The Moreaus were always a rather well-to-do family, based in France with many family members living in America (particularly New Orleans and various areas in the Southern region) and the Carribean islands, running plantations and making other such investments in the New World for many generations. Much of their income was made from sugar cane production in what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and even at least one Moreau has participated in slaving. The results of the American Civil War drove most of the Moreaus scattering to the Carribean, Quebec to have a piece in the fur trade, or back to France, although a few remained in Louisiana.
The Moreaus were, for the most part, devout Catholics and often only married other rich Catholics -- the Moreaus in the New World, however, notably did not have the high standards as the French Moreaus. It remained that way for quite a while, until one young man of the French Moreau family, Gaultier, fell for a Russian Jewish ballet dancer named Yeva Sokoll. He impregnated and married her, much to the chagrin of both of their families - as marrying outside of one's faith was a rather inappropriate thing to do in that era. Marrying a foreigner was an even worse offense, because up until that point the French Moreaus only married other French (and in some cases even inbred). As if things could not make anything more difficult for Gaultier, the woman he married was also from a poor family.
Gaultier and Yeva were to be the parents of Alphonse Moreau, a very skilled and accomplished surgeon who later grew infamous for his ideas and beliefs about animal vivisection and fled to his own private island to carry out his work in relative obscurity until his death. Gaultier was rather estranged from his family due to his marriage to Yeva, and in turn, he became rather distant to his son and wife as he tried to earn his family's respect again. The Sokoll-Moreau family was decidedly lower middle class and lived in England -- partly to give their son Alphonse a better education, partly because Gaultier simply didn't want to catch any more grief from his father for marrying a Jewish "peasant woman".
Alphonse grew up not knowing much about either sides of his family, often clinging to his mother for support where his father offered none. Alphonse's existence made Gaultier feel shamed because of his family's rejection of the marriage. However, Alphonse's birth marked the start of what would later become a rather significant rift between two sides of the same family.
((OOC note: For the sake of avoiding spoilers for a few things that are to occur in The Antherios Project, I'm going to omit certain bits of information. Alphonse's background up to TAP's IC-present can be found here:
http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewtopic.php?page=1&t=2597449#58165167 ))
Ellis Island immigration records from the year 1899 show a Mrs. Moreau entering the United States from England with her three young children: Svetlana, age 9; Eva, age 7; and Roland, age 2. There are no records of a Mr. Alphonse Moreau immigrating to America with her, so it was assumed that he died or went on another boat than his wife. The turn of the century had Mrs. Moreau and her children living in the slums of New York for a while before she saved up enough to move somewhere else in 1901. She had written to the Moreaus in Louisiana seeking refuge, only to have her request fall through because they didn't know who she was, much less the Moreau she married, and she didn't have much to her name.
Since that request for help was rejected, Mrs. Moreau sought out to get help from the Jewish side of the family, the Sokolls. She found out through Alphonse's mother, who was still alive (albeit elderly) at the time, that there was a family in Chicago that she could stay with -- friends of Yeva who had immigrated from Russia not too long ago. Mrs. Moreau and her children fell into the Jewish community in Chicago, where they had become something of an extended family to the woman.
Mrs. Moreau suffered an untimely death in 1905 of pneumonia, leaving her children to the orphanage. The St. Philomina's Haven for Orphaned Children took in the three, seeking out someone to care for the Moreau children. They wrote a letter to successful Chicago businessman Olivier Toussaint Moreau III, the only other Moreau in the city and the children's great-uncle. He came to visit the children, but ultimately decided to only adopt one of the three -- the youngest and only son, Roland. He did not want the two Moreau daughters, so they stayed in the orphanage for a little bit longer before being adopted by the Jewish family that had befriended Mrs. Moreau, the Kaufmans.
The Kaufmans were a poor family, having immigrated from Russia to avoid dealing with the increasing presence of revolutionary parties and fearing for the worst. They were a farming family before, but had eked out a decent living in America working at a general store. Life was a bit harder now that they had to care for two girls, one of which who was crippled and wheelchair-bound, Eva (her mother had claimed it was from an animal attack as a toddler). But since they had no children otherwise, they loved having the girls around. The sisters stuck together and were practically inseperable, although they often lamented the loss of their brother being adopted out to someone who would surely never want to see them again.
Roland missed his sisters dearly, having been very attached to them growing up. He had also missed hearing them talk about their father, as they were old enough to remember him, while he had never gotten the chance to meet his father or even know where he was. He was a sweet-tempered boy, and genuinely good-hearted, even though Olivier often drilled into his head ideals of being a "good Moreau" and to not bring shame to the family like his insane, half-breed father. Olivier, being Gaultier's brother, never was very proud of his nephew after hearing that he got ostracized from England. At a very young age, Roland learned such skills as the value of a dollar and how to be professional, which would later benefit him in adulthood.
It wasn't until 1908 that he'd see his sister Svetlana again, when she found out where he lived and wrote him a letter, inviting him to her wedding. She was to marry a Jewish man named Adrian Schreier, a childhood friend of hers, and was thrilled to see her baby brother again after all these years. He invited her, Eva, and Adrian to the mansion to meet their great-uncle, overjoyed to see his sisters. Unfortunately, all did not go well at this reunion -- the presence of the girls and Adrien was very offensive to Olivier and he insulted them in front of their brother, calling them "peasants" and claiming they only wanted to talk to Roland because they wanted his money. They left earlier than scheduled, feeling very bitter and hurt about the visit and Olivier's opinions of them. Olivier later forbade Roland to go to Sveta's wedding as well as write to her, and any letters she wrote to him were taken and burned.
Because Roland never got the letters and therefore never wrote back, Sveta assumed that he no longer wanted anything to do with her, which in turn made her very upset with him. Eventually she stopped writing and cut off all contact attempts with him, instead focusing on raising her two sons, Aleksei (named after her beloved father) and Grigori.
Roland Moreau went on to start the Feral Company of Veterinary Goods and Medicine in 1925 with financial backing from his great-uncle, becoming so immersed in his work that he found easy ways to push aside the guilt from not being able to make amends with his sister due to Olivier's actions, instead working fervently for the care and betterment of animals -- not just people's pets, but animals kept in captivity at zoos, as well. His business was a big success, so much that it even stayed alive during the Great Depression (albeit with a bit of a struggle and a few layoffs to preserve the company's revenue during such hard times). He had a son of his own, Tristan, although he spent much of his early life with Olivier and getting the traditional Moreau ideals being drilled into his head at such an impressionable age, since Roland often spent his time at work and couldn't look after his son.
For a long time, Roland forgot about his sisters. It wasn't until his great-uncle died in 1940 that he found one of the letters from Svetlana he'd forgotten to burn while sifting through the man's paperwork, and again attempted to reach out to his sister and repair the bridges that Olivier burnt so long ago. The meeting was bittersweet, as Sveta was hesitant to open herself up to her brother and only made small-talk with him as if she were speaking to an old acqaintance from school. She knew of her brother's success and had already figured he'd want little to do with her since she was poor, so she wasn't very receptive of him, fearing the worst. While Roland's attitude still hadn't changed and most of the distancing between him and his sister were Olivier's doing, the two siblings never did become as close as they were growing up. That meeting was their last, and Roland died in 1955 where his son Tristan had taken over the Feral company.
Sveta's son, Grigori Schreier, had grown into a fine young man by the 1920s, jumping onto Prohibition by the throat and starting his own speakeasy with ties to the local gang. He made a fair killing off of selling illegal liquor for many years until the law banning alcohol was repealed in 1933. He had a son named Milan in 1935 who, instead of following in his father's law-breaking footsteps, decided to work at a used junk store, eventually becoming the owner of the store in 1965 after working there for so long and inheriting the shop from its original owner, who had taken a liking to Milan and had no family to take over the store for him.
The junk store made enough to get by, with little in the way of profit. Over time, it was made into an antique store as it had many unsold artifacts left over from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Milan married and fathered a son, Anatoli Schreier, who practically grew up in the dusty little antique store. Milan took his son to work constantly, and the shy young boy often helped out around the store and insisted on learning about the objects that he was counting for stock and inventory, as well as the time period that they came from. He listened to stories from his grandfather with great interest, becoming enrapt with 1920s gang culture and speakeasies from hearing his grandfather talk.
For the most part, the Schreiers and Moreaus were rather distant from each other since Roland's last meeting with Svetlana. They made no effort to contact each other for the most part, although Milan once tried writing to Tristan asking if he would like to come to a family reunion. Tristan, having been raised with Olivier's influence, immediately reacted with distrust and ill-concieved ideas towards Milan's motives for contacting him in the first place. Knowing that the Schreiers were poor, had roots in crime, and that his great-great-uncle didn't like them, he wrote back rejecting the invitation and accusing Milan of only writing to him because he wanted money.
Milan was very offended by this, and wrote back voicing his strong disagreement. This in turn started a very heated exchange as Milan and Tristan fired angry letters back and forth to each other for at least a year before Milan gave up attempting contact, since there was clearly no way he could convince the other man that he wasn't after his money. They left each other alone, each pretending the other didn't exist, and went on and ran their businesses. Feral Labs eventually became a large, international company while Milan's antique store continued to be a small shop in old downtown Chicago.
Anatoli grew up and later came to be the owner of the shop when his father died in 1994. Inherting the shop was more than just maintaining the family business to Anatoli, he was maintaining the family history as well. History was a very important thing to him and he took great pride in running his father's antique store and acquiring old items from estate sales simply because they fascinated him. For the most part, he was only interested in learning about the 1920s due to his grandfather's stories -- it wasn't until very recently that he wanted to learn more about his family and reach back even beyond the 20s, where he found out about Alphonse Moreau.
What artifacts he found after a trip in the attic of his and his mother's house (the house that the Schreiers have been living in for generations) were disturbing. He found diaries and logbooks of his great-great-grandmother that she had taken with her when she first came to America. While most of these books and diaries contained forlorn drafts of letters to be sent to her husband, there was one particular book that described in vivid detail the surgical process of transforming an animal into a man. Reading over the journal entries was a very haunting experience for Anatoli -- the journal had started off so innocently. The first page was filled with ranting about a "horrible woman" in cyrillic and the first entry in English described being on a boat headed to an island and about the woman who wrote it... but as he read on through the journal, things just became more and more horrific to read. There were written accounts of the animal attempting to speak and understand higher thinking, amongst other things.
At the same time, the journal filled Anatoli with morbid fascination. He couldn't find journals talking about other animals, although the late Mrs. Moreau had mentioned other animals-turned-human, termed "antheria" in the book, in her entries. A former dog named Rowan turned up a lot, who was apparently Alphonse's own pet project. Anatoli in turn wanted to find out more about Alphonse and his work. It all interested him greatly, mostly because it sounded like something that came out of a science fiction novel than something from real life. He went on a deep search trying to find more logbooks -- apparently Alphonse had a number of assistants working with him on this island project, but Anatoli found no information pertinent to what he was looking for. He did, however, find an old copy of an old news pamphlet titled 'The Moreau Horrors,' which gave a bit of insight to the start of Moreau's grisly career in animal vivisection.
Anatoli should have known better to stop his search there, rather than contact a certain distant relative seeking more information... one Nicholas Moreau, the new CEO of Feral Labs. Sometime in 2006 he mailed off a letter requesting copies of the family records from 1889 through 1899, particularly the records concerning Alphonse Moreau. Little did he know what was to happen to him, though...
