Fun family fact: this guy was my wife’s cousin. Her family lived nearby on Long Island, and her mom and grandmother always were strict with the family about not having anything to do with them. Even going by the house was “forbidden” (as much as anything can be in an old Italian family). Of course that’s the first thing I did when we started dating, lol. (Respectfully of course, I just drove down the street to say that I had. There was no gawking.)
One of my ancestors was either African or Native American and decided to move to NZ via Australia (allegedly smuggling himself out of the USA on a sheep boat) in the early-mid 19th century. He ended up making a bit of money after catching a bushranger in Aus, before moving to Invercargill a few years after it was founded where he opened a pub and had a bunch of kids, including one daughter that I’m descended from.
One of his sons is known as the “kiwi Rambo” because during WWI he’d frequently get drunk and disorderly, end up in jail, then would do some heroic shit to get out before getting drunk and repeating the whole cycle. He was nominated for several VCs but didn’t get any because he was a brown dude who liked alcohol and did not respect authority. Robin Hyde, an important saffa/kiwi novelist/journalist/poet ended up writing multiple books inspired by his life, including Passport to Hell which is still occasionally studied in uni-level history classes round here.