Latest / Stories That Live In Us / West Virginia: Fame or Infamy in the Mountain State (with Mallory Peterson) | Episode 84

Transcript

West Virginia: Fame or Infamy in the Mountain State (with Mallory Peterson) | Episode 84 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Mallory Peterson: And then she uh made a living off of her stories and she would go to performances on stage.
• 0:08
  Crista Cowan: So she went from being a spy to being an actress.
• 0:10
  Mallory Peterson: An actress, yep.
• 0:11
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 0:12
  Mallory Peterson: Yep.
• 0:12
  Mallory Peterson: She relived her glory days, basically.
• 0:14
  Mallory Peterson: Did she have a nickname?
• 0:16
  Mallory Peterson: Cleopatra of Secession.
• 0:18
  Mallory Peterson: Excuse me.
• 0:19
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 0:20
  Crista Cowan: Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
• 0:28
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:32
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
• 0:43
  Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 0:52
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from Sea to Shining Sea the stories that live in us.
• 0:59
  Crista Cowan: My red-headed grandmother was such a storyteller, and I loved that about her.
• 1:09
  Crista Cowan: Till the day she died, she was telling stories, sometimes the same stories over and over in the same conversation as she got a little older.
• 1:17
  Crista Cowan: But they always captured my imagination.
• 1:20
  Crista Cowan: And it's been a little bit of a journey to figure out which pieces of those stories were true and which pieces of those stories were not true.
• 1:29
  Crista Cowan: I suspect some of that storytelling came from her Scottish ancestry.
• 1:36
  Crista Cowan: Her great-grandfather was from Scotland, and if you've listened to my episode about Samuel Mulliner, you know the story of him going back and forth across oceans, crossing countries, starting businesses.
• 1:50
  Crista Cowan: He was entrepreneurial, he was adventurous, and maybe just a little bit rebellious.
• 1:58
  Crista Cowan: I had the opportunity a few years ago to take my dad and some of my siblings and some of my dad's cousins to Scotland.
• 2:07
  Crista Cowan: And we had the opportunity to walk the battlefields at Culloden and to hear the stories of the Scottish people and their rebellion against England.
• 2:17
  Crista Cowan: My dad and siblings and I had the opportunity to drive up to the Highlands, retracing a trip my mom and I had taken nearly a decade earlier to see the sparsity of the land there.
• 2:30
  Crista Cowan: I think one of our Airbnb hosts called it dramatic scenery, and surely it was.
• 2:38
  Crista Cowan: And I love it there.
• 2:41
  Crista Cowan: But I also, every time I go there, feel the spirits of the people who lived there and who fought there and who struggled to survive amidst persecution, amidst economic hardship, all of the things that ultimately drove them out of the highlands and for many of them to the shores of this country over the course of a century or more.
• 3:08
  Crista Cowan: My mom's people ended up in North Carolina and Tennessee and ultimately made their way out to Arkansas.
• 3:17
  Crista Cowan: And their Scottish roots ran deep.
• 3:19
  Crista Cowan: And they brought with them music and culture and storytelling.
• 3:25
  Crista Cowan: And my dad's ancestor ended up in Utah, but not before passing through Ohio and Illinois and ultimately making his way out west.
• 3:40
  Crista Cowan: And he brought with him stories and music and culture.
• 3:45
  Crista Cowan: And I've always loved that about my own Scottish heritage.
• 3:50
  Crista Cowan: Several years ago, I had the opportunity to visit West Virginia.
• 3:58
  Crista Cowan: My mom took me there for my birthday because it was the last of the 50 states that I needed to visit.
• 4:08
  Crista Cowan: I had checked off every other state in the union, but somehow had never had the opportunity to visit West Virginia.
• 4:15
  Crista Cowan: Now, my birthday is this week.
• 4:19
  Crista Cowan: And so we visited West Virginia in the mid to late fall that particular year.
• 4:28
  Crista Cowan: And we drove along the Shenandoah Valley.
• 4:32
  Crista Cowan: And I remember thinking it felt so familiar because I had visited places in North Carolina and Tennessee and Georgia where my mom's family had lived.
• 4:43
  Crista Cowan: And it was amazing to me how even that much further north, that particular Appalachian range of mountains felt like home.
• 4:53
  Crista Cowan: And every time I visit Scotland, I get that same feeling.
• 4:58
  Crista Cowan: The two places are so similar.
• 5:02
  Crista Cowan: And so it's no surprise that so many Scottish immigrants ended up in that Appalachian mountain range.
• 5:11
  Crista Cowan: Now, in the Appalachian Mountains, you have not just Scottish people, but you have all of the traditions that they brought with them.
• 5:20
  Crista Cowan: There is Appalachian music that sounds eerily similar to Scottish highland music.
• 5:26
  Crista Cowan: And there is a culture of storytelling.
• 5:30
  Crista Cowan: Sometimes we might call them tall tales.
• 5:33
  Crista Cowan: In that particular range of the Appalachian Mountains, we hear the stories of Johnny Appleseed walking across the plains, the frontier, and out to the out to the plains, spreading seeds, right?
• 5:48
  Crista Cowan: He started there.
• 5:49
  Crista Cowan: We hear the story of John Henry.
• 5:52
  Crista Cowan: He's the steel-driving man who raced against a steam-powered drill and won only to collapse from exhaustion.
• 6:00
  Crista Cowan: Like those kinds of stories are coming out of this place.
• 6:03
  Crista Cowan: Some of them might be legendary or a little tall.
• 6:07
  Crista Cowan: Some of them, like the story of the Hatfields and the McCoys, their legendary border dispute after the Civil War that captured the attention of the American people and made them really wonder about what was happening in West Virginia.
• 6:23
  Crista Cowan: Some of those stories were actually true in all of their seemingly exaggerated detail.
• 6:30
  Crista Cowan: And so that's the fascinating thing to me about Appalachian culture, about Scottish culture.
• 6:37
  Crista Cowan: And as I went and checked off my 50th state on the list about West Virginia as well.
• 6:44
  Crista Cowan: Now, I have never been as cold in my entire life as I was on a train ride I took up a mountainside to a mine in West Virginia on that birthday trip with my mom.
• 6:59
  Crista Cowan: And it has become kind of a legendary story in our family.
• 7:04
  Crista Cowan: I have never seen colors as exaggeratingly beautiful as I saw on that trip to West Virginia in those mountains along that Shenandoah Valley Ridge.
• 7:18
  Crista Cowan: It is a beautiful, fascinating, and also kind of a harsh place.
• 7:25
  Crista Cowan: And so I think that's why so many Scottish settlers ended up there was because A, it reminded them of home.
• 7:32
  Crista Cowan: The Scottish Highlands are dramatic in all the similar ways.
• 7:37
  Crista Cowan: But also it gave them, I think, a sense of safety.
• 7:42
  Crista Cowan: Because the way that those valleys and those hollers and those hills protected them, they were able to connect more closely with their families or clans.
• 7:54
  Crista Cowan: They were also able to defend themselves against what they saw sometimes as encroaching overreach from the government.
• 8:03
  Crista Cowan: Much of what they had to deal with in their homeland.
• 8:07
  Crista Cowan: Now there's this little town in West Virginia.
• 8:11
  Crista Cowan: And if you ever look at a map of West Virginia, it's called the Eastern Panhandle.
• 8:16
  Crista Cowan: And it's this little s section of West Virginia that just kind of sticks out in between Maryland and Virginia.
• 8:22
  Crista Cowan: Now, the the history of West Virginia, just its very existence, is rooted in conflict.
• 8:28
  Crista Cowan: West Virginia became a state in 1863, at the beginning of the Civil War here in the United States, because of the rift between the Union and the Confederacy.
• 8:43
  Crista Cowan: But this little town of Martinsburg that sits squarely in that eastern panhandle was just close enough to the borders of Maryland and Virginia that there was a lot of conflict there.
• 8:56
  Crista Cowan: Today they call themselves the gateway to the Shenandoah Valley.
• 9:00
  Crista Cowan: Well, the Shenandoah Valley runs straight down into Virginia.
• 9:03
  Crista Cowan: And Virginia, of course, at the time of the Civil War was run by a plantation economy.
• 9:10
  Crista Cowan: It was run by enslavement.
• 9:13
  Crista Cowan: And the Civil War was being fought over that.
• 9:16
  Crista Cowan: And so the town of Martinsburg sympathized a lot, even though they were part of the state of West Virginia and part of the Union officially with the South because of their connection to Virginia, to the Shenandoah Valley.
• 9:33
  Crista Cowan: There was a vital railroad that ran right through the town.
• 9:40
  Crista Cowan: And it was a critical railroad to the Union Army.
• 9:44
  Crista Cowan: It was critical to making sure that troops and supplies could get where they needed to go.
• 9:49
  Crista Cowan: And so this particular town had divided loyalties.
• 9:54
  Crista Cowan: There was neighbors who were on opposite sides, family members who were on opposite sides.
• 10:01
  Crista Cowan: And if I have my numbers correct, the town of Martinsburg in particular flip-flopped between Union and Confederate control about 40 times during the Civil War.
• 10:14
  Crista Cowan: Now imagine being a child growing up in that environment where you didn't know from one day to the next who was in charge of the town, what fights might erupt, whether your family's safety was at risk.
• 10:32
  Crista Cowan: I think that the stories that might come out of that kind of conflict can't help but be tall tales in some cases.
• 10:41
  Crista Cowan: My guest today is Mallory Peterson.
• 10:45
  Crista Cowan: And Mallory didn't grow up knowing her father's side of the family at all.
• 10:50
  Crista Cowan: But she has become enamored with family history research and in the process of exploring her dad's side of the family tree, she has discovered an ancestor and a family connection to this little town of Martinsburg.
• 11:06
  Crista Cowan: The person that she's uncovered in her tree is going to be a story you're going to want to hear.
• 11:11
  Crista Cowan: What I think makes Mallory's story particularly compelling is how as she has explored her own family history, this Scottish heritage weaves in with the stories of this ancestor and the little town of Martinsburg and the conflict of the US Civil War in a way that reminds me that so many of us with Scottish heritage still have a little streak of maybe rebellion, maybe suspicion in us.
• 11:42
  Crista Cowan: But I hope we also embrace the telltales and the music and the culture.
• 11:49
  Crista Cowan: And if you ever have a chance to visit the Scottish Highlands or even the Appalachian Mountains, I suspect that you'll feel a lot like I did, which is a little bit of home.
• 12:01
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Mallory Peterson.
• 12:04
  Crista Cowan: I've gotten to know you a little bit in our little pre-conversation, but I'm excited to learn about your journey into family history because you're a little bit younger than most of the family historians that we talk to.
• 12:17
  Crista Cowan: Um, but as we were talking earlier, you said there might be something to start with around your last name.
• 12:25
  Crista Cowan: Tell me about that.
• 12:26
  Mallory Peterson: Okay, so my last name, I'll go by LaFord, which is my mother's side.
• 12:32
  Mallory Peterson: So my mother had me at a very young age.
• 12:34
  Mallory Peterson: She was in high school, and um I was put as a LaFord on the birth certificate.
• 12:40
  Mallory Peterson: And that's because I didn't know my father and I didn't meet him until eighth grade.
• 12:46
  Mallory Peterson: And his last name is Hammond.
• 12:49
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 12:49
  Mallory Peterson: And this is how we're gonna connect my ancestor.
• 12:53
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 12:53
  Crista Cowan: So um, so did your mom remarry did your mom marry and have she did.
• 12:58
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 12:58
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 12:58
  Mallory Peterson: She married when I was three years old and had three other children.
• 13:04
  Mallory Peterson: So I have half siblings, but I, you know, yeah, I see them as my full siblings.
• 13:09
  Crista Cowan: And um, yeah, that's so were you raised with your stepfather's surname ever?
• 13:14
  Mallory Peterson: Um, I took on yeah, he adopted me.
• 13:17
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 13:17
  Mallory Peterson: So I took on his last name.
• 13:19
  Crista Cowan: Do you think maybe that played into your interest in family history?
• 13:22
  Mallory Peterson: 100%.
• 13:22
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 13:23
  Mallory Peterson: Yes, I would say I think this is why I'm so into my family.
• 13:28
  Crista Cowan: You know, it's interesting because I think sometimes we think that our family situation is just the messiest.
• 13:34
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 13:34
  Crista Cowan: And the beautiful thing to me about family history is as you dive into it, you learn all families are messy.
• 13:40
  Mallory Peterson: Yes.
• 13:41
  Crista Cowan: And every family is messy in kind of its own little way.
• 13:43
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 13:43
  Crista Cowan: But sometimes we feel so much confusion or shame around that.
• 13:46
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 13:47
  Crista Cowan: And so I it sounds like you're starting to figure that out.
• 13:50
  Mallory Peterson: Oh yes.
• 13:51
  Mallory Peterson: I have figured it out.
• 13:52
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 13:52
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 13:52
  Mallory Peterson: I feel really good and confident.
• 13:54
  Mallory Peterson: So good.
• 13:54
  Mallory Peterson: Uh yeah.
• 13:55
  Mallory Peterson: I'm so glad I I looked into ancestry.com and I got in and and and found some ancestors.
• 14:02
  Crista Cowan: So were you raised knowing that that the dad that you were being raised by wasn't your biological father, or did you have to figure that out at some point?
• 14:11
  Mallory Peterson: I didn't know until hmm, I was like nine, ten.
• 14:15
  Mallory Peterson: Oh wow.
• 14:16
  Mallory Peterson: And didn't find him until eighth grade.
• 14:19
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 14:19
  Crista Cowan: And so did you go looking?
• 14:20
  Crista Cowan: Did your mom still?
• 14:21
  Mallory Peterson: Apparently, my great uncle went looking and and tracked him down, and he was in Michigan of all places.
• 14:27
  Mallory Peterson: So um he ended up agreeing to coming and meeting me.
• 14:32
  Mallory Peterson: And we uh got to meet here in Lehigh, actually.
• 14:37
  Mallory Peterson: So um it was great.
• 14:40
  Mallory Peterson: And as soon as I saw him, I went, Whoa, you look like my father.
• 14:44
  Mallory Peterson: So I was like, confirmation, you know.
• 14:47
  Crista Cowan: I'm just super curious to know like how like those conversations with your mom played out.
• 14:52
  Crista Cowan: Like as you're a child, is she telling you about any of this?
• 14:55
  Crista Cowan: Did you were you raised knowing that?
• 14:57
  Crista Cowan: Like what was there a moment where you were like, I want to know more?
• 15:01
  Crista Cowan: Because you're still pretty young at this time.
• 15:03
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:03
  Crista Cowan: I mean, eighth grade is not that old.
• 15:05
  Crista Cowan: What it's up?
• 15:05
  Crista Cowan: How old is that?
• 15:07
  Mallory Peterson: 14, my son's age.
• 15:08
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:09
  Mallory Peterson: So it was through the messiness of the divorce.
• 15:13
  Mallory Peterson: Yep.
• 15:14
  Mallory Peterson: And then she dropped that bomb on me.
• 15:17
  Mallory Peterson: Oh, your stepdad is not actually your biological dad.
• 15:21
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Mallory Peterson: And it's time that I tell you who your biological father is.
• 15:24
  Crista Cowan: And she had not kept in touch with him at all?
• 15:26
  Crista Cowan: No.
• 15:26
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 15:27
  Crista Cowan: Nope.
• 15:27
  Crista Cowan: Did your biological father know you existed or was this news to him?
• 15:31
  Mallory Peterson: He did.
• 15:31
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 15:31
  Mallory Peterson: He knew.
• 15:32
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 15:32
  Mallory Peterson: So my mother um shut him out.
• 15:34
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:35
  Crista Cowan: And do you still have a relationship with him?
• 15:37
  Mallory Peterson: I do.
• 15:37
  Mallory Peterson: It's very cordial.
• 15:39
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:39
  Mallory Peterson: You know, we, you know, I was an older child by then and my grandparents were raising me.
• 15:45
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:45
  Mallory Peterson: So grandma and grandpa raised me.
• 15:47
  Mallory Peterson: I love that.
• 15:48
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:48
  Mallory Peterson: Yep.
• 15:49
  Mallory Peterson: We thank God for grandparents.
• 15:51
  Mallory Peterson: I always say that.
• 15:52
  Mallory Peterson: I always tell people I the exact same thing.
• 15:56
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 15:56
  Crista Cowan: Mm-hmm.
• 15:56
  Crista Cowan: Um, and so you weren't you weren't raised in a single place because you had a lot of upheaval in your life.
• 16:03
  Mallory Peterson: Yes.
• 16:04
  Crista Cowan: And then did where did your grandparents live?
• 16:07
  Mallory Peterson: Um, so we were in Kingman, Arizona.
• 16:09
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 16:09
  Mallory Peterson: That's where we started.
• 16:10
  Mallory Peterson: I was born in Phoenix, lived in Kingman, and then moved to Burley, Idaho, with my stepfather and my mother.
• 16:19
  Mallory Peterson: And then they had their, you know, marriage for five years there.
• 16:23
  Mallory Peterson: And then once they divorced, I had the option to go live with grandma and grandpa again.
• 16:27
  Mallory Peterson: And it brought me to Lehigh.
• 16:29
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 16:29
  Mallory Peterson: Well, I love Lehigh.
• 16:31
  Mallory Peterson: I have deep roots here.
• 16:32
  Mallory Peterson: I love Lehigh.
• 16:33
  Mallory Peterson: I mean, I saw it back when it was just fields and farmers.
• 16:36
  Mallory Peterson: So it's great.
• 16:37
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 16:38
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 16:38
  Crista Cowan: So as you started digging into your family history, was there like a moment?
• 16:43
  Crista Cowan: Like, were there stories that your grandparents told you that you were curious about your mom's side?
• 16:47
  Crista Cowan: Did you want to start digging into your dad's side first?
• 16:50
  Crista Cowan: Like, what was it that kind of pulled you first?
• 16:52
  Mallory Peterson: Here's what it was.
• 16:53
  Mallory Peterson: My father always told me that we we had Cherokee Indian in us.
• 16:59
  Mallory Peterson: And I was like, hmm, okay, I'm gonna dig into this because that's interesting.
• 17:04
  Mallory Peterson: And I, you know, got into it and I said, okay, so we're not Cherokee Indian.
• 17:11
  Mallory Peterson: There's none of that.
• 17:12
  Mallory Peterson: We are very Scottish.
• 17:14
  Mallory Peterson: We are from some very cool ancestors from Scotland.
• 17:18
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 17:19
  Crista Cowan: I learned that.
• 17:20
  Crista Cowan: So your dad's last name is Hammond.
• 17:22
  Mallory Peterson: Hammond.
• 17:23
  Mallory Peterson: And he's from Arizona.
• 17:25
  Crista Cowan: Where were his parents from?
• 17:26
  Mallory Peterson: I believe they're from Tennessee.
• 17:28
  Crista Cowan: Well, if they're from Tennessee, that makes sense why you would have a Cherokee myth in your family tree.
• 17:33
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 17:33
  Crista Cowan: Like a lot of that association there.
• 17:36
  Mallory Peterson: You know, maybe he was thinking that from maybe his mother's side, but even then there was a lot of Irish people from them.
• 17:42
  Mallory Peterson: So I'm still on the hunt.
• 17:43
  Mallory Peterson: So that's another one.
• 17:44
  Mallory Peterson: And you've taken a DNA test, but I have with Ancestry.com.
• 17:48
  Mallory Peterson: Native American.
• 17:49
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 17:50
  Mallory Peterson: Because he tested.
• 17:50
  Mallory Peterson: Uh-huh.
• 17:51
  Mallory Peterson: And nothing.
• 17:52
  Crista Cowan: We're very Scottish.
• 17:53
  Crista Cowan: There you go.
• 17:54
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 17:54
  Crista Cowan: Very.
• 17:54
  Crista Cowan: It's a very common myth in a lot of families, especially a lot of families from like that region of the country.
• 18:00
  Crista Cowan: Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia.
• 18:02
  Crista Cowan: So you've um made some connections then back to Tennessee.
• 18:05
  Crista Cowan: Where else does your family tree take you?
• 18:07
  Mallory Peterson: Uh New York.
• 18:07
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 18:08
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah, Virginia.
• 18:09
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 18:09
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah, West Virginia.
• 18:11
  Crista Cowan: And what, like, as you've been climbing that family tree, have there been any stories that have just been really interesting to you?
• 18:19
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 18:19
  Mallory Peterson: So I'll start down with my father.
• 18:21
  Mallory Peterson: Um, his father, my grandpa, never met his father.
• 18:26
  Mallory Peterson: Oh my goodness.
• 18:26
  Mallory Peterson: So he passed away when he was three years old.
• 18:31
  Mallory Peterson: I did my homework and I dug and I dug through um the internet and I actually found the man.
• 18:38
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 18:38
  Mallory Peterson: So his name is John B.
• 18:40
  Mallory Peterson: Hammond.
• 18:41
  Mallory Peterson: And he passed away at the young age of 30 because he got infection in his Achilles, right?
• 18:48
  Mallory Peterson: Sepsis of all things, and passed away.
• 18:52
  Mallory Peterson: And um then if you go further up into the family tree, you get his father.
• 18:58
  Mallory Peterson: And we don't I I have been diligently searching for him.
• 19:02
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 19:03
  Mallory Peterson: Like I know he was a race car driver in Illinois and Indiana.
• 19:06
  Mallory Peterson: Can't find him.
• 19:07
  Mallory Peterson: Traced him in New York, but he's a ghost.
• 19:10
  Mallory Peterson: But I'm working on that.
• 19:11
  Crista Cowan: But you but you know who he is?
• 19:12
  Crista Cowan: You just can't find his story.
• 19:14
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah, I can't find him.
• 19:15
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 19:15
  Mallory Peterson: Anything he abandoned his children.
• 19:18
  Mallory Peterson: I'm seeing some patterns.
• 19:19
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 19:20
  Mallory Peterson: Right?
• 19:20
  Mallory Peterson: Isn't that interesting?
• 19:21
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 19:22
  Crista Cowan: So it's your great-great-grandfather that you can't track down.
• 19:25
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 19:26
  Crista Cowan: But you knew enough about him to connect him to his parents.
• 19:30
  Crista Cowan: Yep.
• 19:30
  Crista Cowan: And how did you make that discovery?
• 19:32
  Mallory Peterson: Okay, on ancestry.com, they have um the section where you match with other people.
• 19:38
  Mallory Peterson: Uh-huh.
• 19:38
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 19:39
  Mallory Peterson: And I found my father's cousin.
• 19:42
  Mallory Peterson: And I reached out to him in a message, you know, in on the website.
• 19:46
  Mallory Peterson: You can you can message people.
• 19:48
  Mallory Peterson: It's a little scary, it's a little nerve-wracking.
• 19:50
  Mallory Peterson: You don't know who these people are.
• 19:51
  Mallory Peterson: And he replied back.
• 19:54
  Mallory Peterson: And he said, Have you heard about Belle Boyd?
• 19:58
  Mallory Peterson: Have you seen her story yet?
• 20:00
  Mallory Peterson: I said, No, who is this person?
• 20:02
  Mallory Peterson: And he shared um her uh link to me, and I went into that and I just went down a rabbit hole with her.
• 20:10
  Mallory Peterson: So much to find.
• 20:11
  Mallory Peterson: So much to find on this person.
• 20:14
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 20:14
  Mallory Peterson: So I know a little bit about Belle Boyd.
• 20:16
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 20:17
  Mallory Peterson: Right?
• 20:17
  Mallory Peterson: She's pretty much.
• 20:18
  Mallory Peterson: A lot of people know about Bell Boyd.
• 20:19
  Mallory Peterson: So Belle Boyd's pretty infamous.
• 20:20
  Mallory Peterson: Yes.
• 20:21
  Mallory Peterson: Tell us about her.
• 20:22
  Mallory Peterson: She is notorious for being a rebel spy, a Confederate spy.
• 20:28
  Mallory Peterson: And she was very young.
• 20:30
  Mallory Peterson: She was 17 years old.
• 20:32
  Mallory Peterson: Her parents had their, they owned a hotel.
• 20:37
  Mallory Peterson: So where was Belle from?
• 20:39
  Mallory Peterson: Where did her family live?
• 20:40
  Mallory Peterson: She was from Martinsburg, Virginia.
• 20:42
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 20:42
  Crista Cowan: And she was born like what in the 1840s, right?
• 20:45
  Mallory Peterson: Uh 1844.
• 20:46
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 20:47
  Crista Cowan: So it was still Virginia then.
• 20:48
  Mallory Peterson: Yes.
• 20:49
  Crista Cowan: But there's this history with Virginia and West Virginia.
• 20:52
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 20:52
  Crista Cowan: As the Civil War, you know, was coming to a head.
• 20:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 20:56
  Crista Cowan: There was slave states and non-slave states.
• 20:59
  Crista Cowan: And there was a lot of controversy around how that was going to break out.
• 21:03
  Crista Cowan: And so West Virginia became its own states as part of that whole Civil War conflict.
• 21:10
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 21:10
  Crista Cowan: Because they did not want to be a slave state.
• 21:12
  Mallory Peterson: No.
• 21:12
  Crista Cowan: And so you have to think that she was raised in a family that had such strong passion toward the Confederacy and probably were angry that West Virginia had become its own state and was a non-slave state.
• 21:25
  Crista Cowan: Right.
• 21:25
  Crista Cowan: That she was willing to take those risks.
• 21:28
  Crista Cowan: Do you think she was doing that on her own or maybe spurred on by her family?
• 21:32
  Mallory Peterson: So her father was in the war.
• 21:35
  Mallory Peterson: He was a soldier and they were for the Confederate.
• 21:40
  Mallory Peterson: She would um use, like I said, her family's hotel.
• 21:44
  Mallory Peterson: She used peepholes to spy on the Union soldiers, listened to the information, and she rode 15 miles to Stonewall Jackson and gave him information because the Union soldiers were going to march unexpectedly.
• 21:59
  Mallory Peterson: And she rode and and told him about that.
• 22:02
  Mallory Peterson: And they changed course and they won that battle, that particular battle.
• 22:07
  Mallory Peterson: Because of her.
• 22:09
  Mallory Peterson: And Stonewall Jackson does um give her credit for that.
• 22:13
  Crista Cowan: And so she starts kind of this spying when she's 17.
• 22:16
  Crista Cowan: The war doesn't officially break out until she's 18, um, you know, almost 19 years old.
• 22:21
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Crista Cowan: And how long does she does she go through the whole war that way?
• 22:25
  Mallory Peterson: She was imprisoned six to seven times.
• 22:27
  Mallory Peterson: What?
• 22:28
  Mallory Peterson: Six to seven, but yet she was always released.
• 22:31
  Mallory Peterson: Why?
• 22:32
  Mallory Peterson: She was known as a very voluptuous woman.
• 22:37
  Crista Cowan: So maybe she used that?
• 22:39
  Mallory Peterson: I think she well, she did.
• 22:41
  Mallory Peterson: She wrote a bunch of letters to her cousin William, and in them she states how she used her looks to get um information from soldiers.
• 22:50
  Mallory Peterson: And she was a courier, so she would pass notes to and from.
• 22:55
  Mallory Peterson: Wow.
• 22:55
  Crista Cowan: So she was smart.
• 22:56
  Crista Cowan: And probably got away with a lot because of her beauty.
• 22:59
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Mallory Peterson: She was known as La Belle Rebelle.
• 23:02
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 23:03
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 23:03
  Mallory Peterson: That's crazy.
• 23:04
  Mallory Peterson: She was a little spitfire.
• 23:07
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 23:07
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 23:08
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 23:08
  Crista Cowan: I can't even imagine like my 17-year-old self.
• 23:12
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 23:12
  Crista Cowan: Like you think about, I was very strong-willed, isn't it?
• 23:15
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 23:16
  Mallory Peterson: Right.
• 23:16
  Crista Cowan: So I can kind of understand like having opinions and wanting to fight for a cause.
• 23:21
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 23:21
  Mallory Peterson: But she certainly was fighting for her cause.
• 23:24
  Crista Cowan: For what she believed.
• 23:24
  Mallory Peterson: What she believed in.
• 23:26
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 23:26
  Crista Cowan: You think about, I mean, your oldest is 14.
• 23:28
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 23:29
  Mallory Peterson: Three more years.
• 23:30
  Mallory Peterson: She was only 17.
• 23:31
  Mallory Peterson: She's a child.
• 23:31
  Mallory Peterson: So what happens to her after the war?
• 23:33
  Mallory Peterson: Uh she sailed to England and met her first husband.
• 23:39
  Mallory Peterson: And they fled to Canada, apparently.
• 23:42
  Crista Cowan: Was this because she still was so bought into the Confederate cause?
• 23:47
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 23:47
  Mallory Peterson: Or because she was wanted for war crimes.
• 23:49
  Mallory Peterson: Still wanted for war crimes.
• 23:50
  Mallory Peterson: And so they they went to Canada and then they came back to the US and they married.
• 23:55
  Mallory Peterson: She had a child with him.
• 23:57
  Mallory Peterson: And then I believe he passed away.
• 24:00
  Mallory Peterson: And then she remarried, which was my great-great-great-grandfather, John Hammond.
• 24:07
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 24:08
  Mallory Peterson: And then she uh made a living off of her stories and she would go do performances on stage.
• 24:16
  Crista Cowan: So she went from being a spy to being an actress.
• 24:19
  Mallory Peterson: An actress, yep.
• 24:20
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 24:20
  Mallory Peterson: Yep.
• 24:21
  Mallory Peterson: She relived her glory days, basically.
• 24:23
  Mallory Peterson: Did she have a nickname?
• 24:24
  Mallory Peterson: Cleopatra of Secession.
• 24:26
  Mallory Peterson: Excuse me?
• 24:28
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 24:28
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 24:29
  Mallory Peterson: What does that mean?
• 24:31
  Mallory Peterson: Well she used her looks.
• 24:33
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 24:34
  Mallory Peterson: So she used her body.
• 24:35
  Mallory Peterson: She got what she wanted, which was all the information.
• 24:39
  Mallory Peterson: I'm telling you, she was an interesting person.
• 24:42
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 24:43
  Mallory Peterson: Notorious, the Cleopatra of Secession.
• 24:46
  Mallory Peterson: That is such a great phrase.
• 24:48
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 24:49
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 24:50
  Crista Cowan: And I and I have to wonder how she felt about being called that.
• 24:54
  Crista Cowan: Or if she knew.
• 24:55
  Crista Cowan: Like if she did take pride in it, or if she was offended by I don't know.
• 24:59
  Mallory Peterson: Oh, I'm sure she took pride in it.
• 25:00
  Mallory Peterson: You think?
• 25:01
  Mallory Peterson: Because all the things that I have read up on her, she was a very vain individual.
• 25:06
  Crista Cowan: Um, have you ever seen any pictures of her?
• 25:08
  Mallory Peterson: I I do.
• 25:09
  Mallory Peterson: I have.
• 25:09
  Mallory Peterson: I have seen a bunch of photos of her.
• 25:11
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 25:12
  Mallory Peterson: And she is very full of herself.
• 25:14
  Mallory Peterson: And she would mention her nose to her cousin a lot and talk about her nose.
• 25:18
  Mallory Peterson: It's so interesting.
• 25:19
  Mallory Peterson: She said, you know, I love my nose, but it's not a Greek nose.
• 25:22
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 25:23
  Mallory Peterson: That's what she would say.
• 25:24
  Mallory Peterson: I'm like, I don't know what that means, but she loved her beauty.
• 25:29
  Mallory Peterson: So she used that to spy.
• 25:33
  Crista Cowan: She did.
• 25:33
  Crista Cowan: But I think Does it sound like she continued to use that through her life?
• 25:37
  Mallory Peterson: She's very proud of herself.
• 25:38
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 25:39
  Mallory Peterson: That's how she was making her living.
• 25:41
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 25:42
  Crista Cowan: So as you think about kind of the end of Belle's life, she's, you know, fought for this cause that lost.
• 25:48
  Crista Cowan: She's raised these children who may or may not love having a relationship with her.
• 25:54
  Mallory Peterson: And maybe her children had a hard time because there was a little stability.
• 25:57
  Mallory Peterson: She was barely getting by.
• 25:59
  Mallory Peterson: She had a heart attack at age 56, and um, it's said that she died in poverty.
• 26:06
  Crista Cowan: And where was she at the time?
• 26:08
  Mallory Peterson: She was in Wisconsin.
• 26:09
  Mallory Peterson: So she was traveling around the country.
• 26:10
  Mallory Peterson: She was traveling the country, telling her story, you know, acting it out.
• 26:14
  Mallory Peterson: And at 56, this is what, like 30 some odd years after the war.
• 26:19
  Mallory Peterson: Yes.
• 26:19
  Mallory Peterson: She's still 1900.
• 26:21
  Mallory Peterson: She's still telling the story.
• 26:24
  Crista Cowan: Do you know where she's buried?
• 26:25
  Mallory Peterson: Apparently the town that she was born and raised in, they didn't want her.
• 26:30
  Mallory Peterson: Oh yeah.
• 26:31
  Mallory Peterson: And her kids didn't like she's still buried in Wisconsin.
• 26:36
  Crista Cowan: It's so interesting to me when you think about war and you think about um spies.
• 26:43
  Crista Cowan: Women are not the first people that come to mind.
• 26:45
  Crista Cowan: Definitely not.
• 26:46
  Crista Cowan: Definitely not.
• 26:47
  Crista Cowan: And so when you found that story, yeah, like I mean, clearly she's on the wrong side of history.
• 26:52
  Mallory Peterson: 100%.
• 26:53
  Crista Cowan: But but that's there's still something about her and her choices and her like way that she approached that that maybe you can learn from.
• 27:04
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 27:04
  Crista Cowan: Or that maybe there's a little bit of something in you.
• 27:06
  Mallory Peterson: I don't know.
• 27:06
  Mallory Peterson: I think it's a Scottish blood.
• 27:08
  Mallory Peterson: I mean, in our blood, we stick to what we believe when we are stubborn, I guess, or just strong-willed.
• 27:15
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 27:16
  Crista Cowan: Well, and it's interesting when you think about the Scottish and English conflict, right?
• 27:20
  Crista Cowan: Like a lot of people who are not intimately familiar with that look at that almost as two, you know, two sides fighting, just like the US Civil War.
• 27:28
  Crista Cowan: Clearly, very different cultures, very different personalities of people have emerged.
• 27:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 27:34
  Crista Cowan: But but always feeling like they're fighting for the right cause.
• 27:37
  Crista Cowan: And so many of those in Scotland, especially like after the Battle of Colloden and some of the things that happened there, ended up in Virginia and Tennessee and North Carolina.
• 27:48
  Mallory Peterson: And I mean, they're children still still doing what they were doing.
• 27:52
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 27:53
  Mallory Peterson: And I did have ancestors in Cullodden.
• 27:55
  Mallory Peterson: So really, really neat family tree I've got going on.
• 27:59
  Mallory Peterson: And have you been to West Virginia?
• 28:01
  Mallory Peterson: I have not.
• 28:01
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 28:02
  Mallory Peterson: It's on my bucket list though.
• 28:03
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 28:04
  Mallory Peterson: So I would love to go and see the town that she's from.
• 28:08
  Mallory Peterson: And they have a lot of um like signs of her around the town, actually.
• 28:13
  Mallory Peterson: Is the hotel still standing?
• 28:14
  Mallory Peterson: No, sadly.
• 28:15
  Mallory Peterson: Sadly, it is not.
• 28:16
  Mallory Peterson: But there are two of her homes that are still standing.
• 28:19
  Mallory Peterson: Okay.
• 28:19
  Mallory Peterson: That um is uh a place to go and walk around in, apparently.
• 28:24
  Mallory Peterson: So that would be fun to go walk through.
• 28:26
  Mallory Peterson: Right.
• 28:26
  Mallory Peterson: I would love that.
• 28:27
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah.
• 28:28
  Mallory Peterson: So what's next?
• 28:29
  Mallory Peterson: What do you want to discover next?
• 28:30
  Mallory Peterson: Oh man.
• 28:32
  Mallory Peterson: I don't know.
• 28:33
  Mallory Peterson: There's just uh maybe the Irish side.
• 28:35
  Mallory Peterson: That would be great.
• 28:37
  Mallory Peterson: I'm really into um the Scots, the Irish, fighting against fighting against those English.
• 28:44
  Mallory Peterson: Yes, I really am.
• 28:46
  Mallory Peterson: I'm all for the Scots and the Irish people, but yes.
• 28:50
  Crista Cowan: It's so interesting because a lot of people in the sweep of history, they view um, you know, underdogs, right?
• 28:56
  Crista Cowan: Like and that's and I think that's why I'm drawn to them.
• 28:59
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 28:59
  Crista Cowan: When you think about also like all those people who fought, you know, the Battle of Colloden and that group of Scottish people who immigrated to the colonies, those then a generation later become the people who are rising up against the English here.
• 29:12
  Mallory Peterson: Yes.
• 29:13
  Crista Cowan: And and so as we get ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I've been thinking a lot about um, you know, some of those early skirmishes that led to the Revolutionary War.
• 29:26
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 29:26
  Crista Cowan: A lot of them were led by the Scottish people.
• 29:28
  Mallory Peterson: I'm from some pretty cool people.
• 29:30
  Mallory Peterson: Belle Boyd, she walked across a battlefield and she came out with holes in her skirts from the bullets.
• 29:36
  Mallory Peterson: How do how do you come how do you store that away?
• 29:39
  Mallory Peterson: She was loved and then she wasn't.
• 29:41
  Mallory Peterson: And for you, you're just really like diving into this journey.
• 29:44
  Mallory Peterson: I'm gonna be the one to tell my my children about my family stories.
• 29:49
  Mallory Peterson: And I didn't get that, so it'll be great.
• 29:52
  Mallory Peterson: Yeah, it can start with me.
• 29:53
  Mallory Peterson: Thank you for sharing her story with us.
• 29:55
  Mallory Peterson: Of course.
• 29:56
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 29:57
  Mallory Peterson: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.
• 30:00
  Crista Cowan: Okay.