Leaves on the Tree

  Though I have no image of Mary Jane Sheridan, as a girl, she may have dressed similarly to this girl whose portrait was painted in 1849. 1 When I look across Mary Jane Sheridan’s whole life, rather than a shadowy and nearly anonymous woman who occupied the space next to her husband on my family tree, I find Mary Jane was a woman who lived a challenging, mobile, sometimes tragic, and sometimes triumphant life. It was probably not unlike those lived by many women of her time— lives only considered quiet and uneventful because they were unknown. My 3x great-grandmother Mary Jane uprooted more than once, driven by her father or family's needs or wishes to move from urban to increasingly rural settings. She became a wife, mother, farm helper, and eventually a taxpayer and a landowner. She held her family together after personal and financial losses. She clung to her Catholic faith and seemed to provide a strong grounding for her children. Among her achievements, Mary Jane Sheridan...