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Scarcely a week goes by without me getting at least one e-mail like the one below (names are removed and some specifics changed for privacy reasons): Hi, Rose, I just found your website. I have not read your Moran book yet, but I wanted to let you know that I'm one of George Moran's great-great nephews. My Grandmother's aunt was married to George's brother John Moran. No, she was not. Moran never had a brother named John. And if he had, John's surname would not have been Moran, because Moran's surname was not Moran! Confused? George Moran was born Adelard Cunin on August 21, 1891 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Jules Adelard Cunin and his wife, Marie Diana Gobeil. He had one brother, Cyrille (later Anglicized to Cyril) and two sisters, Josephine and Laurette. Laurette's daughter, Carol, confirmed in a 2004 interview that Adelard's evolution from petty thief to the infamous George Moran was a well-known family scandal, although he was grudgingly commended for financially supporting his widowed mother in her final years. Adelard initially changed his name to George Miller after he escaped from the juvenile correctional facility at Red Wing, Minnesota, in 1909, and fled to Chicago. He was known under the surname Miller for three years, until he was arrested in Bloomington, Illinois, for grand larceny in 1912. Because he had already been arrested as George Miller in 1910, he tried to conceal his previous record once again and claimed that his name was George Moran. The name stuck, even though he tried George Gage and George Heitl too. But the truth always escapes in one form or another: Moran's knowledge of the French language becomes obvious when you consider that his first wife was a French woman of Turkish descent, who spoke little to no English when she came to the United States in early 1922, and that a former resident of the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon recalls hearing him speak the language to the local children when he visited the island bootleggers to work out liquor deals on behalf of the O'Banion gang. So if there's a George Moran in your family tree, it's not the gangster. Any and all Cunins are encouraged to stake their claims though!!
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