It all started around 2004 when my angry half-sister told me to take her off the family tree I’d been working on for the past 20 years. “Besides,” she threw out, “you are following the wrong family anyway!”
What did she mean?
The tree in question traced her line back to Newgate Prison in London, where our ancestor was found guilty and sentenced to transportation to Virginia Plantation in 1743. Was she saying that this ancestor wasn’t really my ancestor?
The father we had in common had unfortunately passed, but my stepmother was still around, so I called her to ask what my half-sister had meant. My stepmother replied that it was all in the past and there was no sense digging up old dirt. To read the story, hit here
