Uncovering Appalachia’s Hidden Heroines: Pauletta Hansel Reveals Untold Stories in Understory
I was amazed to find out that he already knew from his research that she was a direct descendant of Margaret Wroughton who arrived in Jamestown in 1621 to be married off to a landed settler, though she had ended up with a tenant blacksmith, Ezekiah Wroughton, instead, and that their descendants had migrated to Appalachia after the Revolutionary War. I think Danny, too, was surprised that my question brought him another few generations of Margaret and Ezekiah’s line. That conversation with him was around 2006, and I thought it was pretty cool, but I didn’t do much with the information until 2021 when I needed a few more poems to finish my exploration of Appalachian women’s lives in Heartbreak Tree.
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