow
August baby shout out bro August thirty first, eighteen seventy five.
The couple as twins. Later, just like three years later,
February twenty eighth, eighteen seventy eight. However, there's a tragedy.
The twins are still born, or according to some accounts,
(34:26):
they survive for a little bit, but they pass away
within twenty four hours of being born. You know, of course,
infant mortality very high at this time in American history.
Eighteen seventy nine. The next year, Z has a daughter.
She's named Mary Susan James. She survives, and she actually
(34:49):
outlives the James Younger Gang.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Right, Yeah, the James and Younger Gang, not to be
confused with the incredible I believe a funk band James Gang,
isn't that wasn't a funk band kind of music to
James Gang play sorry in a rock band James James Gang,
American rock band from Cleveland, Ohio, formed in nineteen sixty six.
(35:12):
Go Cleveland Cleveland Rocks. Yeah, that's right. The James Younger
Gang stopped being active when one of the younger brothers
last why yep were captured during a raid in Northfield, Minnesota.
Around the high damn polite over there, drinking their milk
(35:35):
and eating their cheeses, their fine cheeses. That's Wisconsin and Minnesota.
They like a good cheese in Minnesota as well. So
Jesse decided to start up a new gang, the James Gang. Yeah,
h burst of creativity. Yeah, I like it. And they
did continue a robin and a pillaging and uh, you know,
holding up trains and the like. And on September seventh
(35:58):
of eighteen eighty one, Glendale, Missouri, they had their last stand.
Yeah yeah, I mean in terms of not like death,
but like the last big, big heist.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, one last job. So they hold up this train
and then Jesse says, we're gonna move our family to
a different town, get away from the heat a bit.
It's Saint Joseph, Missouri. That's where they settle under Jesse's
assumed name. He calls himself Tom Howard. He has a
ten thousand dollars reward over his head. So they have
(36:32):
to they have to try to lie low or lay low.
And Z tries to talk Jesse into living the square life,
you know what I mean, like getting a solid job,
you know, maybe go to church once in a while.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
And Jesseward's a good square name, by the way.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah yeah, And Jesse says, you know what, Hunt, You're right,
I am definitely gonna settle down and have a square life,
right after one last bank rubber?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Oh, how is it gonna go?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
A bit?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Is it gonna go?
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Well, it.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Depends on what side of the robbery you're on, right,
So he's planning this robbery, it's so such a trope,
one last job. He hangs out with Charles and Robert
Ford or Bob Ford to his friends call it. And
while they're planning this robbery, Bob kills Jesse James on
April third, eighteen eighty two. Zee and her children are
(37:27):
in the kitchen when the fatal gunshot occurs, and the kid,
Jesse Junior, runs into the living room. He finds his
father on the floor clearly has been shot in the head.
Ze begins to scream. The little girl Mary starts crying.
This is just an absolutely horrific situation. Zee is on
(37:49):
herne He's trying to staunch the blood, but it is far,
far too late. Bob or Robert Ford may have been
a coward, but he was a good enough shot at
close range.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Strange exactly, but I always picture, or at least maybe
it's depicted off an in westerns, like someone will get
a head shot sometimes right and then not instantly die
or have like the whole side of their head blown
off if it's with like a maybe a lower caliber pistol. Obviously,
shotguns a different story, but we're handguns like less powerful
in those days. Could you be more likely to get
(38:21):
winged or even just like you know, even we hear
about people surviving head shots sometimes in these days.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Sure, there are a lot of variables, you know what
I mean. There's also not a lot of empty space
in the human body, so even a weak caliber is
gonna is gonna do some damage. It's a good question
because there are there are some pistols that were pretty strong,
and then there's some other ones that you would think
were maybe a little more lightweight. But that term shouldn't
(38:48):
even apply because guns can always be dangerous, you know.
So we could probably do an entire episode about Jesse
and Bob's relationship. It does make me want to rewatch
that film, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
I've honestly never seen it, and I would very much
like to. I think it's great.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
I enjoyed it. I enjoy If you're a history buff,
which I guess all three of us are, then you'll
enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
It's fine. History's okay, it's mids three out of five.
I give history.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
But when Jesse dies, a lot of people who are
aware that he is not really Tom Howard, and a
lot of people in the larger United States, they say, well,
this guy committed so many robberies. I bet is what
widow is set for life. But that wasn't the case.
(39:38):
Who was in a really dire straight The only stuff
they owned they had like a little bit of leftover
stolen jewelry. They had some weapons, and then they had
the things families have photos of each other, you know,
nice letters. Here's a blanket I knit you when you
were but a wee child. So they've got a lot
of debt, and pretty soon they sell almost everything in
(40:01):
the household at an auction to pay their creditors, and
Z and the kids have to move in with Z's
brother in Kansas.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
City, And as is often the case in these types
of situations, it's the children who really get the rough
end of it. Ze did not emerge from the death
of her husband Jesse unscathed. Despite not being harmed physically,
she suffered from serious depression and anxiety, crippling her ability
(40:33):
to take care of her kids. She wore black all
the time and apparently never changed out of this black garb.
She did not remarry. She became something of a hermit.
Jesse James Junior had to essentially much earlier than any
child should, become the primary earner for the household at
(40:58):
the age of eleven, to take care of his ailing
mother and his young sister.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
And Zie was, in her defense, a woman of integrity
in some regards. She refused for the rest of her life.
And he offers to publish books or give insight into
the criminal career of Jesse James, who was already becoming
larger than life posthumously, he's becoming part of American mythology.
(41:24):
And she could have made their lives easier if she
capitalized on the activities of her late husband, but she didn't,
and so she passed away on November thirteenth, nineteen hundred
in Kansas City. She was buried in Cemetery Mount Olivet
in Kearney, Missouri, and about eighteen months later people exhume
(41:47):
her husband and move him from his original gravesite on
the James family farm to place his remains next to her.
And you can find those graves today the next time
you're in Kurdie, Missouri.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
You're not a bummer ending, didn't we?
Speaker 4 (42:01):
Y'all?
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Well, we were going to deliver on that with some
tangents and trivia, some sort of nuggety little stories of
folks who fancied their cousins quite a bit. And I
think these ones we should lighten up the mood a
little bit, because, man, you know, dying in despair, wearing
all black and having your young eleven year old son
have to take care of you the rest of your
(42:24):
life ain't exactly the cheery ending that was promised.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about something something
mechs you found here where you said, wow, private secretaries
to the president sure loved their cousins. It's a very
specific font of knowledge that we're we're about to explore.
I want to give a shout out to nominative determinism
(42:49):
and a guy named Samuel L. Gouveneir g o u
v e r n e u r.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
That like a fancy governor.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a governor, but it's
six dollars more a counter, got it?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Got it?
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Our buddy sam is the private secretary for a guy
who is his daddy uncle and fifth president in US history,
James Monroe.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Ben I absolutely love that you said daddy uncle because
this just gets so confusing because his actual uncle, not
by blood, but James Monroe, was married to Elizabeth Monroe,
who was Samuel L. Gouvernor's mom's sister, So his aunt
by blood uncle by marriage, but his dad or daddy
(43:39):
or dad in law, because Gouvernor married Maria Hester Monroe,
the daughter of Elizabeth and James Monroe. But this is
even weirder when we started hearing all the names and
also how utterly confusing all this crap.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Is Samuel L. Gouverneur, his mother was named Hester Gouverneer.
His wife once they actually did get married, was Maria
Hester Gouveneer. It's confusing, extra confusing, as you mentioned, Max,
and researching a lot of us stuff, it gets a
little Quagmiriy. So Maria Hester Gouvenier is not to be
(44:15):
confused with his second wife, Mary Digs Gouvenier.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Totally different, totally different, right, And Sam's sister's maiden name
was Maria Charlotte Gouveneer. Two of his children were named
Samuel Lawrence Gouverneir Junior and James Monroe Gouveneir also shout out.
Shout out to Max and the research brief who called
(44:42):
Samuel L. Gouveneer America's number two most famous Samuel L.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Moving on to John Adams the Second, not to be
confused with our boy, John Quincy Adams, who Max you
referred to as the original sequel.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Explain, because there's John, there's John Quincy Adams, which is
his son, and there's John Adams the second. So John
Adams the Second is really kind of John Adams the third,
but he's not. Also, to get your heads up, is
really hard to find information about John Adams the Second,
because you type it into a search engine, it just
comes up with John Adams, second President of American history.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Max's with the facts of phone get backs.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
He drops the knowledge just for you.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
So good, there we got fat.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Indeed, John Adams was in fact the second president in
American history and was the successor to James L. Governaire,
holding the position of private secretary to John Quincy Adams.
John Adams the Second was the second son of John
Quincy Adams and Louisa Catherine Nae Helen Adams, with an
(45:59):
older brother named George Washington Adams, Get out of here,
and a younger brother named Charles Francis Adams. This is
like a Gabriel Garcia Marquezno, it's it's absurd. Later they
popped a scenior onto there, just to make things less
confusing more confusing. You mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Yeah, I don't know at this point, but all the
way the cadences as you're talking about, that makes me
think this is a situation where you could make a
really confusing school children's song that's supposed to help you
to remember but just becomes increasingly convoluted.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Let's put they might be giants right on it. Yeah,
there we go. We forget.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
We forgot to say, why is private secretary important? Secretary
back then does not mean the same thing as secretary
often means now. The private secretary in this day and
age was a position that was kind of expected to
be based on nepotism. Your private secretary was usually a
(46:57):
direct close family member filling in and as you know,
as Max points out, it's also a position that seemed
to have a lot of first cousin marriers and as
a patented Williams Street so Okay, no, he did a
beautiful job outlining the relationship here. John Adams two becomes
(47:18):
this private secretary for the entirety of his father's presidential
career starting eighteen twenty five ending in eighteen twenty nine,
and then somewhere along the way eighteen twenty eight, he
marries his wife, Mary Catherine Helen at the White House
super fancy. Johnny and Mary had known each other for
(47:38):
a while because when Mary Catherine Helen's parents died, Mary
Catherine Helen was a child and she moved in with
her mother's sister, whose name was Louisa Catherine Helen Adams.
To make everything a lot worse, immediately, all three Adams
(47:59):
brothers started an intense competition to win Mary's hand, and
they aggressively courted their cousin first custom first cousin. And
this is These are just a few examples. This goes on,
but as as we said, everybody you know, it can
be confusing to keep track of all the individuals, especially
(48:19):
as the names get similar, and it could be difficult
today for people often to trace their own familial relationships.
That's why there is there was at least a dating
app in Iceland. You guys heard about this that would
tell you whether or not you were related to someone
you were trying to date.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Do you guys know the Snel I say, Irish dating show.
I think it's Bill Hayter is like the Bachelor, and
it's eighty Bryant, Kate mckannon and Cecily Strong are like
the three like bachelors, and it turns out that two
of them are related to him.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That actually is a benefit.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Like Adie Bryan's the one that's not related to so
she's just kind of eliminated off quietly, right, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 4 (49:04):
Why that's where my brain's going with us right here.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
And again, you know, as we said at the top,
we're not here to vilify people or to you know,
to make a mockery of them in this regard. But
it turns out there are a lot of prominent historical
figures that did in fact marry their first cousins, from
outlaws like Jesse James to groundbreaking scientists like Albert Einstein,
(49:30):
because at the end of the day, they're all human
and humans are inherently fallible. But Noel, speaking of fallibility,
I think we did okay on this one. We held
our own things I don't think we falibated.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
No, wow, I'm salivating thinking of how little we falibated. Okay,
I think we've we've all collectively gone a little insane
from from naming and cousin math fatigue. But thanks for
bearing with us, y all ridiculous historians out there, and
thank you Max for this incredible and brain shattering research brief.
(50:05):
And thanks to you.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Ben behind the curtain, guys, behind the behind the gurkin. Yeah,
there's a lot of gurkhing in this episode.
Speaker 4 (50:13):
It's this brief took.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
An extra two weeks for me to get done because
once I started touching Adam's family, which the Adams family
is just.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Full of inbreeding.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
They're creepy.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
It's so creepy. Yeah, every time I opened it up
and I started researching, it broke my brain. I just
had to stop.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Well, thank you for your service, Max, and also thanks
to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist. Thanks to Christoph rassiotis
East Jeffcoat here in spirit Nol. Of course, thanks to you.
Are you excited about this weird Pirate episode?
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Oh gosh, ar maty boy boy boy am I EMM
see you nice time? Folks For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever did you
listen to your favorite shows
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Noel Brown
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