When Melanie Chisamore saw the growing pile of quarters left on her great-great-great-great-grandmother’s gravestone, she felt a sense of awe.
“I was overwhelmed … with just how special it seemed,” said Chisamore, who believes people leave the coins because that was the price her ancestor Jane Elizabeth Martin Barnes charged to tell a fortune back in the mid-1800s.
“The fact that the number of coins keeps increasing means that more and more people are learning about her and understanding her place and our history here.”
Chisamore has made it her goal to share the story of Mother Barnes, who also came to be known as the Witch of Plum Hollow and lived in a log cabin in Sheldon’s Corners, Ont., just outside the hamlet of Plum Hollow, about 110 kilometres south of Ottawa.
WATCH: Witch or wise woman? The story of the so-called ‘witch of Plum Hollow’:
Melanie Chisamore’s great-great-great-great …