Fearless Females - A Surprising Fact

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 19.  I have gotten a little behind in the last week so I am trying to go back and catch up.


March 19 — Have you discovered a surprising fact about one of your female ancestors? What was it and how did you learn it? How did you feel when you found out?

I did find a very surprising fact about one of my female ancestors and I wasn't sure what to think about it.  I have written about this before here.

When I was talking to different cousins I found out about a picture. It was a picture of Margaret Plummer Browning in her casket.  She was my dad's much older half-sister.  I have not seen the picture.  I have been told by several of my cousins that the picture exists.  Margaret's granddaughter remembers the picture, but is not sure what happened to it.  My Uncle George's daughters had a copy of a picture, which we believe may be the same picture, but one of the family members destroyed it.  I have been told there are other copies.  I hope to someday get a copy of the picture if it still exists.

The picture is of my great aunt in her casket wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe and had other Klan items in her casket. 

When I found out I was shocked!  I didn't even know women were in the Klan.  I couldn't believe that someone in my family could be involved with an organization like that.  I have since done some research on women in the Klan and found that they did do some good things, which made it a little easier to deal with. 

 One of the things I was determined not to do was to try to hide the information.  I was surprised that family members had destroyed the pictures.  We can't change the past, we can only learn from it.  I am not rewriting the past, I am doing my best to report it. 

Someday I hope to get a copy of the picture to add to this post!