© Kathy Duncan, 2021
If you are going to play the genealogy game for the long haul, be prepared to be shocked by your ancestor's behavior. Be prepared to be disappointed.
Keep in mind that they did not share our cultural sensitivities.
In 1923, my husband's grandfather, Iley Nunn Selph, won second place for his KKK costume, which he wore to a "masked" dance given at the Grange hall in Allison, Colorado in the early days of 1923. Was it a real clansmen robe that he dredged up somewhere? Was it a parody of a clan robe? It's impossible to know, other than it was a costume, so it was likely recognizable as such and possibly out of character for him.
Note that a woman had gone in black face and another dressed as a homeless man. Both would be wildly inappropriate today.
And the man dressed as a woman? That seems to be high hilarity in every generation.
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