DNA Updates

• This week my first DNA match is a distant cousin connecting through Joseph Cardinal, my 5th great-grandfather. She was pretty easy to track and connect. Ancestry was indicating that she was related through my dad’s side, though. Maybe there is a connection through a different branch with this cousin. Something to watch for, although none of the names rang a bell.
• The second DNA match is another distant cousin connecting through Valentine Mattox, a 4th great-grandfather on my dad’s side of the family. Interestingly enough, it appears this cousin might also connect through my Puckett line. Normally I would set this one aside to flesh out later, but since there appears to be a double connection, I’m anxious to work it now. Filling in the Puckett line was straight forward, however, making the connections to Valentine Mattox will take some effort and I will save that for another day.

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Unusual Place Name – Bucklucksy

In researching the Rennels family, they resided in Bucklucksy, Oklahoma for a period of time. I was curious how the name came to be. Since Google is my friend on most days, I asked and then I had CoPilot condense it down into a single paragraph.

Bucklucksy—originally named from the Choctaw phrase Bok Luksi, meaning “Creek with turtles”—was the first settlement at the crossroads of the California and Texas roads where J.J. McAlester opened a general store in 1869. The discovery of nearby coal and McAlester’s success in attracting the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad in 1872 transformed the area, prompting the railroad and post office to adopt his name. Though Bucklucksy later became known simply as McAlester, parts of the old townsite now rest beneath Lake Eufaula, leaving only its story to surface.

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Continuing Research on Benjamin Cox descendants: Emma Taylor Thomas

I am continuing my research on William Taylor’s descendants. This week’s research starts with a search for Emma Taylor Thomas’s daughters. Emma died in 1910 and is buried in Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Her obituary places the family near Needmore and there apparently was a measles outbreak at the time of her death.¹ Information on her husband Joseph Thomas was hit or miss early in the search. A 1919 army transport manifest for their son George mentioned that Joseph was in Gore, Sequoyah County, Oklahoma. This is also the location where George was married later that year. George and his bride were enumerated in Wharton County, Texas in 1920. Laura and Zelora seemed to have vaporized during this time. Joe resurfaced in 1930 living with George and his family and they had returned to Oklahoma.

Emma and Joseph’s daughter Hazel was a little easier to track…she married and ended up with the rest of the family in California. Her obituary listed two sisters as living, however, they were not Laura and Zelora. Researching Edith and Anna, I found them and their father in Wharton County, Texas…next door to George. As it turns out, Anna married George’s brother-in-law in 1922 who was a widower with two children. They raised a sizeable family (Linthicum) which I likely will not finish assembling this week.

Eventually Joseph appeared in the 1910 census…in Delaware County, not Ottawa County. Afton, where Emma reportedly died, is near the county line so they very well could have been residing in Delaware County all along. Laura and Zelora are not named. Laura was fourteen so maybe, and that’s a big maybe, she had married by 1910. Zelora would have been about ten, so likely she had died. No mention of either girl was found in the family obituaries.

In a last ditched effort to find Laura and Zelora, I checked Mount Hope Cemetery on Find a Grave. I didn’t find them, but I did find an infant daughter of Joseph and Emma’s named Lenna. She was born on January 5, 1910 and lived about six weeks. There is also an unnamed infant son with no photo of the stone. The notes state he is a son of Joseph, but it is not clear where that information came from. From the information provided, these two could have been preemie twins.

Emma’s sister Millie Taylor reportedly had the measles in the summer of 1909 in Afton.² Millie was working for a Mrs. Mason after she recovered from her illness.³ Another researcher had provided a death date for Millie so I followed up in the newspapers and confirmed it was the same person. She remained in the general area, married, and raised a substantial family. I will need to follow up with more research on her family (The Canadas).

• Jesse Cox + Mary Waugh > John Cox + Mary Parks > Louisa Cox + David Taylor > William F Taylor + Mary Lucy Pearson
  • Taylor
    • Oklahoma: Ottawa
  • Rennels
    • Oklahoma: Pittsburg
    • California: Stanislaus, Butte
    • Oregon: Marion
  • Rogers
    • Oklahoma: Pittsburg
    • California: Stanislaus
  • Peeples
    • California: Butte, San Francisco
    • South Dakota
  • Mayer
    • California: San Francisco
  • Linthicum
    • Iowa: Polk
  • Mitchell
    • Missouri: Cole
  • Canada
    • Oklahoma: Ottawa

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Error Resolution

The last available update via Ancestry ProTools: I have 5074 errors in the tree–510 possible duplicates, 4108 with no documents, 456 other errors. My Ancestry error resolutions this week included:

• A dangler not connected to anyone. She will be pruned.
• A husband of a wife of a cousin. He will be pruned.
• Husband of a distant cousin needs records. This took some effort. I did not have a first name for him and I did not have his mother-in-law’s name either. It took some process of elimination before I could identify and document this individual.

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Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,684 people
End of Week: 27,910 people
Change = +226 persons
Tasks for coming week:

• Continue research on Isaac Cox, “The Immigrant” and his wife Susannah Tomlinson.
• Review Coxes of Cox Creek
• Run newspaper search, especially for articles recounting local history
• Review the Cox package of information from Sweden
• Look for documents in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky

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1. https://www.newspapers.com/image/606543616/?match=2&clipping_id=200814310 ↩︎
2. https://www.newspapers.com/image/606541946/?match=1&terms=Millie%20Taylor ↩︎
3. https://www.newspapers.com/image/606542838/?match=1&terms=Millie%20Taylor ↩︎