How many of us wish they had an ancestor’s story, told in their own words? Sometimes all we know is a tantalizing tidbit: a tiny piece of an ancestor’s story that raises as many questions as it answers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we think, to know the hopes, dreams, wishes and fears of Great-Great-Grandma as she bounced over the plains in a covered wagon? Wouldn’t it be cool to know what Great-Great Uncle Joe was thinking while he robbed that bank? Well, if they didn’t write their thoughts down, you’ll never know now.

To illustrate this point, here is a story that I wrote about my own longing for connection with my ancestors. I was told that my great-grandmother on my father’s side was either a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian, or a half-breed Nez Perce Indian. The story depended on who you were talking to. Some relatives say she wasn’t even Indian at all, but born in Kansas. It’s hard to know the truth now, since she’s been dead for fifty years, and so is nearly everyone who really knew her.

Everyone does agree that her name was Isabelle Evelyn McKay and she died at the age of 90-something in 1954. Before that, there seems to be some disagreement. The story I like best is the one told me by her daughter, my great-aunt, now long deceased. It goes like this:.

Evelyn McKay was born and raised on a reservation in Idaho, and lived there until she was sixteen or so, in the mid-1880s. That’s when Preacher James Pearson came to the reservation. He was a circuit preacher, meaning that his congregation was the little towns from Washington, Idaho and Montana. He rode from town to town preaching his brand of Christianity for a few days, and then rode on. Towns would see him once or twice a year when he would regale them with hair-raising sermons on the hellfire and damnation he saw waiting for them. Those in the family who remember Preacher Pearson agree that he was not a lovable man, being particularly given to frightening small children with vivid descriptions of hell. But there must have been something about him, for he was able to convince the young Evelyn to marry him. He took her away with him and plunked her down somewhere in Eastern Washington, and left her there to birth and raise their seven children while he rode his rounds, totally uncaring of the vicious racial bias against Indians and half-breeds which was normal for the western towns of the time. She must have had a lonely, difficult life. Or maybe not. Maybe she coped well with a Bible-thumping wanderer, and wasn’t the victim of anti-Indian prejudice. But I wish I knew for sure. I bet she had fascinating stories, at the very least.

I remember Evelyn McKay Pearson, although she died when I was four. I have a vague memory of climbing in her lap. She was the oldest person I had ever seen. I remember her fusty old lady smell, like rotting flowers, and the strip of skin hanging down over her dress that wiggled as she talked. (She had a goiter.) I remember her gnarled old hands softly patting my arm, tap tap tap. I felt no fear or disgust; not even boredom. Instead I remember liking her, and wanting to visit her again. We never did, but she must have felt the same connection. When she died she left me, out of all her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren – around a hundred people – three of her special treasures. She left me her etched drinking glass, her pink handkerchief, and her shell necklace. I wish so much that I could have known her.

If you’d care to share this story, please leave a comment here. At the end of each month I’ll gather up the Sharing History comments and pick one at random from a drawing, and send the winner of the drawing my e-book: your choice of a Making History Workbook.

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