Remembering Who We Are……….
The Declaration of Sarah’s Cousin
•July 1, 2026•
by Janey Roney
One of our home movies from the 1970s captured our daughter squirting water from a hose into a growing puddle in the lane. When her big brother splashed through her puddle, she burst into tears and screamed, “He’s stepping in my stream!!!”
We all step in someone’s stream now and then, but for most of the last 250 years, we Americans have managed to live in peace with one another. Among notable exceptions, of course, are the Civil War, the black civil rights struggle, and that awful year, 1968, but unlike other parts of the world, we usually live in harmony. Why?
A lot of credit goes to a document written by the cousin (twice removed) of Sarah Waugh Farrar Vaughan Rankin. You’ve never heard of her? She and her husband Robert Rankin moved into Ash Grove Township in Shelby County in 1828, and you might be related. She left many descendants who still live in the Findlay and Bethany area. Her great grandmother was Judith Jefferson Farrar, the aunt of Thomas Jefferson. If you are one of her descendants, you share some of Thomas Jefferson’s DNA. So, on this special 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let’s look again at what Jefferson (who is maybe your or your neighbor’s distant cousin) wrote.