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!

My DNA and Me

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I never knew much about either side of my family. Neither of my parents had any interest in tracing their ancestry--in fact, they were more focused on leaving the past and family connections as far behind as possible!

But, having been asked since the first Kincaid/James book why, as an American, I wanted to write about England, I was curious about my life-long Anglophilia. My mother's side of the family had names that might have been French variants (Dozier and Jordan) and I'd heard something vague over the years about being descended from settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee, so I thought perhaps there were French Protestants on that side of the family. But on my dad's side, I had no idea. Darden, my maiden name, is not a common English name, but neither is it French.

So a few months ago, I did an internet search, and found a Darden in Plymouth, England, in 1601. Curiosity in full gear now! Then I got a Facebook message from a man in British Columbia who was doing research on Ancestry.com and discovered that our grandmothers were cousins. When I looked at what he'd found, I traced the Dardens back to Alabama in the early 1800s, and the Doziers as far back as Normandy in the early 1600s. There the trail died out--at least so far.

I decided I wanted to do a DNA test, so Rick gave me 23andMe for Christmas. I spit in the test tube and sent it off! (It takes a LOT of spit, by the way.)

Last week I got my results and it's fascinating!

That British connection?
70% British and Irish

The French?
11% French and German 

Then there's another 15% or so Broadly Northwestern European.

All very cool, if not hugely surprising. But--

It seems that sometime in the 1700s, I had ONE fifth-to-seventh great-grandparent who was 100% Scandinavian. Who knew?

And in the 1600s, a how-many-ever great-grandparent that was 100% West African. It shows up on my DNA map as a tiny red dot among all the blues. Now I want to know that story!

What I didn't find was Native American, although I'd always been told that there was some Cherokee on my mom's side of the family. But the results show 0%.

And then there were all the things I didn't expect to learn. Like that I have the gene for fast twitch muscles, like those Olympic skaters you've been watching. (I think I'm a total fail on that one...) 

I have more Neanderthal variants than 96% percent of customers--which makes sense as that was central Germany.

My genes show I prefer salty to sweet (true), that I don't have cheek dimples or a cleft chin, that I have dark  hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, that I can taste bitter things, and that my big toe is longer than the others. I don't have a unibrow or red hair. Isn't that just bizarre?

Those aren't dimples--just laugh lines!

 
There are dozens of other interesting things, and especially having studied biology and genetics in college, I could easily fall down the research rabbit hole. 

I know that these tests are not 100% accurate, and that the different testing companies can get slightly different results depending on their data bases. But the more people who are tested, the more accurate the data gets, and I LOVE following that genetic fingerprint..

What about you, REDS and readers? Do you find it creepy or fascinating? Have you done a DNA test, or would you like to? If you have, tell us something interesting you learned!