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One of the Facebook groups I follow is Genealogy Tip of the Day by Michael John Neill. On a daily basis, he’ll post interesting little tidbits related to genealogy. I recommend genealogists of all levels subscribe to his posts. On Monday, Michael led off a post with “Is it necessary to research your fifth cousin’s third mother-in-law whose daughter he was only married to for a few weeks?” That made me stop and think. Was I doing something similar by researching all the descendants of my 4th great grandparents? My end goal isn’t to do a descendants report on the Cox family. My goal is to research the lineage of my grandfather Samuel T DeMoss Sr. When I started the project, I decided that the end product would contain biographies of each couple for each bloodline that I could reasonably prove. As part of the biographies, I would include a list of any children either parent had, with limited details on the children and their spouses. To keep the project manageable, I would not delve further down the lines in my manuscript. So, I ask myself, why am I spending so much time right now researching people who will not make it into my book? I did this before when I was working on the DeMoss line. Ultimately, I checked myself and got back on track. I think I need to check myself again and get back to the current topic at hand, namely the children of Gabriel and Nancy Cox.

There was a mini-rant in one of my Facebook genealogy groups this week about how women were just extensions of their husbands–Mrs. John Doe, Mrs. Harry Smith, etc. They were never listed by their given names. I chuckled and moved on. At least it was funny until it hindered me from finding an obituary for Elizabeth Mabes, aka Mrs. John Mabes.

Sadly, women were considered extensions of their husbands. Can’t find her? Check under ‘Mrs. His Name’

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5281 errors in the tree–390 possible duplicates, 4283 with no documents, 608 other errors. That’s 10 more than I had last week. Must be some of those sixth cousins or so that I added or their spouses or their kids.

  • A 6th cousin from my DeMoss line. He had several hints and I was able to clean up his record.
  • My second error to clean up was for Margaret Cowhick. I *think* she is my 5th great grandfather William DeMoss’s sister-in-law. She married Lewis DeMoss in 1802 in Fleming County, Kentucky. Someone posted an image of the marriage bond, so I attached that to her and she should be good to go now.
  • The last error is for a living 3rd cousin. She’s probably about the same age as my daughter and doesn’t have any hints available yet. I gleaned her name from her grandfather’s obituary. Won’t be able to fix that one for now.

This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines which will occur during the week ahead.
235 years ago – marriage of Mary Overlin (6th ggm) and Christian Hibner (1st husband)
189 years ago – birth of John W Fielden (3rd ggf)
183 years ago – birth of George Winkler (3rd ggf)
180 years ago – birth of Joseph Nagele (3rd ggf)
32 years ago – death of Phyllis Keller DeMoss (mother)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,549 people
End of Week: 27,584 people
Change = +35 people – goal not met
Goal for coming week: Finish research on Sarah Piety Cox and Philip Smith family. Start research on Joseph D Cox family. Continue to look for documentation connecting John S Cox to his siblings as further proof that he was a child of Gabriel and Nancy.