Messages From the Ancestors

S. A. Sizemore
3 days ago
9 min read

You may or may not believe in ghosts. I’m a healthy skeptic. I like figuring out a mundane answer to something before I jump to the paranormal. However, sometimes I just can’t ignore messages from those who came before me.

Since I was a child I have always been drawn to my ancestors. My maternal grandmother talked about her sister, an early Hollywood stuntwoman, who died doing a stunt in Pasadena’s Oak Grove Park by the Devil’s Gate Reservoir. My paternal grandmother talked about her Cherokee father who beat a fellow miner to death for stealing his lineman tools. Storytelling, particularly storytelling around the ancestors, just ran in the family, so it’s not surprising that the Beckett Coven series is steeped in ancestral details.

During my most recent trip to Salem, Massachusetts in August, I spent every morning and every evening visiting the graves of my ancestors at the Charter Street Cemetery and St. Peter’s Church. The cemetery didn’t feel strange, rather it felt like I was hanging out at a family reunion. It was comforting and familiar and I couldn’t wait for the sun to rise and set so I could visit them as downtown Salem became relatively quiet. Both places are tourist attractions. The Charter Street Cemetery, second oldest colonial cemetery in America, is particularly busy during the day while Salem is full of tourists and at night as walking tours snake their way through the streets.

On my first evening in Salem, I walked down to the cemetery around 8 p.m. Walking tours were already in full flight just outside the cemetery gate next to the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. Suspiciously, they weren’t venturing further into the memorial itself. As I peered around the corner I spotted the culprit.

Halfway up the path, past Bridget Bishop’s memorial stone, something white and black and fluffy danced in the grass. A skunk had wandered into the memorial looking for grubs and other tasty morsels. One of the tour guides mentioned it was the first time they had seen one inside the memorial itself. Interesting that it coincided with my visit.

I grew up on the edge of a green belt in the foothills of Los Angeles, so I was very familiar with this stinky member of the weasel family. If you keep your distance, don’t startle them, and let them be, they will leave you alone, as well. So, I was the only brave soul who entered the memorial that night and perched on the far end overlooking the cemetery. I spent about an hour thinking about my family members buried nearby and thanked the adorable skunk for its buffer of protection from the invading tours.

Within the Charter Street Cemetery lay the remains of my Ingersoll, Wakefield, and Archer ancestors, mostly aunts, uncles, and cousins. I suspect some of my 11^th, 10^th, and 9^th great-grandparents are also buried there since many of them lived within a half mile of it, but many surviving headstones are unreadable due to decay and a fire that ravaged Salem in 1914.

As I walked through the serpentine paths of the graveyard earlier in the day, I saw other family names as well, Cooks, Purchase, Ropes, Rose, and Williams. Their exact genealogical connection to me was unknown since I didn’t have time to investigate everyone before I left on the trip.

The oldest headstone of my relatives is for Susanna Wakefield, my 9^th great-aunt. Her sister, Elizabeth Wakefield, married my 9^th great-grandfather, Samuel Ingersoll. Susanna’s father had property out in what was the Salem Village area but closer to Salem Town. She was born January 26, 1682, and died twelve days later. Buried beside her is her brother, John Wakefield. John was born Oct 4^th in 1692 at the height of the Salem Witch Trials. He died on March 23^rd 1712, the same year the Salem Village Meeting House collapsed into the ground.

Headstone for Susanna and John Wakefield in Charter Street Cemetery, Salem, MA

My 8^th great-uncle, John Ingersoll, is buried not too far from them but closer to the backside of the Frankenstein’s Castle attraction. The rest of my Ingersoll cousins are mostly laid to rest within the Bradstreet Tomb. A docent told me that the tomb originally contained the remains of Simon Bradstreet, the last governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which explained the elaborate plaque on the tomb opening’s side. In the 1800s it wasn’t uncommon for older tombs to be purchased by other families, so my Ingersoll cousins bought the Bradstreet Tomb.

At least five of my family members are buried there including Susannah “Duchess” Ingersoll who was the second-to-last Ingersoll to own the Ingersoll-Turner Mansion. The house once had seven gables on it, which Susannah mentioned to her second cousin, famous author Nathaniel Hathorne. I visited the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion for the first time on this trip. When I entered the house I immediately felt nauseous and started sweating. I thought I was going to have to leave.

The docent explained this part of the house was left to look as it would have been when the Turners owned it. The house was originally built in the 1600s so the ceilings were low and the rooms were dark with few windows. John Turner lost the home after several bad business deals, and my first cousin, nine generations removed, Captain Samuel Ingersoll bought it. (Captain Samuel was the namesake grandson of my 9^th great-grandfather, Samuel Ingersoll, who is a character in the Beckett Coven series.)

Turner-Ingersoll Mansion at the House of the Seven Gables museum and gardens in

Before we ventured into the next room, I mentioned to the docent that I was an Ingersoll descendant and that Susannah was my cousin. Immediately after saying that, I felt totally different. The nausea lifted. Before that moment it felt like I was completely unwelcome in this house. But after I introduced myself, it felt like being greeted at a family reunion. Even when we went up into the attic via the secret passage along the chimney, it still felt warm and cozy. It was the strangest experience I’ve ever had.

My unusual ancestral encounters didn’t stop there. One evening before my wife and I went to dinner, I took her to the location where my Ingersoll ancestors once lived. According to a map from the University of Virgina that reconstructs land allotments and locations of houses from 1700 Salem Town deeds, my Ingersoll family lived on a two-acre strip east and west from Daniels Street to what is now the Salem Maritime National Historic park, then north and south from Essex Street down to the water.

None of my ancestor’s houses still stand, but in 1700 my widowed 10^th great-grandmother, Mary Coombs Ingersoll, lived in a house at approximately 67 Essex Street. (Mary and her husband John Ingersoll, Jr. are also characters in the Beckett Coven series.) Their son, Samuel Ingersoll and his first wife, Elizabeth Wakefield, my 9^th great-grandparents, lived at approximately 2 Daniels Street.

(Highlighted area is where the Ingersolls lived.)

Fifty years later in 1751, Samuel’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth Ingersoll Burrows Hinche, and her two sons, William and John Burrows, sold a house previously owned by her aunt Ruth Ingersoll Rose which was about where 12 Daniels Street now is. My 7^th great-grandfather, William Burrows, took his share of the proceeds and moved down to Delaware with his new wife Sarah Darling. There she gave birth to my 6^th great-grandfather James Burrows on an estate in 100 Duck Creek in 1752. (My Burrows ancestors inspired the creation of my Beckett Coven character, Sheriff Moira Burrows.)

As I stood on the corner of Daniels and Derby Streets, explaining to my wife where everyone approximately lived, she stopped me and stared at something just above my head.

“What?” I asked, wondering what the heck had made her eyes widen with surprise.

“A feather,” she replied. “It almost hit your head and went right past your shoulder.”

We spent several moments trying to find the feather on the ground but couldn’t. When I finally spotted it, I saw it was a small round feather that looked to be from a morning dove or pigeon’s breast.

In the Cherokee and Chickahominy branches of my family, feathers represent messages from the ancestors. At first I kind of took the whole thing with a grain of salt. We were after all standing next to a tall building and some pigeons had just flown by overhead. I continued with my stories about great-grandma, Elizabeth Ingersoll Burrows Hinche, as we kept going down Daniels Street toward the water. Not more than two houses later another feather came wafting down and hit me in the left shoulder.

This time I couldn’t ignore it. I stopped and said, “Thank you, Great-grandma. Thank you for letting me know you are here.”

Daniels Street taken from Derby Street looking towards Essex Street. The area on the left hand side from the brown building northwards is approximately where my Ingersoll ancestors lived in Salem, MA. Photo by S.A. Sizemore © 2025

When we got back home, I pulled up some documents I had about Elizabeth, wondering if I could find something that might explain the mysterious feathers. Did they have some kind of significance to her life? I located her will, which I had never read before. The first paragraph states she was a muff and tippet maker. Basically, she was an 18^th century fashion accessory designer.

Excerpt from Elizabeth Ingersoll Burrows Hinche's will. "Elizabeth Hinche of Concord in the County of Middlesex and province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England.

Muff and tippet maker".

Muffs were a cloth tube, often made of fur or wool, used for warming the hands. Tippets were a thick scarf or short cape worn around the shoulders. Shoulders? Interesting. I looked further down the will. It was adorable. She had several sheep, probably for the wool to help make her muffs and tippets, which she gave to each of her grandchildren living locally in Concord, Massachusetts and Connecticut. To the wife of my uncle, John Burrows, Elizabeth left her feather muff and tippet. She adorned her muffs and tippets with feathers!

"I give and bequeath to my son John Burrows my copper scally (mug) and picture in a frame and also to his wife my feather muff and tippet."

After reading that, I have no doubt my great-grandmother was with me while I walked down Daniels Street, which in the early 1700s was known as Ingersoll Lane.

On my last morning in Salem, I went to Charter Street Cemetery once more before we left for the airport. Most of my family’s graves sit under two large oak trees at the northwest corner of the cemetery by the Grimshaw House. First, I stopped to visit Elizabeth Ingersoll Beckett, the namesake niece of my great-grandmother of muff and tippet fame. Elizabeth married Captain John Beckett, who was Bridget Bishop’s second great-grandson. (She is the ancestor who inspired me to meld the Ingersoll and Beckett families into my Beckett Coven book series.)

Then I went over to the Bradstreet Tomb. Right after I got there, the branches of the oak trees that cover it started raining acorns down around the crypt. I looked up to see if a squirrel was messing about or if the wind had kicked up. Nothing. So many of acorns were falling all at once that I worried I was going to get hit in the head. I moved over to see my Archer cousins further down the path.

Nathaniel Archer was Elizabeth Wakefield Ingersoll’s second cousin. His wife, Hannah Cook Archer was the niece of my 8^th great-grandmother, Hannah Cook Purchase. As I went over to their graves to say goodbye, the falling acorns literally followed me. I looked back over at the Bradstreet Tomb and now no acorns were falling there. Heavy sigh. So, I went back over to the Bradstreet Tomb. When the acorns followed me back to the crypt opening, I decided I should say something.

“Don’t worry. I’m coming back. I’ll be back to visit you. Promise.”

At that, the acorns stopped falling. Of course they did, because it’s Salem and that’s just how things work there! After paying my respects to my Wakefield aunt and uncle, I did one last loop around the Witch Trials Memorial and said goodbye to Bridget Bishop.

Bridget Bishop's memorial stone at the Salem Witch Trials Memorial next to

While I sat in the airport, I looked up what acorns meant to my New England cousins during their lifetime. For 19^th century Americans acorns represented strength and potential, because great things come from small acts. Acorns were often carved into tombs as mourning symbols to represent the cycle of life. In British folklore they were used as protection talismans. The other thing they represented were new beginnings.

Strength. Potential. Mourning. Protection. New Beginnings.

Symbolic for the Beckett Coven series?

Indeed.

Shall we begin?

S.A. SIZEMORE's
BECKETT COVEN

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