Hollyworld: April 2023

All families have secrets. Stories someone holds onto because they're just too painful to share.

My grandmother had such a secret. When she passed, I found a letter from an attorney that enclosed her original birth certificate. Her bio mother's name was listed as Sarah K.. My grandmother's bio father's last name was listed as Miller. I knew she'd adored, Mills, the father who raised her. When he passed, her mother, Myrtle had lived with her. My mom adored her grandmother. I still have Myrtle's rocker in the living room. I knew it as my grandmother's rocker, but in reality it was her mom's. But the parents she loved and took cared for weren't her biological parents is what the birth certificate indicated. I can't imagine how finding that had rocked her world.

I talked to a friend of the family who said the rumor was my grandmother's adoptive father was also her biological father. I suspect my grandmother heard that and that's why she went looking. The last name listed on the birth certificate could be a wordplay on his name. Miller-Mills.

I found two Sarahs with the right last name, one in central PA and one in Ohio who were about the right age and both had been to Pittsburgh, where the birth certificate was issued. My grandfather was a railroad engineer and his route took him into Pittsburgh.

I had clues and little tidbits. I dug off and on for years.

All that digging led me to DNA verification that the central PA Sarah was my bio great-grandmother. Census data and a few news clippings helped me piece together Sarah's story. I know she left central PA and went to Pittsburgh. Maybe she was there to go to nursing school or maybe she was already a nurse and working there (I'm still looking into that). I know that she ended up being a visiting nurse back in central PA. I even found a picture of her (She's the one in the front on the right). Sarah was twenty-one when my grandmother was born. Mills, the father who raised my grandmother was indeed my bio grandfather and he was in his forties when she was born.

I've found records that Mills and his wife Myrtle lost a one day old son eighteen years before Mills brought my grandmother home to Myrtle. What kind of strength does it take to raise the child born of your husband's affair? I can't imagine. I do know Myrtle loved her and loved my mom. The fact that I'm looking into DNA relatives doesn't negate that love...Myrtle will always be my family.

When my grandmother got that birth certificate from the attorney, Sarah was still alive. She'd worked as a nurse and had retired from her visiting nurse job. She had lived in central PA with another single sister until that sister died. A second sister lived in Ohio with her family. Sarah's brother moved to New York. Once her roomie sister was gone, she was alone. To the best of my knowledge, my grandmother never met her or contacted her. I might not have known Sarah, but I was alive when my grandmother got that birth certificate and I wish we'd met.

Maybe it's the fact I'm a writer. Maybe it's the fact I'm a dreamer. Maybe there's some mitochondrial connection, but so many of these names in my family tree have become so real to me. I'd like to think that Sarah would be happy to know that she's now part of the family. That we were always out there and she was never truly alone.

I love finding new threads in my family tree and unraveling them. I've found other secret babies. One was adopted by someone else in her family. One looks as if he was adopted and raised by a stepfather, but kept his bio dad's last name.

I found a relative who got drunk and froze to death. I've found one who helped found Brown University. I had a relative who was was an aide to George Washington. I've found sharecroppers. Lords and Ladies, Scottish clans. I have one relative who make a Paul Revere-esque ride through the Virginia mountains tell his neighbors that the British were coming (the Minions and I always give him a shout out and keep playing at writing him his own Paul Revere sort of poem). It's so easy to get carried away by the stories.

It is frequently harder to track down the females in my tree. I'd really love to know more about them other than they were someone's wife and mother. So often they went by their husband's name on census forms. Mrs. So and So. Or her first name and his last name, making it hard to track down her birth records. I think that's one of the reasons I love that my mitochondrial DNA came from my mom. She got hers from her mom. My grandmother got hers from...Sarah. And so on and so on through the branches of my tree. Even the women I haven't established as anyone more than Mrs. So and So, are there in my mtDNA. I was my mother's only girl, and I love knowing that line of mtDNA will live on through my daughters and their daughter and...

Right now I'm reading a book on Maryland and my family's help in founding it. The book hoarder in me loves looking for these old tomes that tell my family's stories.

Speaking of stories, Something Borrowed is still for sale for a few more weeks. Something Perfect is part of the Second Chance Anthology. And the third book in Around the Square, Sweet Success, is out soon and available for preoder!

That's it for now!

Holly

Something Borrowed is for sale for $.99!!
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