Marcia Talley's Family Vault

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is always such a treat for me to host my dear friend Marcia Talley! And I  have to admit that I've read an advanced copy of her newest Hannah Ives novel, TANGLED ROOTS, and I LOVED it. 

I've always said that reading a Hannah novel is as much fun as sitting across the table with Marcia for a nice long visit, and I love learning what leads to the plots in Marcia's books. I well remember discussing this one when it was just a gleam in Marcia's eye!

Here's Marcia to fill you in!

MARCIA: Last year about this time, after I delivered Hannah’s sixteenth adventure, Mile High Murder, to my editor, and while I awaited her feedback, I began visiting my relatives … the dead ones, that is.

My sister, Debbie, started me off on what is turning out to be an addiction by entering our family details into Ancestry.com and sharing editorial responsibility with me, the oldest of our siblings. Just like the ads on television, a leaf pops up, you click on the leaf, head off on an adventure of discovery to a new family fact, click on another leaf and so on and so on until four hours have flown by and your husband is wondering what on earth has happened to dinner.

Fortunately, there's already a lot we know.  We had a great-great uncle on our father’s side who was deep into genealogy and wrote a book about it. Then there’s our Mormon cousin who provided a family tree that takes our family back – I kid you not – to Ragnhild “Hilda” Hrolfsdatter, born in 1836 in Maer, Norway.

Most of the Duttons came over with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, it appears . I confirmed family legend that I'm directly related to John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence through his daughter, Susanna, and to John and Priscilla Alden of Mayflower fame. But we knew all that.

Fast-forward to the secrets?  Before he married my mother-in-law, my father-in-law had been married before. Who knew? And that first cousin once removed we know never married? Well, apparently he did, during WW2, in Iowa.

It’s the deaths that fascinate me.  Sometimes their tombstones tell the tale. In November 1910, baby Robert Culver, my second cousin once removed, lived only 6 hours. His mother, Helen, died a day later.

But, the real treasure trove are the death certificates you discover online. My second great grandmother Helen Drew lost four of her children, ages 15, 17, 20 and 25 in a single year during a typhoid epidemic. I. Can’t. Even. And two of these little angels only lived into their teens, drowning two years apart in separate accidents on Lake Michigan. 

My husband’s step-grandfather, drop–dead handsome James, was caught between train cars and decapitated. 

“Papa Hise,” another relative on his mother’s side, fetched the shotgun out of the attic, killed the family dog before the horrified eyes of his daughter, Odie Grace, then shot himself in the head. It took him two days to die. Then there was the Brelsford great uncle who went West to seek his fortune. When prospecting didn't pan out, he shot his car before turning the gun on himself. Better the car then the dog, I say.  

One relative was murdered at age 21. What's that all about, I wonder?  Another, a Rebel, died of smallpox in a Yankee prisoner of war camp.  My great grandmother, Marcia Jane Drew, for whom I was named, died at age 42 in Lowell Massachusetts during dental surgery, or so my grandfather firmly believed. And yet there’s her death certificate, staring me in the face: ovarian tumor. As a cancer survivor who confidently stated “there’s no history of cancer in my family” that would have been good to know.

About that time, I needed an idea for a novel, so I figured why look any further than my own family’s deeply tangled roots? My 3rd great grandmother, Sarah Drew, died of “suicide by hanging.” Really? At age 84? 

I definitely felt a novel coming on.

My deep research for Tangled Roots began with the obvious first step: I spit into a test tube and sent it off for DNA testing.  I spent the weeks before the results came in constructing my family tree on a popular genealogy website and soon, like Hannah, found myself sucked, head-first, down a rabbit hole.  Now, nearly a year later, I’ve reconnected with a long-lost cousin (Hello, Ellen!), discovered that a first cousin in fact wasn’t, learned that identical twins don’t just run in the family, they run rampant, and visited a cemetery not far from the King Arthur Flour Company in rural Vermont where generations of my family lie buried. Some of these genealogical adventures inevitably wove themselves into the fabric of Tangled Roots.

Hannah Ives’s sister, Georgina, has some astonishing news. A DNA test has revealed she is part Native American, and Hannah’s test has similar results. The link seems to come from their late mother. But how?

As Hannah dives into constructing her family tree, she uncovers a heart-breaking love story and a mysterious death, while DNA matching turns up two second cousins, Mai and Nicholas. Hannah and her niece, Julie, are eager to embrace their new relatives and learn about their surprising ancestry, but Georgina’s husband, Scott, isn’t so keen… Are more revelations about to come to light? And can Hannah untangle her family roots to uncover the truth behind a devastating tragedy?

 

Tangled Roots officially releases in the U.S. on July 1.  What to do in the meantime? I have to admit that genealogy is now a passion.  After building my own family tree, I’m helping friends research theirs.  When an elderly British friend told me she knew her mother had been married before, but she didn’t know anything about the man, not even his name, I immediately volunteered to help.  Several days later, I was able to give her a photograph of his tombstone in Flanders: over 4000 young British soldiers had died in combat on that same day in 1917.

If the contents of friend and family closets ever peter out, what with the popularity of Scandinavian Noir these days, maybe I’ll start writing under a family-inspired pseudonym – Hilda Hrolfsdatter has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree?  

You can learn more about Marcia Talley and her books by going to

www.marciatalley.com

or follow her on Twitter at

marciatalleybks

Marcia blogs with the Femmes Fatales at

https://femmesfatales.typepad.com/

DEBS: Marcia's family is certainly more interesting than mine--at least as far as I know! REDs and readers, what skeletons have you discovered in YOUR family closets?? 

DEBS PS: Marcia's book is available for pre-order from your favorite bookseller!

Do You Know Who You Are

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm assuming everyone has recovered a bit from the all the holiday hoopla, and hoping that everyone had a lovely time. Most of us spent at least some of the Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year's celebration with family. It occurred to me that not only do we spend a lot of time with our relations, we talk a lot about family and where our particular family traditions come from.

But as much as I love hearing about other people's traditional and ethnic holiday celebrations, it always makes me a little wistful, because I am a MUTT.

As far as I know, at least. I only knew one grandparent, my mother's mother, and if she knew much about her family history, she never talked about it. My father was not close to his family either and had no interest in learning about his heritage. I've guessed, from the names (Darden on my father's side and Dozier and Jordan on my mother's) and from their Protestant upbringing, that both families might have come to Texas from the original Protestant migration into the Kentucky/Tennessee area. I am also guessing (wildly) that all the names were originally French.

But that's it. I know absolutely nothing else. One of these days maybe I'll join Ancestry.com, or do a DNA test, or both. I am curious. I wonder if it would make me feel more grounded, to know something about my background. Or perhaps the lack of knowledge has given me the freedom to make my own identity. Hmm...


REDS, what about you? Do you know where you came from? And if so, does it help form the way you see yourselves?

HALLIE EPHRON: My husband has been researching his family for years. Helps that he's got an unusual last name (all the Tougers in the world are related to him). I have very little interest in knowing my own, I confess. They all came from Russia, that much I know. And there was a good amount of mental illness. Swell.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I have asked and asked..and but no one who could have known seemed to know.  It apparently depends on where the border was at the time my family on my father's side came from Russia or Poland or Austria. (Aunt Portia, the coolest aunt ever, insisted it was Austria.)  My mom's father's last name was Miller, and I am pretty sure his family was German. Do I wish I knew more? Well, it would be interesting,but I don't think life-altering. I'd love to know about what the people DID, you know? One of my grandfathers owned a chain of department stores, and my other grandfather sold cars, So there's the "selling" element. Both my grandmothers bought a lot of clothes. So there may be something there.... 


RHYS BOWEN: I know quite a lot about my own family on my mother's side. My mother's father was Welsh but her mother was from East Anglia (a blonde Saxon married a dark Welshman!) My grandfather's mother was French. She was 17 when she married my 35 year old Welsh great-grandfather. How those two met is of great interest to me, but alas nobody is around to ask. She was a fantastic woman.She had 14 children. I have a picture of the whole family with her youngest sitting on her lap, her oldest with their own babies. She looks like a teenager still, with a tiny waist and bright face. My great grandfather, on the other hand, looks a haggard wreck! When my great-grandfather died she married again. When he died she went to her oldest daughter in Australia, traveling alone by ship in her eighties. I guess my love of travel and adventure comes from Grandmere Josephine.

And of course I married into a family of British aristocrats who can trace their lineage back to eight hundred. And the family tree includes several royal connections, including Queen Jane Seymour's brother, the Earl of Somerset and a Scottish noblewoman called Beatrice Lachan McLachan of McLachan  (I'm not making this up.)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Rhys, I thought I was cool because I can trace my mother's side of the family back to the beginning of the eighteenth century! My nine-times-great grandfather, Donald McEachron (or MacEchron, or McEachern or a half dozen other spellings) left Islay, Scotland to come to the western frontier of the colonies in the 1730s - the Adirondack region of New York. His eldest son, Cornelius "Neil" McEachron enlisted in the Revolutionary Army and married a Dutch woman, whose father, family legend has it, was an officer. (Scandal!)

The family home in Argyle, NY. The little girl is my Great-Aunt
Lillian, who was born in 1905, on the same date as my Smithie.

Other members of my family tree: a New York State Commissioner of Canals, a Victorian lady whose husband gave her eight children and then retired to his bed as an invalid, a bigamist, a farmer who played the organ for silent movies and, of course, my amazing mom, who was married, became a mother and widowed by age 21; who went on to raise three kids and travel the world, and who rules her Episcopal church with a benevolent hand.                        

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh this is so fascinating. I have a cousin who has done tons of research since my dad died a few years ago and bequeathed him a big box of family photos and mementos. My father loved family history and explored it the hard way--by writing people by hand--way before ancestry.com came along. I know I had Irish, German, and Swiss relations on that side. My father was quite obsessed with one relative who graduated from West Point and then served in the Spanish American war and fought the Indians in the west. He apparently committed suicide in the Philippines, supposedly in a fit of malaria-induced delirium. My mother's side (Burdette!) had some French relations, but much less is known about them. This gets me interested in finding out more about the whole crew! The saddest story in our history might belong to my grandfather, who owned a silk mill in Paterson NJ with his older sisters. He desperately wanted them to sell it, but they refused. And then production of synthetic products ruined the business and their fortune was lost.

Lucy's  aunt Maria, a great uncle Percy Brereton, and her grandmother, Alice May Isleib

DEBS: So interesting! Hallie, please tell us a bit about the Tougers--now I'm curious. And Rhys, I want to see that photo of your Grandmere Josephine. I'll bet that's where you got some of your drive and energy.

I'm inspired--you see you all know at least a little bit. Maybe I'll find time to do a little digging. My daughter's German grandmother has given her a whole family tree and a twenty or thirty page hand-written family history, so I feel I'm letting the side down a bit for future generations.  And who knows? Maybe I'll discover there are actually some English and Scottish ancestors in the mix somewhere!

READERS, what about you? Do you know your family history?