Thoughts from Polly's Granddaughter: Kitty Sutton

Kitty Sutton is the author of a series of books she calls "Mysteries from the Trail of Tears." She claims she has uncovered a hidden history of the Cherokee Nation after the Trail of Tears. She also claims she and her family are Cherokee.

From Amazon -

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From her Facebook Fan Page -

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From Twitter -

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From LinkedIn -

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From Interviews -

When asked why she writes historical fiction -

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When asked why she writes about the time period -

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Despite her claims, Sutton is not Cherokee. She's not registered with any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes and she has nothing in her genealogy that suggests she has Cherokee, Osage, or any other American Indian ancestors. Another researcher and I traced Sutton's genealogy and researched every line back to, at least, the time of the Trail of Tears. The family was never living among the Cherokees (or any other tribe) and they were always found listed as white citizens of the United States.

If I was inclined to do so, I could write as many posts about Sutton's ancestors as I did about US Senator Elizabeth Warren's family. That is not necessary (yet) because Sutton bases her entire claim (for now) on one ancestor, her paternal grandmother, Anna Miller.

March 16, 2013, Sutton made this post on a genealogy message board asking for leads on her grandmother who she "knew" was Native American.

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One of the people trying to help her with her query specifically asked Sutton if she was basing her claim on family lore. Sutton said no and that she knew for a fact her family was Native American.

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May 26, 2013, Sutton posted a picture of her grandmother to her tree on Ancestry and wrote that the picture showed her grandmother was Native American.

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March 6, 2014, Sutton posted a message on her Ancestry Sutton Family Tree suggesting her paternal grandmother, Anna Miller, was not the child of Nancy Adaline Duncan, based on a marriage date. It appears she then surmised Anna was the child of Charlie Miller and some unknown Cherokee woman.

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March 19, 2014, Sutton left a long, angry comment in response to an article about disenfranchised Indians. She basically said she's Cherokee and Osage, but she can't prove it, but despite that, she's still no less Indian.

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By March 24, 2016, Sutton was claiming her Native American grandmother was "adopted out" to a family in Missouri and the family name was lost to time.

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The problem with all this, every last bit of it, is that Kitty Sutton has apparently created a fictional Cherokee ancestor that is as imaginary as the characters in the stories she writes. Her grandmother was not a full blood Cherokee child adopted out (of the Cherokee Nation?) to a white family in Missouri. She was a white baby born in Missouri into a white family that were citizens of the United States.

Charlie Miller and Nancy Adaline Duncan were married August 4, 1885, in Benton County, Missouri.

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Approximately six months later, February 6, 1886, Anna Miller, their daughter was born. We all know the gestational period for human babies and we can all see the records indicate Nancy likely conceived Anna before she married Charlie. While some might be shocked to find records such as this, we genealogists know this was not a rare occurrence. There's no need for moral judgement. It is what it is. It is not a problem that would indicate a child was "adopted" as Sutton says, but instead a piece of documentation that suggests a child was conceived before marriage.

Anna Miller was found on the following US Censuses:

1900 as Mary A. Miller; 14 years old; born Feb 1886 in Missouri; daughter of Charles Miller, a widower; living in Adair, Camden County, Missouri. Race - white.
1910 as Anna Kelly; 23 years old; born about 1887 in Missouri; wife of Mell Kelly; living in Lincoln, Pratt County, Kansas. Race - white.
1920 as Anna Kelley; 35 years old; born about 1885 in Missouri; wife of Mall Kelley; living in Parsons Ward 4, Labette County, Kansas. Race - white.
1930 as Anna Kelley; 43 years old; born about 1887 in Missouri; widowed*; living in Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri. Race - white. (*Mall Kelley was not dead. Either there was a divorce or he abandoned the family between 1920-1930 because he was alive in Texas after 1930.)

Additional information on Anna Miller (who started using the name Bonnie later in life) is found on her death certificate. The informant was Anna's daughter, Verba Kelley. Verba said her mother was white; born February 6, 1886 in Warsaw, Missouri (which is in Benton County); and the daughter of Charlie Miller and Nancy Adaline Duncan.

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The documentation supports the information Verba gave for her mother's death certificate. There is no reason to doubt any of it. The only reason it has come into question is because Kitty Sutton, granddaughter of Anna Miller, has either poorly researched her ancestry or refuses to believe the documentation she's found. Clearly Sutton wants to be Cherokee and she will stop short of nothing to try to convince herself and others that she is Cherokee. That's not the way it works though. No matter how much one might try to twist, misinterpret, or misrepresent records, they can't find what isn't there. This is why Sutton isn't able to prove Cherokee ancestry. She simply isn't Cherokee.

While this may appear to be just another case of wannabeism gone bad, it's more than that. According to Sutton's website, the National Park Service has accepted Sutton's books for their catalog which allows any National Park Gift Shop to order them and sell them. Sutton advertises this as proof that she's discovered an accurate history that has never been revealed until now. To those of us who study the behavior of fake Cherokees, the claim of "hidden history" always sends up a red flag. We know that eventually those fake Cherokees will try to use the idea of undiscovered facts in an effort to authenticate their family as Cherokee. Sutton appears to be doing this in her fourth book. She claims the story line has a strong connection to her family because her grandma was adopted "out" to a white family in Missouri. As bad as that is, it is not the worst of it.

Sutton now promotes herself as a Cherokee historian, of sorts, who has done extensive research on Cherokee history. She travels throughout the Ozarks (southern Missouri and northern Arkansas) to Cherokee historical sites giving presentations on the Trail of Tears because she believes our history has been recorded incorrectly.

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If Sutton can't do her own genealogy accurately, how in the world can she be trusted to do any other research correctly? Think about that. When she looks at the documents on her own family, she doesn't see what's there. Instead, she sees what she wants to be there. Now that we know that, any detail that comes from her research of history becomes suspect.

At this point in time, we should consider Sutton's claim of Cherokee (or any other tribe) debunked. Should she "line jump", which is common in false claims, I'll address that when it occurs. As previously stated, her ancestry has been traced in every line dating back to the time of the Trail of Tears. Nothing indicates Indian ancestry. If Sutton respects the Cherokee people, she'll stop claiming to be one of us. If she doesn't, she'll cling to her story as if her life depended on it, continuing to exploit our ancestors for her own personal gain. Only time will tell which direction she'll go.

Those are my thoughts for today.
Thanks for reading.

*Line jumping is when a fake Cherokee has their false claim debunked in one line of descent so they "jump" to another line in their family and then claim that one is "Cherokee".

*Census records were found on Ancestry.com.

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