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Digging Up My Roots

~ one ancestor at a time

Digging Up My Roots

Monthly Archives: September 2025

2025 Week 39

28 Sunday Sep 2025

Posted by suzieg1969 in Genealogy

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Tags

ancestry, Cox, family-history, Genealogy, Kansas

Mykonos, Greece

So, I took another week off from my blog. This time my husband and I went on a cruise in Greece with friends. I didn’t take my laptop, but I did get some genealogy done during our At Sea Days, albeit very little was done on my family tree. My husband showed some interest in his maternal grandmother’s family roots. We didn’t really know all that much about her family. Growing up, the adults had been rather tight-lipped about the family’s origins. We actually learned quite a bit with very little effort. Some of the highlights included:

  • his grandmother had an older half-brother
  • his grandmother had a younger brother who was killed in an automobile accident at age 31
  • we found the Dawes Census Card linking his family to the Chickasaw Tribe on his grandfather’s side of the family.

I’ll work on his tree a little at a time. I have a lot to do on my own.


When I left off on my own tree, I was working on the children of Harvey Innes Cox and Mary Nicholson. I was down to the last two children–Andrew and Rachel.

Andrew Campbell Cox has been rather difficult to flesh out. He married Minnie Burton in 1897 in Labette County, Kansas. The 1900 census includes an infant daughter, possibly named Iris. A short newspaper blurb later that year, states Minnie Cox was grieving the loss of her young child. There were several legal notices naming Andrew published in local papers a few years later regarding Minnie’s family. The last evidence of Andrew was in his father’s 1912 obituary saying Andrew was in Paris, Texas. No mention of him has been located after that time. Several researchers claim he died in Anchorage, Alaska in 1934, however, no documentation supporting this fact has been located. He was not mentioned in his brother Henry’s obituary in 1929.

Rachel Cox wasn’t nearly as difficult to research, but her husband Otis Morrow was rather elusive by 1910. The 1910 census states that Rachel was married, however, Otis was not in the household. She had four children which lived to adulthood.


Tree Ratings are back! I have 3 errors from last week and 3 from this week to resolve. I have 5055 errors in the tree–372 possible duplicates, 4182 with no documents, 501 other errors.

  • The three from last week all needed sources attached. Two were spouses of distant cousins and the third was a 5th cousin.
  • The first error this week was for an unattached person from the 1840s. I simply deleted her.
  • The second was a little harder to clean up. A Mary Polk listed as the daughter of General Thomas Polk had no sources attached. Ancestry also claimed she was her sister Margaret. Both sisters were mentioned in Polk Family and Kinsmen, however, little information about Mary/Polly was specifically provided. It did mention that she married a Daniel Brown and they had three children who died young.
  • The third was a spouse of a distant cousin who did not have a first name in my tree.

This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines from last week and the week ahead.
309 years ago – death of John Norton (9th ggf)
274 years ago – birth of Jane Wilson (5th ggm)
266 years ago – birth of James Ireland (6th ggf)
263 years ago – birth of Elizabeth Pea (5th ggm)
262 years ago – death of Jacques Cardinal (7th ggf)
250 years ago – death of Elizabeth Quincy Smith (7th ggm)
238 years ago – birth of John S Cawood (4th ggf)
210 years ago – death of Daniel McLeese (6th ggf)
182 years ago – marriage of James Fielden (5th ggf) and his 2nd wife Jemima Neal
162 years ago – death of Isaac Catt (4th ggf)
157 years ago – birth of Mathias Keller (2nd ggf)
150 years ago – birth of Sarah Butler (2nd ggm)
148 years ago – marriage of Rebecca Coppock (2nd ggm) and Calvin Mattox (2nd ggf)
135 years ago – marriage of Mathias Keller (2nd ggf) and Emma Nagele (2nd ggm)
131 years ago – birth of Emmett Keller (ggf)
124 years ago – death of Richard Bennett (3rd ggf)
76 years ago – marriage of Blanche Cox DeMoss (ggm) and her second husband Coen Robertson
67 years ago – death of Emmett Keller (ggf)


Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,029 people
End of Week: 27,053 people
Change = +24 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Finetta Ann Cox
  • Review the information in The Other Polks to see if there is anything I don’t already have
  • Continue data mining on Ben Cox and Sarah Piety
  • Confirm the data from Polk Family and Kinsmen has been added for this family and page numbers are noted for easier citation adding
  • Review Coxes of Cox Creek

2025 Week 37

13 Saturday Sep 2025

Posted by suzieg1969 in Genealogy, maps, Newspapers

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Tags

ancestry, Cox, family-history, Genealogy, Indiana, Kansas, Knox County, Labette County, Newspapers

This week I’m starting on the family of Harvey Innes Cox. I’ll get it started, but likely won’t finish it. His parents were Jonathan P Cox and Rachel Tigert Cox. He married Mary Nicholson in Knox County. They had nine kids that I know of. After he served in the Civil War, they picked up stakes and moved to Labette County, Kansas around 1868. This is where they remained until death.

Where exactly is Labette County? It is in the southeastern corner of Kansas, not too far west of Joplin, Missouri. Harvey’s family was mostly located in the Parsons area, in the northern part of the county, but over the years they could be found in the southern towns of Edna and Bartlett.

I have concerns about some of the information out there for Harvey’s descendants and families. His daughter Eliza appears in the 1860 census as a one year old, however, there is no trace of her after that. Some trees, and print books, list an actual date of birth and death, however no sources have yet to be found with this information. I would only hope there is a family bible out there somewhere that contains that information.

There is also erroneous information regarding the family of Benjamin F Cox, Harvey’s son. Benjamin married Etta Pond when she was 19. Some sources claim her maiden name was Stark based on her headstone, but this is incorrect. Benjamin’s obituary claims Etta died before his second marriage, but that is also incorrect. Scouring the newspapers, Etta filed for divorce from Benjamin in February 1916 according to The Times-Journal. It was granted in May. A marriage license for Etta Cox, 51, to William Wright was located in the South Kansas Tribune in January 1918. This was followed by a legal notice in the Parsons Daily Sun on April 21, 1921, where Etta Wright sues a William Wright for divorce. Part of her suit is to return her name to Etta Cox. Prior to 1930 Etta seems to have remarried to Eugene Stark, which explains the Stark name on her headstone. Pulling information from two very different obituaries for Etta ties the two women together.

I actually made more progress than I thought I would on this family this week. Three of the sons–Henry, and the twins Jonathan and Simon–appear to have never married so there wasn’t much drama to try and unfold. Two of the daughters–Eliza and Irene–seem to have died as small children so there was little to be found about them. The 1900 census mentions that Mary Nicholson Cox had 12 children, however, I have not been able to account for two of them. There does seem to be a significant gap between Harriet (b. 1851) and Henry (b. 1855). Researchers on FamilySearch have indicated there was a baby born in January 1853, however, no source is provided. The gap between Benjamin and Irene is likely due to Harvey being away at war for three years, so I would not expect a child to be hidden there.


This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines the week ahead.
281 years ago – death of Louise Arrivee Cardinal (8th ggm)
258 years ago – birth of Lydia Smith (6th ggm)
242 years ago – death of Rev. William Smith (7th ggf)
228 years ago – marriage of Mary Gott (5th ggm) and John Squires (5th ggf)
193 years ago – birth of Benjamin Coppock (3rd ggf)
193 years ago – death of Richard Puckett (5th ggf)
179 years ago – death of George Boord (6th ggf)
148 years ago – marriage of Joseph E Cardinal (3rd ggf) and Elisabeth Carrie, his 2nd wife


Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,020 people
End of Week: 27,029 people
Change = +9 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Harvey Innes Cox
  • Review the information in The Other Polks to see if there is anything I don’t already have
  • Continue data mining on Ben Cox and Sarah Piety
  • Confirm the data from Polk Family and Kinsmen has been added for this family and page numbers are noted for easier citation adding
  • Review Coxes of Cox Creek

2025 Week 36

07 Sunday Sep 2025

Posted by suzieg1969 in Genealogy

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Tags

ancestry, Cox, family-history, Genealogy, Indiana, Kentucky, Knox County, Polk

Sally Cox. She was the first daughter born to Jonathan Piety Cox and Rachel Lemen Tigert. There really isn’t much, if any information on her existence. Robertine Cox Dees, the great-granddaughter of Jonathan and Rachel, named Sally as their daughter born in 1822.1 It would seem that Sally possibly died as a small child. She cannot be accounted for in the 1830 Census. There is only one female between the ages of five and nine identified and that likely references her sister Mary who was born in 1824. Other researchers, including Ancestry’s hints, try to attribute this Sally to one who married David Huff in 1842 in Hancock County, Kentucky. While that Sally’s father’s name was also Jonathan, it must be remembered that Jonathan was a popular Cox family name. It is not very likely that after Jonathan and Rachel moved the family north to Knox County in 1823ish, that they would have married her off to someone in a county they were not native to some distance away.

That said, all I can and will say about Sally is that she was born circa 1822, probably in Shelby County, Kentucky.


Moving on, Mary J Cox certainly has a few more details to consider. I have a couple DNA matches through her as well. There also seems to be some confusion between this Mary and another Mary who resided in Warrick County, Indiana during the same time period. The DNA algorithms are trying to attribute Warrick County Mary as a daughter of JP. She likely is descended through another branch of my Cox line. I’m sure there will be more on that later.

Mary married her distant cousin Isaac Polk. They had nine children together before her death in 1859. Isaac married a second time, however, I will research those three daughters at a later date. Mary and Isaac’s son Benjamin Franklin Polk served as county treasurer for one term in the 1880s. The family mainly resided in northern Knox County as prominent farmers and livestock growers. Both Jeanette and Henrietta were married to Ellis Hill, although not at the same time. A common ailment leading to death in this family was Bright’s Disease, an old school term for a general group of kidney diseases.


Revisiting a question from a couple weeks ago regarding Benjamin Cox, son of Jonathan and Rachel…nothing concrete was found regarding the parents of the Benjamin Cox in Montgomery County. No land records in Montgomery County were found indicating where Benjamin might have resided at the time of purchase. The Find a Grave memorial does include an obituary which states that Benjamin arrived in Montgomery Co in 1853, and he is attached to a William and Ida Cox from the Lexington, KY area. The 1880 census states his parents were born in England which is inline with information available on William and Ida.

A will for Jonathan Piety Cox was not found, so whether or not Benjamin was still alive in 1874 when JP died cannot be determined. However, I think it can be surmised that JP’s son did not move to Montgomery County and marry Mary Srader.


A lot of progress was made this week, including the pruning of several unattached branches in the tree. Next week I will continue with the descendants of Harvey Innes Cox.


This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines the week ahead.
362 years ago – birth of Anna Shepard (9th ggm)
202 years ago – death of Jane Wilson (5th ggm)
130 years ago – birth of Ethel Thompson (ggm)


Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,336 people
End of Week: 27,020 people
Change = -316 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Harvey Innes Cox
  • Review the information in The Other Polks to see if there is anything I don’t already have
  • Continue data mining on Ben Cox and Sarah Piety
  • Confirm the data from Polk Family and Kinsmen has been added for this family and page numbers are noted for easier citation adding
  • Review Coxes of Cox Creek

  1. “Indiana Genealogy, Answers #638” The Indianapolis Star, 2 Jun 1929, page 74, newspapers.com. ↩︎

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