Ancestral revelations and sighs of relief

My dad's side of the family has been active in genealogy work trying to follow the tangled web of our roots. My uncle even sent his cheek swab DNA sample off for testing. A while back, I tracked down some information on the internet and sent it along to my dad using his mother's maiden name. He hadn't seen a lot of the information before or known of some of the family connections. What I discovered was that my family was in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s and then moved off to various other places around the US. My little brain began whirring, and I wondered if they had been around during the witch trials, but I left it as one of those unsolvable mysteries. The timing might have been right, but who knew? And there was this terrible little fear that they had been part of that whole mess, believing overly emotional and repressed teenaged girls (bad idea, ancestral people), getting caught up in the hysteria, and killing people.

However, this was not an unsolvable mystery it turns out; it just took time. My sister did an ancestry project for school recently, and my mom sent along a copy of the ancestry report. These have been compiled through various people, but the history tracks my family back to 1564 in Warwickshire, England and--wait for it--Salem in the 1630s. What is more amazing, though, is this little gem:

 

Apparently, I wasn't the only one seeking the information that "not everyone was caught up in the hysteria epidemic."