52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 1 "I'd Like to Meet"

 

I learned recently of a genealogy challenge to feature 52 ancestors in 52 weeks this year, organized by Amy Johnson Crow.  What a great challenge! This really piqued my interest. I have been collecting the stories of my children's ancestors, both mine and my husband's families, for nearly 25 years now. It's about time that I get serious about sharing those stories with everyone else. I need to record them instead of keeping them all in my head or buried between the lines of the multitude of records that I've collected in both digital and paper format.

The challenges are emailed to participants each week. Here's the info on Week 1: 

This week's theme is "I'd Like to Meet." Most of us have an ancestor who we'd like to meet (even if it's to ask, "What are your parents' names?") This week, write about that ancestor or why you'd want to meet him or her. Feel free to be creative!

What a great way to begin the challenge - a nice, easy question for me! 

The ancestor I would most like to meet is my 3rd great grandmother Sarah Mills Pargin.

Sarah (1866 - 1907) was the mother of Goldie Pearl Pargin, my great great grandmother. Goldie was Sarah's oldest child and is the one standing behind her mother on the right hand side of the photo.

Sarah married Peter Pargin in Lawrence County, IL. Peter is my 3rd great grandfather and father of Goldie Pearl Pargin. Or at least that's what we've always been told . . . I have always had serious doubts about him actually being Goldie's biological father. Goldie was born in 1888; Peter and Sarah didn't wed until 1891. The 1890 United States Census was destroyed in a fire decades ago and birth records were not reliably recorded in Illinois until 1916. Every other paper record of Goldie's life lists Peter as her father.

The family lived in Lawrence County, Illinois but traveled west to southwestern Missouri/northeastern Arkansas around 1905. Sarah passed away there in 1907. Her husband, Peter, and most of the children returned to Lawrence County by 1910. The youngest child, Maude, was born in Missouri and was raised by family members there after Sarah passed away.

I have taken a DNA test, along with my grandfather (Goldie was his grandmother), and the DNA results show that Goldie was not in fact a Pargin. I believe I have narrowed the suspect down to one father and son in another local family, but I'm not certain if I'll ever fully solve the mystery.

I would love to sit down with Sarah and talk with her. Who was Goldie's father? Was it a romantic, secret affair? Or something darker? What prompted the family to move to Arkansas? What was life like there? Was her marriage to Peter, who was quite a bit older than her, a happy one? Did they marry by choice or because of the shame of an out-of-wedlock child for Sarah?

I like to think five minutes is all that I would need with her. Just five minutes... but I think we would have so much to share and would certainly talk for much longer than that.