Monthly Archives: April 2025

2025 Week 17

27 Sunday Apr 2025

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It’s been a productive week for me in the world of genealogy. First and foremost, I finished writing the chapter on the family of Gabriel Cox and Nancy Squires. I documented the last two daughters and put together what I hope is a coherent and cohesive argument for John S Cox to be Gabe and Nancy’s son. I do need to look up a few Indiana marriage records to complete citations at the library next weekend. I’ll let it meld and marinate for a while, then revisit it for possible revisions. I will continue to search for documents periodically on this family to hopefully add more about their lives.

Moving on! The next family unit to research is Gabriel’s parents Benjamin Cox and Sarah Piety. My first task is to attempt to resolve the DNA matches I have tagged for this couple. There were a dozen or so when I pulled up the list. So far I have been successful in connecting two of them.

  • P.H. – The algorithm tries to connect this individual through a Nancy Cox to Ben and Sarah. I am not aware of them having a daughter named Nancy, let alone one that was born in Maryland. Nancy may be a descendant of Isaac Cox (Ben’s father) or one of his brothers.
  • L.D. – The algorithm has misidentified the Albert Cox in this match’s line to a grandson of Ben and Sarah. The Albert Cox belonging to L.D. resided in Pike County, Indiana, whereas my Albert Cox did not. The Albert in question may descend down a different line from Ben or from one of his brothers.
  • M.H. – When I originally tagged this one, the algorithm suggested that Ben and Sarah were the common ancestors. That assertion has been removed. I will leave it tagged for Ben and Sarah for now, but this one could be a hard one to sort out. The match’s mother was involved in a bit of dramatic scandal as a baby so parentage is questionable.
  • K.P. – This is another match that was originally attributed to Ben and Sarah but no longer are. I’ll definitely monitor the situation.
  • M.C. – This match also was previously tied to Ben and Sarah. I did note that she was descended from a step-granddaughter of Ben and Sarah when I first tried to resolve the match. We don’t have any shared matches which is concerning for me.

I still have five matches to work through this week before I start reviewing the data I already have on Ben and start collecting as much detail as I can on my 5th great grandfather.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5275 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4294 with no documents, 607 other errors.

  • A 5th cousin 1x removed needed some documentation. She’s a cousin down my Ireland line which I haven’t worked on in a long time.
  • A 5th cousin also needed to be documented. For whatever reason, I listed her last name as her mother’s maiden name in error. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any documents for her.
  • The spouse of a 3rd cousin 2x removed was undocumented. He had several references to update his record with.

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.
316 years ago – marriage of Jacques Duguay (8th ggf) to his second wife Anne Baillargeon
145 years ago – death of Robert C. Thompson (3rd ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,769 people
End of Week: 27,829 people
Change = +60 person
Tasks for coming week:

  • Document retrieval at FamilySearch Affiliate Library
  • Resolve remaining Ben Cox DNA matches
  • Start data mining on Ben Cox

2025 Week 16

20 Sunday Apr 2025

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The preformatted text that my genealogical software generates for the children of a couple is pretty sparse. It basically says they were born and they died. I guess I could leave it at that, but I at least want to leave some bread crumbs for anyone who comes across my book as a reference guide.

I have two children of Gabriel and Nancy Cox left to biography. Can I use that word as a verb? The online dictionary doesn’t provide a definition as a verb. Oh, well. I’m going to do it anyway. As I said, I have two left. They will be short. Then I need to justify why I believe Gabe and Nancy are John’s parents since I have not located any documents linking them together.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5281 errors in the tree–380 possible duplicates, 4294 with no documents, 607 other errors.

  • My first record to tackle this week was for Orele Duncan, a 4th cousin 2x removed. The system thinks she is a duplicate record. She is not. She had a twin sister. Unfortunately, Orele fell ill in late 1918 and died. Maybe from the Spanish Flu, although that is merely speculation.
  • Record number two, is Therese Reaume Parent, the wife of a 2nd cousin 6x removed. She had no sources attached. She is from my French-Canadian line so I was a bit worried. Luckily, the Canadian Find-A-Grave was not blocked on the US subscription plan.
  • My last record to fix this week appears to be a 5th cousin 2x removed who is likely a living minor. I can only guess when they were born from their parents’ marriage date and their great-grandmother’s obituary.

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.
345 years ago – marriage of Michelle Garnier (9th ggm) and Jean Chevalier (9th ggf)
283 years ago – birth of Joseph Coppock (5th ggf)
225 years ago – birth of Rachel English Caywood (4th ggm)
195 years ago – marriage of Nancy Cunningham (4th ggm) and Henry Thompson (4th ggf)
178 years ago – death of Ellinor Johnson Roderick (4th ggm)
160 years ago – marriage of Suzanne Board Catt (4th ggm) and James Cheshire (her 2nd husband)
131 years ago – birth of Blanche Cox DeMoss (ggm)
129 years ago – death of Sarah Roderick Thompson (3rd ggm)
88 years ago – marriage of Edeine Fielden (gm) and Samuel T. DeMoss (gf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,761 people
End of Week: 27,769 people
Change = +8 person
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue editing and footnoting the bio of Gabriel and Nancy Cox and their children.
  • Start writing the discussion of indirect evidence supporting Nancy and Gabriel are the parents of John S Cox.

2025 Week 15

13 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by in Genealogy

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It’s manuscript time! This is where I try to bring my ancestors to life. I approach it one sentence and one fact at a time.

While trying to include what little I know about Gabriel Cox, I found his name on a list of jurors from 1829. There were actually two lists–the grand jury and the traverse jury. Not familiar with the term “traverse jury”, I decided to look it up.

A TRAVERSE JURY‘s primary role is to listen to evidence presented in court, deliberate, and render a verdict based on the facts of the case. 

What I found interesting was that a Jacob Pea and Philip Catt from my mother’s bloodline were also on this same jury.  Not sure if they are my great-grandfathers or their sons. Hopefully I can figure it out when I start researching those families. Small world!

In writing up Nancy’s part of the biography, I included a land record where she received 40 acres of land near Freelandville, Indiana, using a certificate issued by the Wabash-Erie Canal Board of Trustees. I don’t know that the land was ever improved with a house or buildings. Today it is still used for growing crops while a swath is covered with mature trees.

Land purchased by Nancy Squires Cox in 1857.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5289 errors in the tree–378 possible duplicates, 4304 with no documents, 607 other errors.

  • First up was 1st cousin 5x removed Sarah Arnold who didn’t have any sources attached. Interestingly enough, I will be working on her family unit in the near future. She was the daughter of Elbridge Arnold and Finetta Cox. Finetta was one of Gabriel’s siblings. I added a census record and will come back to Sarah soon.
  • Error correction #2 this week was for a 6th cousin who did not have any sources attached. He was located in the 1950 US Census, along with other undocumented family members and cleared from the list.
  • My last record to clean up belongs to Margaret Polk. I believe she was added to the tree when I was entering information from the text Polk Family and Kinsmen by William Harrison Polk. Obviously I did not finish the task of researching the Polk family. Her father was Brigadier General Thomas Polk. I was able to add a source for Margaret and several other family members, clearing several extra records from the errors list! I am definitely looking forward to researching this line of the family and its contribution to our country’s history.

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.
246 years ago – birth of William Briscoe (5th ggf)
233 years ago – marriage of Mary M. Overlin (6th ggm) and Jacob Pea Jr (6th ggf)
213 years ago – death of John Keirsey (6th ggf)
205 years ago – death of John C Cunningham (6th ggf)
187 years ago – marriage of Sally Mattocks (4th ggm) and Benjamin W Lankford (4th ggf)
161 years ago – death of Louisa Reeve DeMoss (3rd ggm)
and most importantly, MY BIRTHDAY!

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,760 people
End of Week: 27,761 people
Change = +1 person
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue editing and footnoting the bio of Gabriel and Nancy Cox and their children.
  • Start writing the discussion of indirect evidence supporting Nancy and Gabriel are the parents of John S Cox.

2025 Week 14

06 Sunday Apr 2025

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I use Family Tree Maker for my offline family tree. It syncs with Ancestry so I don’t have to do double entry and and I have a backup copy of my work. Backups are important. It has a Plugin called Family Book Creator. I use this to generate the rough drafts of my family bios. I like it because you can include an abbreviated family tree with the text. It incorporates the facts from FTM and has the ability to include citations as well. I personally do not use the citation function when I generate the bios because of the way I am assembling my final document. It gets all discombobulated with the formatting.

After I generated the rough draft for Gabriel Cox and Nancy Squires, I realized I did not have Nancy’s parents entered into the tree, and as a result, they did not show up on the chart. I also realized that I needed to at least research the DNA matches from Nancy’s parents so I could make my case for John S Cox being a child of Gabe and Nancy. So researching my matches through John Squires and Mary Gott has been this week’s research focus. I have 16 matches through John and 22 through Mary. John was much older than Mary and died a few years after their marriage. She remarried and some of my matches are from the second marriage.

I have seven DNA matches from the lines of Nancy’s siblings–one from her full sister Margaret Squires and six from her half-sister Mary Caplinger. Interestingly enough, the match through Margaret is only 8 cM. Several of the matches from Mary are close to double that. It’s likely that there is an amplification effect from Mary’s husband, Gabriel Lemen. Gabriel’s mother was Mary Cox Lemen, an aunt to Nancy’s husband Gabriel Cox. The fact that these matches through Mary Caplinger circle back to the Cox line muddies my reasoning that John S Cox is a child of Gabriel and Nancy Cox. However, the one match through Margaret does, in fact, help the case. Such a tangled tree!

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5265 errors in the tree–384 possible duplicates, 4273 with no documents, 608 other errors.

  • This week’s first error to correct is for an unconnected person in the tree. I cannot figure why he was added. Maybe a distant collateral family? I have removed him.
  • My second error to “fix” is the mother-in-law of a 3rd cousin 6x removed. I have not attached any records to her. Since I typically do not include in-laws of distant cousins, I will remove her and her husband.
  • My last person to clean up is the husband of a 5th cousin. He I will keep. I updated him and his wife (my 5th cousin). I even added a bit to that family to bring it up to date.

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.
346 years ago – birth of Jean Baptiste Creely (8th ggf)
333 years ago – birth of Jeanne Duguay (7th ggm)
282 years ago – marriage of Anna Mohr (7th ggm) and Michael Katz (7th ggf)
133 years ago – death of Caroline Nagley Nagele (3rd ggm)
114 years ago – death of Eli T Butler (3rd ggf)
113 years ago – death of Joseph Nagele (3rd ggf)
89 years ago – death of Anna Gravel Cardinal (2nd ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,622 people
End of Week: 27,760 people
Change = +138 people
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue editing and footnoting the bio of Gabriel and Nancy Cox and their children.