Sorceress Read Online Free Page B

got so far. I’ve kind of commandeered this wall.’
    Agnes followed her down the room past tables piled with document folders and portfolios tied with ribbon. The wall was papered from top to bottom with maps, charts, family trees, computer printouts, photographs and facsimiles of documents. Yellow Post-it notes covered in small fine lettering dotted the field of print like curling autumn leaves. Agnes read the wall from right to left, then back again, scanning fast but careful not to leave any part out. She knew quite a bit about research and this was excellent work, but she saw more than that. The hand-drawn family trees, the carefully drafted charts, the tiny meticulous printed notes told her that this was labour of love that bordered on obsession.
    ‘This is a lot of work. Real impressive.’
    Alison stood, arms folded, peering up at the board through narrow wire-rimmed glasses. She smiled, pleased with the response she had gained.
    ‘I didn’t do it on my own. I’ve had information from all over.’ She reached forward to readjust a peeling Post-it. ‘Elias Cornwell is right over here along with what’s left of Beulah. The Rivers family are up there alongside the Morses. There’s Jonah and Martha.’ She nodded to different quarters of the display. ‘Remember Jack Gill, the boy on the ship? I’ve even managed to track him down.’
    ‘How did you get so much?’
    ‘The response to the book and the web site have been excellent – and my own research, of course.’ Alison laughed. ‘It is my job, after all. It’s not so hard to find out about somebody, even as far back as this. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is well documented, there are vital records: births, deaths, marriages, along with church records, court records, gravestones, private papers, containing letters if you’re lucky. Account books, you can tell a lot from them, probate inventories, wills, what people left behind them and to whom and in what quantity; there’s also family traditions and superstitions, plenty of stuff. The key is knowing where to go look. I owe a great deal of thanks to the Internet, of course, and also the New Englander’s love of genealogy.’
    Alison laughed and stopped. Her laugh was getting a nervous edge to it. She didn’t want to go on too much, sensing that Agnes might be drifting off.
    Agnes knew that stuff anyway, so she had been only half listening. She did want to know something about the family tree marked Rivers–Morse. It stretched from one side of the wall to the other. Beginning with Rebekah, fourteen generations spread out and on from her.
    ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to a single blood-red thread snaking through the branching names.
    ‘It’s the quilt. It follows the distaff side, the female line.’ Alison used a pointer to follow the ribbon along. ‘Starting with Rebekah and going to her daughter Mary Sarah, and to her daughter, and on and on to the tenth generation and this woman, Eveline TraversHarris.’(6)
    (6) Refer to the historical notes at the end of the book.
    The red line stopped with her, although the tree line branched up and off to include three, in some cases four, more names.
    ‘What happened?’
    Alison pointed up at the names bracketed with Eveline Travers Harris : husband Clarence Edgar , died in France, 1918; two infant children ( Etta May, aged 3, and Earl Leonard, aged 18 months ) died of influenza in 1919.
    ‘Eveline herself lived on. Her death was not recorded until 1981. But she never married again.’
    ‘So what happened to the quilt?’
    ‘Seems that Eveline never quite recovered from what had happened to her family. She became reclusive, devoting herself to the making and collecting of quilts and other kinds of needlework. Her death broke the family tradition. Her whole quilt collection, which was by that time extensive and valuable, was sold to a private collector.’
    ‘So how did you get hold of it?’
    ‘The purchaser, J. W. Holden, died several