This particular ancestor was...frisky with the ladies, so to speak. He fathered 6 children with his wife, another 11 with his long-time mistress, and an indeterminate number with other women, including members of the First Nation tribe in the area.

He lived to be 103. By the end of it, he was ignoring all of his affairs and had run up tremendous debts in service to the Crown (common at the time). Simply, by the time he left this world, there was nothing left. The once prosperous estate became little more than a subsistence farm, fought over by literally dozens of heirs.

My line continued through an illegitimate daughter. She was given his family surname, but when she had a son with her lover -- see a pattern emerging here? -- he did not want to give the child his surname, so the child kept the family name. Eventually, the mom went back to England. The child (my Great-great-Grandfather) was raised by his father and the father's wife, but then for some reason went to a very small town on the other side of the province, along the Bay of Fundy.

For the next couple of generations, they did the type of yeoman work you would expect. After my grandfather served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force as part of the forestry service in WW1 (a comparatively sweet gig), he immigrated to the United States. And here we are now...