Finding Parallel Timelines: A Discovery on My Paternal Grandmother’s Side
Finding Parallel Timelines: A Discovery on My Paternal Grandmother’s Side page 797 Page 798 How do two completely different branches of a family tree survive the turbulent 1850s and 60s? Tracing a 51 cM DNA match led me to a narrative in the Benton County History book, revealing a striking parallel: while my Indigenous grandmothers were facing violent displacement and forced removal in Oregon, my 4th great-grandmother Nancy Ann Taylor was holding down their Ozark homestead alone during the Civil War—just 5 to 8 miles from the Battle of Pea Ridge. Holding the farm together with her husband and older sons away at war, she stuffed her young son inside a smokehouse salt barrel so he wouldn't be stolen by roving bushwhackers, and picked up a shovel herself to bury a fallen soldier near her spring before wild animals could reach him. Lineage chart showing my direct paternal line from Garland and Nancy Ann Taylor down through my great-great-grandmother Lulu Belle Mitchell to my paternal ...
