My mother writes, “The parents of Mary Frona Clayton and John Edward Bartley lost their spouses fairly early and married each other (and their children), so Mary Frona and John Edward Bartley were step-sister and brother who later married each other. Thus they were not blood related.”

John Bartley was living in or around West Louisville, Kentucky, at the time of my grandmother’s birth in 1901. (West Louisville is a small town in rural northern Kentucky near Owensboro. It is not associated with Louisville, Kentucky.) From her accounts to me, he said he was one-eighth Cherokee Indian. I have not been able to identify such a Native American presence in this branch of the family, though there is one farther back in another place.