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I have never claimed to be a handwriting expert. Today I wish I was.

As this was library day for me, I was doing my monthly searches using the Full Text Search on FamilySearch. It would seem that there are some new sets of images for Knox County, Indiana that have been added to this tool…the County Commissioners Records.

I was searching for John S Cox, my 3rd great grandfather. I came across an entry from December 8th, 1846, where John S Cox was appointed constable for Washington Township. Initially I was excited to find this small detail about my 3rd-ggf’s life. That was fleeting, though, when I remembered that he had a cousin who lived in that same area whose name was John Lemen Cox. Handwritten “S” and “L” can look a lot alike. I examined other instances of those two capital letters on the page and, sadly, I’m half convinced that the name is John L Cox. (ref: Knox County Commissioner’s Records, volume B, page 471, film 7765, item 3, image 271, FamilySearch.org)

Appointment of John S (or L) Cox.
Example of capital L in the name Laplant.
Example of a capital S in the word Session.

I also located a history of the Mariah Creek Christian Church that is now searchable using the Full Text Search. It identified several of my Coxes and Polks named in that book. It could provide a little color to the biographies of several ancestors going forward. I was able to download a digitized copy from archive.org.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5280 errors in the tree–374 possible duplicates, 4299 with no documents, 607 other errors.

  • The first was an individual who was not linked to anyone else. Needless to say, he was deleted.
  • The second person to resolve is a 1st cousin 5x removed down the line of Ben and Sarah Piety Cox. He just needed a citation added. I added a few of his children and his two wives while I was at it. I will end up doing a deeper dive on him in the near future.
  • The last person needing resolution is the wife of a 5th cousin who had no citations. After a bit of searching I was able to resolve the error.

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.
264 years ago – birth of Jerome Creely (6th ggf)
223 years ago – marriage of Elizabeth Harris (5th ggm) and Ephraim Frost (5th ggf)
211 years ago – birth of Andreas Braun (4th ggf)
208 years ago – death of Eli M Short (6th ggf)
207 years ago – death of Alice Hopkins (6th ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,829 people
End of Week: 27,833 people
Change = +4 person
Tasks for coming week:

  • Resolve remaining Ben Cox DNA matches
  • Start data mining on Ben Cox