My Cherokee Ancestors

Below is the only photo I have of my Cherokee great-great-grandmother. I'm guessing this photo was taken in the early 1920's.  She was born in Mason County, Kentucky in 1836 and lived 87 years, dying in 1923, in Lewis County, Kentucky.  In my genealogy files, there are quotations from neighbors who say that our great-great-grandfather "went West" from Lewis County when he was 19 years old and came back with a Cherokee wife.  The stories are funny, because he only traveled about 30 miles westward, to Maysville, Kentucky.  Priscilla and Francis were the parents of 11 children!

This is her daughter, Viola Nannie Osborne Tully, our great-grandmother, and our great-grandfather, Robert Tully.

Nannie died the year I was born so I didn't know her, but she is the one everyone referred to as "the old Cherokee."  Apparently she had quite a temper, and every time my grandmother, Anna, acted up, our aunts and uncles would taunt her, saying, "You're just like that old Cherokee Nannie."  So goes the attitude toward being Native American in Northern Kentucky in the '40's and '50's, and in many homes it is the same even today.  The only stories I heard about Nannie told of her sitting on her front porch smoking a corncob pipe.  Nannie and her husband Robert had 5 children.

Their daughter Anna was my grandmother.  Below is my grandparents' (Anna and John Mason) wedding photo.  Grandma was little more than 16 years old when she married.  He called her Annie and she called him Johnny. They had seven children.

Grandma loved the land and would rather be outside with Grandpa working in their tobacco fields (they were sharecroppers) than to tend to her house.  She was, however, a good cook, having had to learn how to prepare meals that fed all her family and the field hands. Our grandparents had 8 children, one of whom died at birth or soon after.

Next is a photo of John and Anna's daughter, Emma Catherine Mason (my mother), as a teenager.

Note those high cheek bones.

None of my aunts and uncles were especially interested in the fact that they had Cherokee heritage, but they all loved to tell my generation that we are Cherokee!  Go figure!  Anyway, it is in my generation that several of us search for our lost history. 

All I know is that when I was very young and was visiting these grandparents, I would walk to the top of a nearby hill, sit under the welcome shade of an old, very tall maple tree.  From there I could see a bend in the Ohio River and look into the valley along both banks.  In my minds' eye, I didn't see cars and new houses there.  I saw it without roads, without buildings.  My spirit saw verdant land covered by wonderful blue skies with a fluffy cloud here and there.  My mind's eye saw wildlife that roamed freely, as it had since the beginning of that valley and that river.  My heart soared with a closeness to Earth Mother that no one taught me.  It was a primordial celebration of existence that is hard to equal in modern days.  Am I a wanna-be?  Nah.  I'm Cherokee.

Janet is spelled "tse ni ti" in Cherokee. I proudly walk the path of my Tsalagi ancestors.

"Trace your walk...feel satisfaction in knowing the end of the rainbow you have looked for can be found at the toe of your moccasin after realizing who we are...and what we have." ~John "Eagle Spirit" Campbell, Chief

"With a large bird above me, I am walking around the sky. I entrust myself to the wind." ~Anishinaabeg dream song

Anna is on the far left

Janet M. Moreland