Mallory Peterson: 0:00

And then she uh made a living off of her stories and she would go to performances on stage.

Crista Cowan: 0:08

So she went from being a spy to being an actress.

Mallory Peterson: 0:10

An actress, yep. Okay. Yep. She relived her glory days, basically. Did she have a nickname? Cleopatra of Secession. Excuse me.

Crista Cowan: 0:19

Yeah. Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from Sea to Shining Sea the stories that live in us. My red-headed grandmother was such a storyteller, and I loved that about her. Till the day she died, she was telling stories, sometimes the same stories over and over in the same conversation as she got a little older. But they always captured my imagination. And it's been a little bit of a journey to figure out which pieces of those stories were true and which pieces of those stories were not true. I suspect some of that storytelling came from her Scottish ancestry. Her great-grandfather was from Scotland, and if you've listened to my episode about Samuel Mulliner, you know the story of him going back and forth across oceans, crossing countries, starting businesses. He was entrepreneurial, he was adventurous, and maybe just a little bit rebellious. I had the opportunity a few years ago to take my dad and some of my siblings and some of my dad's cousins to Scotland. And we had the opportunity to walk the battlefields at Culloden and to hear the stories of the Scottish people and their rebellion against England. My dad and siblings and I had the opportunity to drive up to the Highlands, retracing a trip my mom and I had taken nearly a decade earlier to see the sparsity of the land there. I think one of our Airbnb hosts called it dramatic scenery, and surely it was. And I love it there. But I also, every time I go there, feel the spirits of the people who lived there and who fought there and who struggled to survive amidst persecution, amidst economic hardship, all of the things that ultimately drove them out of the highlands and for many of them to the shores of this country over the course of a century or more. My mom's people ended up in North Carolina and Tennessee and ultimately made their way out to Arkansas. And their Scottish roots ran deep. And they brought with them music and culture and storytelling. And my dad's ancestor ended up in Utah, but not before passing through Ohio and Illinois and ultimately making his way out west. And he brought with him stories and music and culture. And I've always loved that about my own Scottish heritage. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to visit West Virginia. My mom took me there for my birthday because it was the last of the 50 states that I needed to visit. I had checked off every other state in the union, but somehow had never had the opportunity to visit West Virginia. Now, my birthday is this week. And so we visited West Virginia in the mid to late fall that particular year. And we drove along the Shenandoah Valley. And I remember thinking it felt so familiar because I had visited places in North Carolina and Tennessee and Georgia where my mom's family had lived. And it was amazing to me how even that much further north, that particular Appalachian range of mountains felt like home. And every time I visit Scotland, I get that same feeling. The two places are so similar. And so it's no surprise that so many Scottish immigrants ended up in that Appalachian mountain range. Now, in the Appalachian Mountains, you have not just Scottish people, but you have all of the traditions that they brought with them. There is Appalachian music that sounds eerily similar to Scottish highland music. And there is a culture of storytelling. Sometimes we might call them tall tales. In that particular range of the Appalachian Mountains, we hear the stories of Johnny Appleseed walking across the plains, the frontier, and out to the out to the plains, spreading seeds, right? He started there. We hear the story of John Henry. He's the steel-driving man who raced against a steam-powered drill and won only to collapse from exhaustion. Like those kinds of stories are coming out of this place. Some of them might be legendary or a little tall. Some of them, like the story of the Hatfields and the McCoys, their legendary border dispute after the Civil War that captured the attention of the American people and made them really wonder about what was happening in West Virginia. Some of those stories were actually true in all of their seemingly exaggerated detail. And so that's the fascinating thing to me about Appalachian culture, about Scottish culture. And as I went and checked off my 50th state on the list about West Virginia as well. Now, I have never been as cold in my entire life as I was on a train ride I took up a mountainside to a mine in West Virginia on that birthday trip with my mom. And it has become kind of a legendary story in our family. I have never seen colors as exaggeratingly beautiful as I saw on that trip to West Virginia in those mountains along that Shenandoah Valley Ridge. It is a beautiful, fascinating, and also kind of a harsh place. And so I think that's why so many Scottish settlers ended up there was because A, it reminded them of home. The Scottish Highlands are dramatic in all the similar ways. But also it gave them, I think, a sense of safety. Because the way that those valleys and those hollers and those hills protected them, they were able to connect more closely with their families or clans. They were also able to defend themselves against what they saw sometimes as encroaching overreach from the government. Much of what they had to deal with in their homeland. Now there's this little town in West Virginia. And if you ever look at a map of West Virginia, it's called the Eastern Panhandle. And it's this little s section of West Virginia that just kind of sticks out in between Maryland and Virginia. Now, the the history of West Virginia, just its very existence, is rooted in conflict. West Virginia became a state in 1863, at the beginning of the Civil War here in the United States, because of the rift between the Union and the Confederacy. But this little town of Martinsburg that sits squarely in that eastern panhandle was just close enough to the borders of Maryland and Virginia that there was a lot of conflict there. Today they call themselves the gateway to the Shenandoah Valley. Well, the Shenandoah Valley runs straight down into Virginia. And Virginia, of course, at the time of the Civil War was run by a plantation economy. It was run by enslavement. And the Civil War was being fought over that. And so the town of Martinsburg sympathized a lot, even though they were part of the state of West Virginia and part of the Union officially with the South because of their connection to Virginia, to the Shenandoah Valley. There was a vital railroad that ran right through the town. And it was a critical railroad to the Union Army. It was critical to making sure that troops and supplies could get where they needed to go. And so this particular town had divided loyalties. There was neighbors who were on opposite sides, family members who were on opposite sides. And if I have my numbers correct, the town of Martinsburg in particular flip-flopped between Union and Confederate control about 40 times during the Civil War. Now imagine being a child growing up in that environment where you didn't know from one day to the next who was in charge of the town, what fights might erupt, whether your family's safety was at risk. I think that the stories that might come out of that kind of conflict can't help but be tall tales in some cases. My guest today is Mallory Peterson. And Mallory didn't grow up knowing her father's side of the family at all. But she has become enamored with family history research and in the process of exploring her dad's side of the family tree, she has discovered an ancestor and a family connection to this little town of Martinsburg. The person that she's uncovered in her tree is going to be a story you're going to want to hear. What I think makes Mallory's story particularly compelling is how as she has explored her own family history, this Scottish heritage weaves in with the stories of this ancestor and the little town of Martinsburg and the conflict of the US Civil War in a way that reminds me that so many of us with Scottish heritage still have a little streak of maybe rebellion, maybe suspicion in us. But I hope we also embrace the telltales and the music and the culture. And if you ever have a chance to visit the Scottish Highlands or even the Appalachian Mountains, I suspect that you'll feel a lot like I did, which is a little bit of home. Enjoy my conversation with Mallory Peterson. I've gotten to know you a little bit in our little pre-conversation, but I'm excited to learn about your journey into family history because you're a little bit younger than most of the family historians that we talk to. Um, but as we were talking earlier, you said there might be something to start with around your last name. Tell me about that.

Mallory Peterson: 12:26

Okay, so my last name, I'll go by LaFord, which is my mother's side. So my mother had me at a very young age. She was in high school, and um I was put as a LaFord on the birth certificate. And that's because I didn't know my father and I didn't meet him until eighth grade. And his last name is Hammond. Okay. And this is how we're gonna connect my ancestor.

Crista Cowan: 12:53

I love that. So um, so did your mom remarry did your mom marry and have she did.

Mallory Peterson: 12:58

Okay. Yeah. She married when I was three years old and had three other children. So I have half siblings, but I, you know, yeah, I see them as my full siblings.

Crista Cowan: 13:09

And um, yeah, that's so were you raised with your stepfather's surname ever?

Mallory Peterson: 13:14

Um, I took on yeah, he adopted me. Okay. So I took on his last name.

Crista Cowan: 13:19

Do you think maybe that played into your interest in family history?

Mallory Peterson: 13:22

100%. Okay. Yes, I would say I think this is why I'm so into my family.

Crista Cowan: 13:28

You know, it's interesting because I think sometimes we think that our family situation is just the messiest. Yeah. And the beautiful thing to me about family history is as you dive into it, you learn all families are messy.

Mallory Peterson: 13:40

Yes.

Crista Cowan: 13:41

And every family is messy in kind of its own little way. Yeah. But sometimes we feel so much confusion or shame around that.

Mallory Peterson: 13:46

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 13:47

And so I it sounds like you're starting to figure that out.

Mallory Peterson: 13:50

Oh yes. I have figured it out. Okay. Yeah. I feel really good and confident. So good. Uh yeah. I'm so glad I I looked into ancestry.com and I got in and and and found some ancestors.

Crista Cowan: 14:02

So were you raised knowing that that the dad that you were being raised by wasn't your biological father, or did you have to figure that out at some point?

Mallory Peterson: 14:11

I didn't know until hmm, I was like nine, ten. Oh wow. And didn't find him until eighth grade.

Crista Cowan: 14:19

Okay. And so did you go looking? Did your mom still?

Mallory Peterson: 14:21

Apparently, my great uncle went looking and and tracked him down, and he was in Michigan of all places. So um he ended up agreeing to coming and meeting me. And we uh got to meet here in Lehigh, actually. So um it was great. And as soon as I saw him, I went, Whoa, you look like my father. So I was like, confirmation, you know.

Crista Cowan: 14:47

I'm just super curious to know like how like those conversations with your mom played out. Like as you're a child, is she telling you about any of this? Did you were you raised knowing that? Like what was there a moment where you were like, I want to know more? Because you're still pretty young at this time.

Mallory Peterson: 15:03

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 15:03

I mean, eighth grade is not that old. What it's up? How old is that?

Mallory Peterson: 15:07

14, my son's age. Yeah. Yeah. So it was through the messiness of the divorce. Yep. And then she dropped that bomb on me. Oh, your stepdad is not actually your biological dad. Yeah. And it's time that I tell you who your biological father is.

Crista Cowan: 15:24

And she had not kept in touch with him at all? No. Okay. Nope. Did your biological father know you existed or was this news to him?

Mallory Peterson: 15:31

He did. Okay. He knew. Okay. So my mother um shut him out. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 15:35

And do you still have a relationship with him?

Mallory Peterson: 15:37

I do. It's very cordial. Yeah. You know, we, you know, I was an older child by then and my grandparents were raising me. Yeah. So grandma and grandpa raised me. I love that. Yeah. Yep. We thank God for grandparents. I always say that. I always tell people I the exact same thing. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 15:56

Mm-hmm. Um, and so you weren't you weren't raised in a single place because you had a lot of upheaval in your life.

Mallory Peterson: 16:03

Yes.

Crista Cowan: 16:04

And then did where did your grandparents live?

Mallory Peterson: 16:07

Um, so we were in Kingman, Arizona. Okay. That's where we started. I was born in Phoenix, lived in Kingman, and then moved to Burley, Idaho, with my stepfather and my mother. And then they had their, you know, marriage for five years there. And then once they divorced, I had the option to go live with grandma and grandpa again. And it brought me to Lehigh. Okay. Well, I love Lehigh. I have deep roots here. I love Lehigh. I mean, I saw it back when it was just fields and farmers. So it's great.

Crista Cowan: 16:37

That's amazing. Yeah. So as you started digging into your family history, was there like a moment? Like, were there stories that your grandparents told you that you were curious about your mom's side? Did you want to start digging into your dad's side first? Like, what was it that kind of pulled you first?

Mallory Peterson: 16:52

Here's what it was. My father always told me that we we had Cherokee Indian in us. And I was like, hmm, okay, I'm gonna dig into this because that's interesting. And I, you know, got into it and I said, okay, so we're not Cherokee Indian. There's none of that. We are very Scottish. We are from some very cool ancestors from Scotland. Okay.

Crista Cowan: 17:19

I learned that. So your dad's last name is Hammond.

Mallory Peterson: 17:22

Hammond. And he's from Arizona.

Crista Cowan: 17:25

Where were his parents from?

Mallory Peterson: 17:26

I believe they're from Tennessee.

Crista Cowan: 17:28

Well, if they're from Tennessee, that makes sense why you would have a Cherokee myth in your family tree.

Mallory Peterson: 17:33

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 17:33

Like a lot of that association there.

Mallory Peterson: 17:36

You know, maybe he was thinking that from maybe his mother's side, but even then there was a lot of Irish people from them. So I'm still on the hunt. So that's another one. And you've taken a DNA test, but I have with Ancestry.com. Native American. Yeah. Because he tested. Uh-huh. And nothing.

Crista Cowan: 17:52

We're very Scottish. There you go. Yes. Very. It's a very common myth in a lot of families, especially a lot of families from like that region of the country. Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia. So you've um made some connections then back to Tennessee. Where else does your family tree take you?

Mallory Peterson: 18:07

Uh New York. Okay. Yeah, Virginia. Okay. Yeah, West Virginia.

Crista Cowan: 18:11

And what, like, as you've been climbing that family tree, have there been any stories that have just been really interesting to you?

Mallory Peterson: 18:19

Yeah. So I'll start down with my father. Um, his father, my grandpa, never met his father. Oh my goodness. So he passed away when he was three years old. I did my homework and I dug and I dug through um the internet and I actually found the man. Okay. So his name is John B. Hammond. And he passed away at the young age of 30 because he got infection in his Achilles, right? Sepsis of all things, and passed away. And um then if you go further up into the family tree, you get his father. And we don't I I have been diligently searching for him. Okay. Like I know he was a race car driver in Illinois and Indiana. Can't find him. Traced him in New York, but he's a ghost. But I'm working on that.

Crista Cowan: 19:11

But you but you know who he is? You just can't find his story.

Mallory Peterson: 19:14

Yeah, I can't find him. Yeah. Anything he abandoned his children. I'm seeing some patterns. Yeah. Right? Isn't that interesting?

Crista Cowan: 19:21

Yeah. So it's your great-great-grandfather that you can't track down. Yes. But you knew enough about him to connect him to his parents. Yep. And how did you make that discovery?

Mallory Peterson: 19:32

Okay, on ancestry.com, they have um the section where you match with other people. Uh-huh. Okay. And I found my father's cousin. And I reached out to him in a message, you know, in on the website. You can you can message people. It's a little scary, it's a little nerve-wracking. You don't know who these people are. And he replied back. And he said, Have you heard about Belle Boyd? Have you seen her story yet? I said, No, who is this person? And he shared um her uh link to me, and I went into that and I just went down a rabbit hole with her. So much to find. So much to find on this person. Yeah. So I know a little bit about Belle Boyd. Yeah. Right? She's pretty much. A lot of people know about Bell Boyd. So Belle Boyd's pretty infamous. Yes. Tell us about her. She is notorious for being a rebel spy, a Confederate spy. And she was very young. She was 17 years old. Her parents had their, they owned a hotel. So where was Belle from? Where did her family live? She was from Martinsburg, Virginia.

Crista Cowan: 20:42

Okay. And she was born like what in the 1840s, right?

Mallory Peterson: 20:45

Uh 1844. Okay.

Crista Cowan: 20:47

So it was still Virginia then.

Mallory Peterson: 20:48

Yes.

Crista Cowan: 20:49

But there's this history with Virginia and West Virginia. Yeah. As the Civil War, you know, was coming to a head. Yeah. There was slave states and non-slave states. And there was a lot of controversy around how that was going to break out. And so West Virginia became its own states as part of that whole Civil War conflict. Yeah. Because they did not want to be a slave state.

Mallory Peterson: 21:12

No.

Crista Cowan: 21:12

And so you have to think that she was raised in a family that had such strong passion toward the Confederacy and probably were angry that West Virginia had become its own state and was a non-slave state. Right. That she was willing to take those risks. Do you think she was doing that on her own or maybe spurred on by her family?

Mallory Peterson: 21:32

So her father was in the war. He was a soldier and they were for the Confederate. She would um use, like I said, her family's hotel. She used peepholes to spy on the Union soldiers, listened to the information, and she rode 15 miles to Stonewall Jackson and gave him information because the Union soldiers were going to march unexpectedly. And she rode and and told him about that. And they changed course and they won that battle, that particular battle. Because of her. And Stonewall Jackson does um give her credit for that.

Crista Cowan: 22:13

And so she starts kind of this spying when she's 17. The war doesn't officially break out until she's 18, um, you know, almost 19 years old.

Mallory Peterson: 22:21

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 22:21

And how long does she does she go through the whole war that way?

Mallory Peterson: 22:25

She was imprisoned six to seven times. What? Six to seven, but yet she was always released. Why? She was known as a very voluptuous woman.

Crista Cowan: 22:37

So maybe she used that?

Mallory Peterson: 22:39

I think she well, she did. She wrote a bunch of letters to her cousin William, and in them she states how she used her looks to get um information from soldiers. And she was a courier, so she would pass notes to and from. Wow.

Crista Cowan: 22:55

So she was smart. And probably got away with a lot because of her beauty.

Mallory Peterson: 22:59

Yeah. She was known as La Belle Rebelle.

Crista Cowan: 23:02

Okay.

Mallory Peterson: 23:03

Yeah. That's crazy. She was a little spitfire.

Crista Cowan: 23:07

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I can't even imagine like my 17-year-old self. Yeah. Like you think about, I was very strong-willed, isn't it? Yeah.

Mallory Peterson: 23:16

Right.

Crista Cowan: 23:16

So I can kind of understand like having opinions and wanting to fight for a cause.

Mallory Peterson: 23:21

Yeah. But she certainly was fighting for her cause.

Crista Cowan: 23:24

For what she believed.

Mallory Peterson: 23:24

What she believed in.

Crista Cowan: 23:26

Yeah. You think about, I mean, your oldest is 14. Yeah.

Mallory Peterson: 23:29

Three more years. She was only 17. She's a child. So what happens to her after the war? Uh she sailed to England and met her first husband. And they fled to Canada, apparently.

Crista Cowan: 23:42

Was this because she still was so bought into the Confederate cause?

Mallory Peterson: 23:47

Yeah. Or because she was wanted for war crimes. Still wanted for war crimes. And so they they went to Canada and then they came back to the US and they married. She had a child with him. And then I believe he passed away. And then she remarried, which was my great-great-great-grandfather, John Hammond. Okay. And then she uh made a living off of her stories and she would go do performances on stage.

Crista Cowan: 24:16

So she went from being a spy to being an actress.

Mallory Peterson: 24:19

An actress, yep. Okay. Yep. She relived her glory days, basically. Did she have a nickname? Cleopatra of Secession. Excuse me? Yeah. Yeah. What does that mean? Well she used her looks. Yeah. So she used her body. She got what she wanted, which was all the information. I'm telling you, she was an interesting person. Yeah. Notorious, the Cleopatra of Secession. That is such a great phrase.

Crista Cowan: 24:48

Wow. Wow. And I and I have to wonder how she felt about being called that. Or if she knew. Like if she did take pride in it, or if she was offended by I don't know.

Mallory Peterson: 24:59

Oh, I'm sure she took pride in it. You think? Because all the things that I have read up on her, she was a very vain individual.

Crista Cowan: 25:06

Um, have you ever seen any pictures of her?

Mallory Peterson: 25:08

I I do. I have. I have seen a bunch of photos of her. Yeah. And she is very full of herself. And she would mention her nose to her cousin a lot and talk about her nose. It's so interesting. She said, you know, I love my nose, but it's not a Greek nose. Okay. That's what she would say. I'm like, I don't know what that means, but she loved her beauty. So she used that to spy.

Crista Cowan: 25:33

She did. But I think Does it sound like she continued to use that through her life?

Mallory Peterson: 25:37

She's very proud of herself. Okay. That's how she was making her living.

Crista Cowan: 25:41

Yeah. So as you think about kind of the end of Belle's life, she's, you know, fought for this cause that lost. She's raised these children who may or may not love having a relationship with her.

Mallory Peterson: 25:54

And maybe her children had a hard time because there was a little stability. She was barely getting by. She had a heart attack at age 56, and um, it's said that she died in poverty.

Crista Cowan: 26:06

And where was she at the time?

Mallory Peterson: 26:08

She was in Wisconsin. So she was traveling around the country. She was traveling the country, telling her story, you know, acting it out. And at 56, this is what, like 30 some odd years after the war. Yes. She's still 1900. She's still telling the story.

Crista Cowan: 26:24

Do you know where she's buried?

Mallory Peterson: 26:25

Apparently the town that she was born and raised in, they didn't want her. Oh yeah. And her kids didn't like she's still buried in Wisconsin.

Crista Cowan: 26:36

It's so interesting to me when you think about war and you think about um spies. Women are not the first people that come to mind. Definitely not. Definitely not. And so when you found that story, yeah, like I mean, clearly she's on the wrong side of history.

Mallory Peterson: 26:52

100%.

Crista Cowan: 26:53

But but that's there's still something about her and her choices and her like way that she approached that that maybe you can learn from.

Mallory Peterson: 27:04

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 27:04

Or that maybe there's a little bit of something in you.

Mallory Peterson: 27:06

I don't know. I think it's a Scottish blood. I mean, in our blood, we stick to what we believe when we are stubborn, I guess, or just strong-willed. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 27:16

Well, and it's interesting when you think about the Scottish and English conflict, right? Like a lot of people who are not intimately familiar with that look at that almost as two, you know, two sides fighting, just like the US Civil War. Clearly, very different cultures, very different personalities of people have emerged. Yeah. But but always feeling like they're fighting for the right cause. And so many of those in Scotland, especially like after the Battle of Colloden and some of the things that happened there, ended up in Virginia and Tennessee and North Carolina.

Mallory Peterson: 27:48

And I mean, they're children still still doing what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah. And I did have ancestors in Cullodden. So really, really neat family tree I've got going on. And have you been to West Virginia? I have not. Okay. It's on my bucket list though. Okay. So I would love to go and see the town that she's from. And they have a lot of um like signs of her around the town, actually. Is the hotel still standing? No, sadly. Sadly, it is not. But there are two of her homes that are still standing. Okay. That um is uh a place to go and walk around in, apparently. So that would be fun to go walk through. Right. I would love that. Yeah. So what's next? What do you want to discover next? Oh man. I don't know. There's just uh maybe the Irish side. That would be great. I'm really into um the Scots, the Irish, fighting against fighting against those English. Yes, I really am. I'm all for the Scots and the Irish people, but yes.

Crista Cowan: 28:50

It's so interesting because a lot of people in the sweep of history, they view um, you know, underdogs, right? Like and that's and I think that's why I'm drawn to them. Yeah. When you think about also like all those people who fought, you know, the Battle of Colloden and that group of Scottish people who immigrated to the colonies, those then a generation later become the people who are rising up against the English here.

Mallory Peterson: 29:12

Yes.

Crista Cowan: 29:13

And and so as we get ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I've been thinking a lot about um, you know, some of those early skirmishes that led to the Revolutionary War. Yeah. A lot of them were led by the Scottish people.

Mallory Peterson: 29:28

I'm from some pretty cool people. Belle Boyd, she walked across a battlefield and she came out with holes in her skirts from the bullets. How do how do you come how do you store that away? She was loved and then she wasn't. And for you, you're just really like diving into this journey. I'm gonna be the one to tell my my children about my family stories. And I didn't get that, so it'll be great. Yeah, it can start with me. Thank you for sharing her story with us. Of course.

Crista Cowan: 29:56

Yeah.

Mallory Peterson: 29:57

Studio sponsored by Ancestry.

Crista Cowan: 30:00

Okay.