Ancestry

Unexpected Findings When I Dug for My Roots

An accused witch, a treacherous power lord, and a kidnapped 6-year-old girl, just to name a few

Sarah Sykes was the great-great-great granddaughter of the Widow Marshfield. Image courtesy of the author.

I was raised Irish Catholic, learning to stepdance and say the rosary by the time I was 10.

Both my parents were of Irish descent, though when I got older, I learned that my maternal grandmother wasn’t Irish but what we called a Yankee, a Baptist who converted to Catholicism when she married my grandfather in 1911.

My mother and her sisters always favored the refined airs of their Yankee mother, who was an early member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). She documented one ancestor who had served in the Revolutionary Army and later hired a researcher to hunt through dusty record books to discover that line of the family tree.

A century later, genealogists can find that information within minutes from original record books that have been digitized and made available online.

Thrilled with the ability to research my genealogy with just a laptop and some free time, I started digging. I’m not sure what drove me, other than a need to put a face on the people whose blood still ran in my veins. In the process, I uncovered several ancestors whose personal stories…