Ironic Twist to the Family Lore

As you may know, my research started with a family story. To read more details on my personal journey, check out How My Journey Began and Myth of the Cherokee Ancestor. 

The short version of the story goes like this...two brothers from France came to America. One married a full blooded Cherokee. They had a son, who married a 1/2 blooded Cherokee wife. Their son (Abijah, who I've identified as my 2nd great grandfather) was supposedly 1/2 Cherokee. In my branch of the family tree, the story morphed to include how back in the early 1920's marrying someone who was part Native American was considered taboo. Supposedly, my grandmother knew, but swore my grandfather to secrecy, and she would divorce him if he ever told anyone about his heritage. It was a family secret not even their children were told. If it were true, my mother would have been 1/16 Cherokee.

Well, DNA testing basically blew the whole story apart. No Native American DNA and no known French ancestry on my maternal side. It's interesting because I've seen others looking for the same Abijah I've been searching for over 10 years now, and they've shared the same story (minus my grandma and the threat of divorce). But in an an ironic twist of fate, as I was researching my mother's maternal great-grandfather this weekend, I found an unexpected, although indirect, link to potential Cherokee heritage in the family after all, just not where it was expected.

William Robertson (my 2nd great-grandfather) was married to Eliza Elvira Kuhn and they had only one child together, my great-grandfather Nathan Newell Robertson. Eliza passed away in 1911. Somewhere between 1911-1914,  William, then in his mid-50's, married Ida Franklin, 26 years his junior, and they had 2 more sons together.  While skimming through Ida's hints (I wasn't ready to work on her profile just yet) I noticed an application for Enrollment with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina. To be completely clear, she is not my direct ancestor, and she was denied enrollment, primarily because her family was not already enrolled with the tribe and they were not in North Carolina at the required time. It doesn't mean the lineage she reported wasn't accurate, it just didn't meet the standards for enrollment at the time. But in the application she did detail how she was 1/16 Cherokee, and she applied not only for herself, but for her 2 sons as well....my grandmother's step-uncles. Since she's not in my direct line, I'm not researching her ancestors, but it was still a nifty find!

I have to wonder how my grandmother felt about this. She would have been about 17 years old at the time of the application. Did she know her grandfather's 2nd wife was supposedly part Cherokee? Was this the reason she didn't want any story of Native American heritage passed down? Because it was loosely tied to her side of the family? Granted, it doesn't change there's no known Native American history in my direct family line, but it was still an interesting and unexpected skeleton to find in the closet.

Image by Orange Fox from Pixabay