flea

Well, my father, who has reams of paper files he inherited but hasn't sorted them properly, is pretty sure Margaret the legal daughter of who she said she is. But he also thought she was an only child, and if she is accurately describing her parentage, she's actually one of at least 9 kids, and possibly the youngest by 9 years. Yes, it's entirely possible that she's biologically an illegitimate granddaughter - I am sure that happened all the time - but her mother's birth date is also rather vague, so she could have been only 41 at Margaret's birth. If it comes to it, we can order from the DAR, for $10, the packet of data that she used to prover her case (in, like, the 1880s, but they seem to have it on file.) It's important because if her paentage is accurate she's the granddaughter of a rather important Revolutionary War figure, who also went to Detroit with Gen. Anthony Wayne at a time when Detroit was way outside the boundaries of the US. The kind of guy you might lie about being descended from, if your father had the same name as the man who married his daughter (and you gave a damn about the DAR.)

I don't have ancestry.com at home, so I'm hoping that some documentation there will clear things up.