Category Archives: UPDATES

UPDATE: Cox and McCullough

25 Sunday Feb 2024

Posted by in Genealogy, Newspapers, UPDATES

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I’ve set aside my DeMoss research and am moving on to my Cox ancestors. I don’t know why but my Cox ancestors are some of my favorites. Maybe it is because of the snippets about great-grandma Blanche I’ve been told by my aunt over the years…how she stepped in on behalf of my uncle during my grandmother’s difficult second marriage. Maybe because Blanche’s grandfather died in the Civil War. Maybe because of the well-documented stories that already exist about the Cox family members who came before. If nothing else, this is not a boring bunch of skeletons in my closet!

So, I’m working on the Cox line and the first family unit to clean up for the manuscript is that of my 2nd-great grandfather Frank Cox. I’ve written about Frank before, exposing some details that other researchers in the family hadn’t yet discovered. The one detail that really bugged me that I didn’t have was the date that Frank married Jennie Hollingsworth. I had searched the Knox County marriage records forward and backward with no luck. This time, I decided to try the newspaper. I simply love the fact that the Knox County library has digitized so many of the old papers and I can access them from 2000 miles away! I plugged in my search criteria and voila! They were married on July 4, 1876 in LAWRENCEVILLE! That would explain why I could not find them in the Knox County marriage database. For those of you that don’t know, back in the day, Lawrence Co, IL was Knox County’s very own Gretna Green. Yay! Now I have another source to confirm they did get married and now we have a date.

Of course, I don’t work on just a single person at one time. I’m also unraveling the generation before and after at the same time. This was especially true today with Frank Cox’s family. In building the timeline for this family, it seems they kept moving back and forth between Cape Girardeau County, Missouri and Knox County, Indiana…and so did the McCullough family. I wrote about Arabelle’s parents, Oliver and Rachel, way back in 2014. I basically lost track of them after the 1880 census. Re-examining Arabelle’s marriage license from Cape Girardeau, she was under 18 and it has a notation that her father OP McCullough gave written permission for her to marry. This means Oliver was alive in 1888. Then, as I was scouring the land and court records for Frank down there, I came across a land transaction listing Rachel McCullough and Francis M Cox as grantors in 1891. Since Frank was listed on the transaction instead of Oliver, either Oliver and Rachel had divorced or Oliver was deceased. At this point in time, I’m leaning toward deceased. I haven’t found any additional information on Rachel.

So, to sum up my new findings…

  • Frank married Jennie Hollingsworth in Lawrenceville, IL on July 4, 1876
  • Oliver McCullough likely died sometime between 1888 and 1891, in either Missouri or Indiana
  • Rachel McCullough died sometime after 1891, probably in Missouri

Re-evaluation

27 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Miscellaneous, UPDATES

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So, it has been almost a month since I posted my last biographical sketch. When I started this project, I didn’t realize the amount of time it would require to do a separate person each and every day. Almost all of the individuals are not from my direct line, but are distant cousins several times removed. In most cases, I had not put much effort into those cousins up to this point in my research. It was taking me two to three hours each night and left little time for other things in my life.

That said, I don’t want to stop this project completely. My go-forward plan is to reduce the frequency to one sketch per week. This should allow me time to work on other parts of my tree during the week as well.

The criteria will be the same. The subject’s birthday must fall in the current week and they must not be alive. Ideally, they should have passed at least fifty years ago. The person should be a blood relative of mine. Since the possible pool for each sketch has increased seven-fold, there should not ever be a need to use a spouse or an in-law.

So here we go…Phase II of my biographical sketch project!

Updates

25 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in Genealogy, UPDATES

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For those who aren’t familiar with Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker, they will provide you with “hints” from their vast collection of databases to assist you in finding your ancestors.  As more information is integrated into their collection, new hints are generated for everyone in your database, not just those you are currently working on.

Boston Area

This morning I was blessed with some additional information for my Sarah Ireland ancestors.  For starters, more information was uncovered for Sarah’s great-grandparents, William and Elizabeth Quincy Smith.

  • Reverend William Smith was born on January 29, 1706 in Charlestown, Massachusetts.  He married Elizabeth Quincy on August 3, 1740 in Weymouth, Massachusetts.  He passed away on September 17, 1783 in Weymouth at the age of 77.
  • Elizabeth Quincy Smith was born in 1721 in Braintree, Massachusetts to Colonel John Quincy and Elizabeth Norton Quincy. She preceded her husband in death on October 1, 1775 in Weymouth at the age of 54.

Elizabeth’s line was extended several generations, going back to the Plymouth Colony.  Once I make an initial pass through my initial tree, extensively studying both the Plymouth Colony and the New Haven (CT) settlement will be near the top of my list of things to do.

  • Elizabeth’s father, Colonel John Quincy, was born July 21, 1689 in Boston to Daniel and Anna Shepard Quincy.  He married Elizabeth Norton in 1715 in Massachusetts and died at the age of 78 on July 13, 1767.  A location wasn’t provided.
  • Elizabeth Norton Quincy was born to Reverend John Norton and Mary Mason Norton on March 15, 1695 in Hingham, Massachusetts.  She died in 1769 at the age of 74.
  • Daniel Quincy was born Boston on February 7, 1650.  He married Anna Shepard on November 9, 1682 and died on August 10, 1690.
  • Anna Shepard Quincy was born in 1663 in Massachusetts.  No information has been collected on her death at this time.
  • Reverend John Norton was born in 1651 in Massachusetts.  He married Mary Mason on November 29, 1678 and died on October 3, 1716.  He was the second minister of Hingham and is reportedly buried in the Tomb of the Three Ministers in Hingham.
  • Very little is known about Mary Mason.  She was born in 1651 and died in 1740.

On the other side of Sarah Ireland’s family, additional information was discovered regarding her 2nd-great-grandparents, Nathaniel and Mary Bunnell.  Nathaniel married Mary Searing in 1690.  She was born in 1672 in New Jersey.  Also unearthed was that Nathaniel’s mother, Susanna Whitehead Bunnell, died on February 13, 1733 in Elizabeth, NJ.

Updated related Pedigree Charts:  Sarah Ireland, Captain Nathaniel Bonnell, Colonel John Quincy and Elizabeth Norton.