Every family has folklore, or a few skeletons in the closet, destined to make their way out. With Halloween on the doorstep, I thought I’d dish a few. And I just want to say right now, “Bob Marley is mistaken.”

Now, I’m sure you’re scratching your head right now, wondering where in the h-e-two hockey sticks I might be going with this, prattling on about family secrets and the reggae king … and heads might roll a little more (pun intended) when I tell you I’m related to the folklore legend Bloody Mary, said to appear in a mirror if you chant her name, and also Mary, Queen of Scots—famously beheaded.

But first, let me take you back to the beginning. A couple years ago when my mother purchased DNA kits for Christmas, I was elated. I hopefully looked to the ancestry.com website and my results to compile a longer paternal tree and verify or discredit a few family stories.

Growing up, I remember mention of my roots in America linked to a passenger on the Mayflower—this remains unverified and I have no knowledge of where this legend might come from.

Other notable ancestors of family lore include two Mary’s. Mary, Queen of Scots, famously beheaded after a plan to assassinate her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, and Mary the I of England—also known as Bloody Mary. After diving into my DNA results and the ancestry.com database, these legends have been verified.

Upon tracing my father’s lineage to a Sarah Stafford and ultimately to Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, an English nobleman and military commander during the War of Roses, I discovered a definitive link to the English royal family. Henry’s mother, Elizabeth Mortimer, was the daughter of Lady Philippa Mortimer, granddaughter to King Edward III.

The House of Lancaster descended from Edward’s third son, John Gaunt. While, the House of Tudor descended from John Beaufort, one of the illegitimate children of John of Gaunt.

The most notorious Tudor royal was the portly and amorous Henry VIII. Henry VIII sired two daughters who both became queens. Queen Mary I, also known as Bloody Mary, was daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Queen Elizabeth I—cousin to the aforementioned Mary, Queen of Scots—was conceived from Henry’s third marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Before I bore you too much longer with my genealogy and relation to the two Mary’s, I’ll move back to Bob Marley and the juicier dish. I’ve always been a history nerd, consider myself a wordsmith and have a deep affinity for music. When I put the three interests together, I often find myself singing silly songs and revising lyrics to more appropriately describe what might have happened in any given instance.

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You’ll be shocked to know (insert sarcasm) that I am in no way related to Marley, but have a deeper family secret than a distant link to a royal apparition who school girls summon in the mirror for Halloween entertainment. A known relative—in a not so distant time and a not so distant place—shot a sheriff. The sheriff died, but I just want to say, the deputy did survive, just not unscathed.

I do not know very many details surrounding the “affair” leading to the untimely death of a sheriff, and I do not have news clippings from the original incident to share. However, a story ran by the Olney Daily Mail in 2002 briefly chronicles the happening. A letter to the editor suggests there was in fact a different chain of events culminating in the death of a sheriff and ALSO the shooting of a deputy … cue the miscued lyrics…

So, there you have it, my family’s biggest skeleton, just in time for Halloween… “He shot the sheriff, AND he shot the deputy…”

Love,
L.N.

Image attribution:
By Unknown – Reproduced in Bill Ellis, Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture (University of Kentucky, 2004). ISBN 0-8131-2289-9, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2321965

By Ueli Frey – http://www.drjazz.ch/album/bobmarley.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1899036

By Sten Rüdrich – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=563034