Under the Elderberry Tree

Under the Elderberry Tree

Creative chronicles of an incoming Crone

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Category: Bold & Queer Family History

A Christmas Wishlist from 1902

Posted on December 8, 2025December 8, 2025 by Melissa

When he was seven years old, my great grandpa, Denzil (AKA Dutch), wrote a letter to Santa that was published in the Chronicle Tribune (Marion, Indiana) on December 23. Thanks to the work of one of the marvelous research librarians at The Marion Public Library, I can now carry his sweet heart on the pulse…

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Deliria by Eve Stanton, 1933

Posted on November 10, 2025November 10, 2025 by Melissa

This post was originally published to my old family history blog, boldandqueer(dot)com. Since no longer publishing on that site, I have moved a handful of popular posts to this space and dated them as their original publish date. However, a few posts, like this one, will be dated in the present because they are special…

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Folding Time: October (The Thinning Veil & Ancestor Connection)

Posted on October 20, 2025November 7, 2025 by Melissa

Spooky Season AKA the time around Halloween and Samhain, is a time filled with pumpkins, images of antiquity, costumes, scary movies, and ghost stories. If you’re into family history or are even a little bit Witchy, it’s also the perfect time to connect with the ancestors in a more profound way. It is believed that…

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Surprise Sisters

Posted on April 6, 2025November 7, 2025 by Melissa

Neither of us knew that the other existed until 2019 when AncestryDNA tests uncovered not only each other, but so much more we may have never known otherwise. Wild how spitting into a tube can change the very foundation of a life and open doors to futures previously unimagined. But it can and it did….

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Old News, New Inspiration

Posted on February 5, 2025November 7, 2025 by Melissa

I’m set to write a piece for an upcoming anthology and have found myself at a crossroads of inspiration. The piece is about an ancestor and the clues about her life that were left in mundane places. Places like Census Records and City Directories, yearbooks and newspaper clippings. Old news written and documented over 100…

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Chatting Nostalgia on The Rewind Podcast

Posted on January 19, 2025November 7, 2025 by Melissa

Late last year I was invited to be a guest on The Rewind Podcast with Kriti and Sara, two Millenial friends from Instagram who wanted to chat with this Gen-Xer. I accepted, we recorded, and it is now live! If you are curious about who I am as a human, farmer, family historian, creative journaler,…

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Hello & Welcome!

Hi, hey, hello! I'm Melissa, a word weaver, book lover, tea drinker, multi-crafter, ghost chaser, soil tender, and good-trouble maker. Grab a cuppa and sit for a spell. I'm so glad you're here!

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