In one of the darkest days of Shire history, the Toohill-Bagginses were almost entirely wiped out, at a pipe-weed party hosted by their arch-rivals the Sackville-Bagginses.
Only a small remnant of the family (who, very oddly, happened to have some Troll genes but that's another story) survived. Their great height kept them mostly above the smoke. Many ages later, one of them made the NFL.
To this day very short people speak in hushed whispers about the "Red Weeding".