2025 Week 34

24 Sunday Aug 2025

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Let’s talk Benjamins–Benjamin Coxes, that is. I have ten of them. Let’s sort them out.

  • Benjamin Cox #1 (1757-1829) – This Benjamin is the granddaddy of them all, literally. He’s married to Sarah Piety.
  • Benjamin F Cox #2 (1804-1887) – This Benjamin Cox is the son of Benjamin #1. He was married first to Elizabeth Shepherd, then to Lucinda Williams. He spent his adult years in Knox County, Indiana.
  • Benjamin Cox #3 (1771-?) – This Benjamin is the son of John Cox, older brother of Benjamin #1. He was born in Maryland. He would be a cousin to #2.
  • Benjamin Cox #4 (1841-?) – This Benjamin is a grandson of Benjamin #1, through his son John Calhoun Cox.
  • Benjamin F Cox #5 (1819-?) – This Benjamin Cox is another grandson of Benjamin #1, this one through Jonathan Piety Cox. He is the focus of this week’s research.
  • Benjamin F Cox #6 (1820-1845) – This Benjamin Cox is yet a third grandson of Benjamin #1, a son of Gabriel Cox.
  • Benjamin Ballard Cox #7 (1869-?) – This Benjamin Cox is the great-grandson of Benjamin #1. He is descended through Isaac Cox and William Benjamin Cox.
  • Benjamin Franklin Cox #8 (1852-1905) – This Benjamin Cox is another great-grandson of Benjamin #1, descended through Gabriel and his son Thomas P Cox. He married Minnie Martin and lived in the Knox County, Indiana area.
  • Benjamin Franklin Cox #9 (1862-?) – This Benjamin Cox is also a great-grandson of Benjamin #1, descended from Jonathan Piety Cox and Harvey Innes Cox.
  • Benjamin Cox #10 (?-?) – This Benjamin Cox is the son of Friend Cox. This would make him a cousin of Benjamin #1.

That’s quite a collection of Benjamins. Unfortunately, I’m having a bit of difficulty with Benjamin #5. He appears to have left home by 1850–he was thirty years old–and was not listed near the family in the census. Someone on FamilySearch mistook him for someone fifteen years his junior so that relationship needed to be severed in the tree. Kester reports in his family history of the Polks that #5 married Patsy Shepherd. I can’t seem to find a marriage record for them and without an actual citation documenting this fact, I’m not sure where exactly to start looking. Benjamin #2 did marry an Elizabeth Shepherd in 1834, but #5 would have been too young to be party to that union.

Ancestry is trying to convince me that #5 moved to Montgomery County in central Indiana, married Mary Srader and raised his family there. While not completely out of the question, I haven’t found any evidence indicating that this is #5. To the best of my knowledge, I do not have any DNA matches connecting this line to my own. Of course, this would be pushing the limits of autosomal DNA matches.

Before I commit to #5 having married Mary Srader, I want to try and find something to substantiate the familial tie. I should try to locate a will for Jonathan Piety Cox in Knox County in 1874. Since court records for this county are restricted on FamilySearch, I will need to explore this more during my next visit to the library in a few weeks. Montgomery County newspapers around 1880 aren’t readily available online, so I am unable to find a death notice.

Also of concern is the spelling of Benjamin with an “e” on the end. This is not consistent with the spelling of Benjamin in my Cox family. This may be of no concern or it could be a significant detail. The 1880 Census states that B.F. Cox’s parents were born in England. #5’s parents were born in Kentucky. The more I look at this, the more I am convinced that the Montgomery County man is not the one I’m searching for. I will table research for Benjamin until September 6th. If I cannot find anything, I will add this to my to-do list for my next trip to Salt Lake City.

For now I’ll move on to the next child of JP and Rachel…John Lemen Cox.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5170 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4235 with no documents, 559 other errors.

  • A grand daughter of Harvey Innes Cox with no sources. I haven’t gotten to this family yet, but I have now updated them.
  • A 7th cousin with no sources attached. Could not locate one that was definitively him.
  • A 5th cousin with no sources attached. He was named in his 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 the week ahead.
302 years ago – birth of Nicolas Cardinal (6th ggf)
263 years ago – death of Jean Creely (8th ggf)
261 years ago – birth of Jacob Pea Jr (6th ggf)
245 years ago – death of Francis Moore (8th ggf)
229 years ago – birth of Michael Keller Jr (4th ggf)
199 years ago – death of Jerome Creely (6th ggf)
192 years ago – death of Johannes Korz (5th ggf)
168 years ago – marriage of Mary Sievers (3rd ggm) and Henry Gravel (3rd ggf)
159 years ago – marriage of Mary Briscoe (3rd ggm) and Richard O. Bennett (3rd ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,557 people
End of Week: 27,307 people
Change = -250 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – John Lemen 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
  • September 6th – FS Full Text Search at library of Benjamin F Cox (1819-?)

2025 Week 33

17 Sunday Aug 2025

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This week I’ve been doing a little of this and a little of that. I took some time one evening to delete some floaters. When I finished, I think it said I deleted well over 100 people! Another night, I cleaned up a few place names. Housekeeping in my tree is an enormous task that will take years to fix.

Aside from those activities, I have started researching Jonathan Piety Cox and his family with Rachel Tigert. Marriage license documents for this couple indicate that Rachel was over twenty-one, however, Jonathan was not and there is written permission from his father for him to wed.

I was unable to find much of anything on Tigerts in the Shelby County area at that time. Broadening my search to all of Kentucky, I did find a will for John Tigert in Warren County, Kentucky in 1820. A Jonathan Cox served as witness to the document. What are the chances that Gabriel’s brother Jonathan (husband to Rachel) is the same man? There is a bit of distance between Shelby County and Warren County, but I don’t think this is too far of a reach. While Mr. Tigert’s will did not specifically name his daughters, he did state he had five of them. The image below appears to be the actual document and not the transcribed copy in the clerk’s book.

A little further digging, and I found an alternate spelling of “Tygart”. John and Isabel were possibly married in Washington County, Virginia in 1800. This would not be consistent with Rachel being their daughter and of the age of 21 in 1817 at the time of her marriage. I guess she could have lied to the clerk. Other documents I found with the spelling Tygart did identify John’s five daughters by name, one of which was Rachel. Unfortunately, her married name was Simpson, not Cox, and the deed stated she resided in Warren County. What I did notice in the Washington County marriage records was the marriage of John’s brother James in 1796. Is James possibly Rachel’s father? At any rate, this has been a bit of a rabbit hole for me. If there are any Tigert/Tygart researchers out there and have an answer or just a theory, I’d love it if you would share.

I did manage to work through the family of Jonathan and Rachel’s first born, James. James married Christiana Polk in Knox County. They were slightly distant cousins. He left her a widow with four young children around 1849 or so. She remarried a couple times. What I am finding is that a portion of Jonathan and Rachel’s descendants migrated away from Indiana and landed in southeast Kansas, not far from Joplin, Missouri. At any rate, I will be working on their second son next week, Benjamin F Cox.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5217 errors in the tree–380 possible duplicates, 4237 with no documents, 600 other errors.

  • The first error is a doozy. There is a child assigned to this individual who was born well after his death. After reviewing a few hints, it was determined that the errant child belonged to the wife’s second husband. The family was built out a bit and the error was corrected.
  • The second error presented is for the granddaughter of one of my cousins. The little girl is five. I don’t have any sources for her. The most obvious citation would be a newspaper announcement, however, the newspapers where they live are not available on Newspapers.com. This one will need to sit until she gets older.
  • The last error for this week is no records on the wife of a 6th cousin. Although not part of the error, I’d also like to find her maiden name. I have way too many women in my database with the last name “?”. Found several facts with documents to clear the error and update her last name.

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.
236 years ago – death of Nicolas Joseph Cardinal (6th ggf)
202 years ago – death of Jacob Richardson Jr (6th ggf)
200 years ago – marriage of John Cawood (4th ggf) and his 2nd wife Rachel English
169 years ago – marriage of Sarah Lewis (3rd ggm) and John W Fielden (3rd ggf)
132 years ago – birth of August Cardinal (ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,642 people
End of Week: 27,557 people
Change = -85 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Benjamin 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 32

10 Sunday Aug 2025

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This week I’m attempting to sort out Joseph Cox, the son of Benjamin and Sarah Piety Cox. Family histories that have been published1 2 3 suggest that Joseph was never married, however, details for him are scarce in these sources. The research of one of my DNA matches says otherwise. Let’s break this down a bit.

My “cousin” is descended from a Joseph Cox who married an Elizabeth Smith in 1833 in Jefferson County, Kentucky. According to her father’s will, written in 1847 and proven in 1860, she died prior to 1847. This means she would not be identified specifically in any of the census records.

It is not exactly known when Joseph died. The previously mentioned sources cited have his date of death as 1862. Jefferson County court records from April 1861 recorded the assigning of a guardian for Martha Cox and Elizabeth Cox, infant orphans of Joseph Cox, deceased, who are above the age of fourteen. 4 Joseph’s 1850 census listed both a Martha and an Elizabeth who would not yet have reached their majority in 1861.

What further complicates this is the presence of a marriage record in Jefferson County for Martha Cox to John Brown in 1863 that has a permission note signed by Joseph Cox. 5 This Martha apparently died in 1877 and Mr Brown then married her sister Lena. Did Joseph die in 1861 or after 1863? Are there two Martha Coxes of about the same age living in Jefferson County, Kentucky at the same time? Maybe the note was forged?

There is also a Joseph Cox who died in Jefferson County in 1866. His occupation was listed as a carpenter, whereas our Joseph Cox identified as a farmer in the census records. Which one is our Joseph Cox?

Regardless of when he died, my “cousin” has multiple Cox DNA matches as well as numerous matches with the Piety surname. Since this suggests that he is descended from both families, his line likely passes down through Benjamin Cox and Sarah Piety. The logical connection would be their son Joseph. For this reason, I believe that Joseph Cox was a widower with several children at the time of his death, whether it was in 1861 or 1866.

Wrapping up Joseph Cox, I do have DNA matches through more than one of his children which boosts my confidence level that he is a child of Benjamin and Sarah Piety Cox. There are even a few shared matches of fairly close Cox relatives of mine. With that, I will be moving on to his brother Jonathan Piety Cox.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5227 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4250 with no documents, 601 other errors.

  • James DeMoss, a potential 6th great-grand uncle is lacking citations. This is my questionable generation on my DeMoss line so I haven’t researched it fully. There was a Findagrave listing for him which I added. He has a daughter named Joanna. This might be an interesting clue, as my 4th-great grandfather also had a daughter named Joanna. Makes me think it might be a well-used family name.
  • Husband of a 6th cousin 1x removed. Found a marriage announcement to clear both of them.
  • A question of duplicates for two women with the same name. After digging in and adding some facts, they are a set of duplicates. Both records had the same father’s name with different mothers. The father had been widowed then married again. After sorting out the correct mother’s name, the error was cleared. I was able to clear two duplicates in the process.

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.
335 years ago – death of Daniel Quincy (9th ggf)
236 years ago – birth of Gabriel S Cox (4th ggf)
219 years ago – birth of Elizabeth Sarah Lowe (4th ggm)
210 years ago – death of James Ireland Sr (6th ggf)
208 years ago – marriage of Rebecca Pea (5th ggm) and George Catt Jr (5th ggf)
166 years ago – death of Jonathan McCullough (4th ggf)
163 years ago – death of Catherine Catt Cardinal (5th ggm)
130 years ago – death of June Bennett (2nd ggm) and Arely D Fielden (2nd ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,630 people
End of Week: 27,642 people
Change = +12 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Jonathan P. 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. Kester, John G., The Other Polks, volume 1, New Elm Press, 2019. ↩︎
  2. Polk, William Harrison, Polk Family and Kinsmen, Bradley & Gilbert Co, 1912, Ancestry.com. ↩︎
  3. Adams, Evelyn C, “The Coxes of Cox’s Creek, Kentucky“, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, volume III, 1981, p. 442, Ancestry.com. ↩︎
  4. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-N3Z2-51NH?view=fullText&keywords=Joseph%20Cox&lang=en&groupId= ↩︎
  5. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89SQ-H84P?view=index&cc=1804888&lang=en&groupId= ↩︎

2025 Week 31

03 Sunday Aug 2025

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I made it to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City! We have a group of about 20 ladies here researching for the week.

Day 1: The first task I’m tackling is looking at restricted access books from their catalog. The first is “DeMoss Family History” by Jo Ann Robertson Hornby written in 1998. She did an awesome job of citing her sources and even providing some document images. One detail that I definitely need to explore is that my line might be descended from William DeMoss and not Louis DeMoss. He is postulated to be a brother to Louis and lived in the vicinity of Louis in Maryland. He also moved to Orange County, Virginia around the same time Louis did. He had two children, one of which was a son named Thomas. This will be worth researching further.

Also worth exploring further are the purported children of Louis DeMoss (1715-1749) and Margaret Ramsey. Their children were listed in “Ancestors of John G Fee, Matilda H Fee, and John G Hanson” by Richard Sears, however, it does not appear to be sourced. They would have been the correct age to have parented my William DeMoss (1773-1815). Children: Peter, John, James, Louis, William, Mary and Elizabeth. Hornby only assigns one child, a daughter Christian, to this couple.

Day 2: Today I’m hanging out on the 3rd floor where all the US and Canada books are. First up is a book of marriage bond abstracts for Fleming Co, KY compiled by Gareth Mark. It does provide some useful information with respect to the Thomas DeMosses in Fleming County. A marriage bond for Thomas DeMoss and Mary Snediger (sic) dated 1823 named Lewis DeMoss as the father of this Thomas DeMoss. A separate bond from 1824 named a Thomas DeMoss as the bondsman for Elizabeth DeMoss who married Michael Hedrick. It’s possible that this is a second Thomas who lived in the county at the same time and is a brother to Elizabeth. This could also be the Thomas who married Rebecca Morrow and that I have DNA matches through.

A number of DeMosses born in the 1770s and residing in the Fleming County area in the early 1800s lead me to believe they were probably siblings: James, William, Mary, and Lewis. The marriage bond records for Mary to Thomas Lock in 1795 Mason County, Kentucky, indicated that her mother’s name was also Mary. The fact that her mother gave her permission would suggest her father was deceased. Part of Mason County became Fleming County in 1798. I’ll need to keep looking for the connection between this generation and the next.

Day 3: I think I have exhausted all sources for the DeMosses at this point in time. When I get home, I will need to review what is already in my manuscript for this line and make any updates based on what I have found. I did do a little research on my George Winkler line which will be the next after the Coxes. I found the divorce proceedings for his marriage to Katie Bean which barely lasted a couple months. Now I am back working on Susannah Cox Ballard’s extensive family.

James and Susannah’s son Bland, named for his grandfather, was fairly straight forward to research. He served as a federal circuit court judge under President Abraham Lincoln. Their son Josephus died as an infant. I also located a transcription of a family bible for the Ballard family which confirms the dates of their vitals. With that, I am finished with Susannah!

Moving on to Isaac Cox, the fifth child of Benjamin and Sarah Piety Cox. Isaac resided in Clark County, Indiana. His sons were river boat pilots on the Ohio River.

Day 4: Last day at the library. Today I am hanging out on the 3rd floor again and going thru the surname books. I seem to have found some good stuff on my Bunnell/Bonnell line. There are three books that chronicle the earliest parts of this family for me. “The Bunnell/Bonnell Family in America” by WIlliam R Austin happens to be on Internet Archive so I can refer back to it often at home.

There is useful information regarding the service of Benjamin Bunnell in the Revolutionary War that might be found in “A Village at War, Chatham, NJ and the American Revolution” by Donald Wallace White. I’ll need to check that out. I might be able to get another Patriot or two out of it. Digging further I was able to find the service source and proof of residency for Benjamin Bunnell so I will be preparing that DAR supplemental application when I get home. I’ve only been wanting to submit that one since 2019!

Back to my research on the Cox family. I have cleaned up Isaac Cox who resided in Jeffersonville, Indiana and am moving on to Joseph Cox, born ca 1790. According to most previously published family histories, he did not marry. However, I have several DNA matches that might say otherwise. Once I sort this out next week, I will elaborate.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5243 errors in the tree–378 possible duplicates, 4261 with no documents, 604 other errors.

  • John Watson is a floater. I have deleted him.
  • A stepson of husband of wife of distant cousin. He is outside of my lines so I deleted him too.
  • A 6th cousin 1x removed has no documentation. I found his marriage record.

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.
375 years ago – birth of Susanna Whitehead (10th ggm)
360 years ago – birth of Louise Arrivee (8th ggm)
346 years ago – birth of Abigail Fowle (8th ggm)
346 years ago – death of Simon Cardinal (9th ggf)
285 years ago – marriage of Elizabeth Quincy (7th ggm) and Rev William Smith (7th ggf)
216 years ago – Elihu Puckett (4th ggf)
69 years ago – marriage of August Cardinal (ggf) to his second wife Jessie Shackelford

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,609 people
End of Week: 27,630 people
Change = +21 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Joseph Cox who may have married Elizabeth Smith
  • 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 30

27 Sunday Jul 2025

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I didn’t manage to do a lot of research this week. I was able to finish cleaning up the children of Andrew Jackson Ballard which I started last week. The family was quite prominent, with the children attending Yale, Vassar, and Cornell Universities. Charles and Samuel founded Ballard & Ballard Company, the flour mills which ultimately was sold to Pillsbury in the 1950s. Samuel served as lieutenant governor from 1919-1923. The youngest of A.J.’s children was Rogers Clark Ballard. He was a geological engineer, shrewd business man and held a significant interest in family history. He served as president of the Filson Historical Society for a number of years, a private organization whose mission is to preserve the history of Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley.

Barnett Ballard, the fourth son of James and Susannah, was accepted to the West Point Academy in 1833. A snippet of his letter accepting his appointment can be seen below.1 He died at age 17 while in service a year later.2

I am currently working on Bland Ballard, James and Susannah’s fifth son. He was appointed as a Federal Judge in Kentucky by Abraham Lincoln. I hope to have more on him and his family this week.

I should be able to get a lot of research completed in the coming week. It likely will not be concentrated on one particular family as I will be spending several days at the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. There are several books with copyright restrictions that I want to get eyes on while I am there. I am super excited as this is my first visit to the family history mecca! I hope to have lots to report back on next week.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5251 errors in the tree–382 possible duplicates, 4264 with no documents, 605 other errors.

  • A 2nd cousin 2x removed that had a residence entry before she was born. This sometimes happened in my tree with the 1940 census when the census taker listed “same house” for location in 1935 on small children. I deleted the timeline entry and all is good.
  • A floater. This is likely someone whose connection to my tree was deleted because they were a distant collateral family. He has been deleted.
  • A 3rd cousin 1x removed that had two errors attached! Since she had no records or data listed, the program thought she was a duplicate with a sister. That was dismissed. The other error was no sources. It took quite a while to find a source for her. Her four siblings were easy to document, but this one, not so much. I finally found a clue in the marriage announcement for one of her sisters! I was then able to track down a marriage record which held a birthdate as well. Whew!

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.
240 years ago – marriage of Therese Lefebre (6th ggm) and Jerome Creely (6th ggf)
163 years ago – marriage of Rachel Frost (3rd ggm) and Oliver McCullough (3rd ggf)
144 years ago – marriage of Sarah Winkler (2nd ggm) and Samuel T DeMoss (2nd ggf)
61 years ago – death of August Cardinal (ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,596 people
End of Week: 27,609 people
Change = +13 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Susannah Cox + James Ballard, specifically son Bland Ballard
  • 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
  • Review History of Mariah Creek Christian Church
  • Review bio of James Ballard, husband of Susannah Cox

  1. U.S. Military Academy Cadet Application Papers, 1805-1866, file 1832/086, Ancestry.com. ↩︎
  2. Register of Westpoint Cadets, 1803-1866, Ancestry.com. ↩︎

2025 Week 29

20 Sunday Jul 2025

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This week I have finished updating the children of William Harrison Ballard. I was able to fill in a lot of details for his seven children. Another researcher had a death date for Mary Ballard Jordan, however, I could not find any documentation to substantiate the fact. All I can be sure of is that it was after 1900 somewhere in Texas. Since her husband remarried in 1909, she likely died, but I cannot be certain.

There also was a bit of confusion with his son Andrew Jackson Ballard in the 1870 census. He was listed as Henry instead of Andrew which threw things off for a bit. I am now finished with this William Ballard and can move on to his brother Andrew.

While the Ballards and, to a lesser degree the Coxes, were prominent figures in the history of Kentucky, Andrew Jackson Ballard and his sons likely were the most prominent. AJ, a Louisville lawyer, served in the state legislature and was appointed by President Lincoln as the Clerk of the US District and Circuit Courts in Kentucky. His sons were prominent business men, having founded Ballard and Ballard Company in the 1880s, purportedly the largest flour mill in the world at one time.

Fun Fact!
In the 1930s, Kentucky baker Lively B Willoughby developed and patented an early version of canned biscuits. He partnered with Ballard & Ballard Company to put it in production. Ballard & Ballard was bought by Pillsbury in 1952 and they further developed the concept into the spiraled cardboard tube available today. In fact, my husband used those very canned biscuits yesterday when he made breakfast yesterday!

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5284 errors in the tree–386 possible duplicates, 4289 with no documents, 609 other errors. These numbers were reported prior to my clean up efforts this week. I am anxious to see how things fared when the new numbers are posted for the upcoming week.

  • Johannes Braun, my 3rd great-grand uncle, has no sources attached. Unfortunately, I do not currently have the Worldwide subscription for Ancestry so I cannot link any sources for Johannes. I do not know if he migrated to the United States like his nephew Mathias. I will need to revisit this one at a later date.
  • A 3rd cousin 3x removed was entered twice, once under her maiden name and once under her married name. Simple merge to fix.
  • Joanna Bonnell, a 6th great-grandaunt, has no sources attached. I was able to find information in a genealogy of the Passaic Valley of New Jersey.

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.
340 years ago – birth of Jacques Cardinal (8th ggf)
336 years ago – birth of John Quincy (8th ggf)
317 years ago – death of Anna Shepard Quincy (9th ggm)
227 years ago – marriage of Mary Hopkins (5th ggm) and Peter Carral (5th ggf)
172 years ago – death of Henry Thompson (4th ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,866 people
End of Week: 27,596 people
Change = -270 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Susannah Cox + James Ballard, specifically son Andrew Jackson Ballard
  • 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
  • Review History of Mariah Creek Christian Church
  • Review bio of James Ballard, husband of Susannah Cox

2025 Week 28

13 Sunday Jul 2025

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No, that’s not a typo. I took a week off and headed north to Alaska with the fam. Now it’s time to get back to work.

I’ve made some decent progress this week on my Ballards. I cleaned up Perlina Ballard Simpson Collings’ family information a bit, filling in some of the blanks. There was some interesting family dynamics going on there, especially after she married the second time. In 1850, the four older children from her first marriage were in her household, but the youngest who was twelve was living with Grandma Ballard. Perlina’s oldest two boys both died in their twenties. Joseph actually had a will and it gave the appearance that there was no love lost between the first family and the stepfather. Joseph’s will left everything to his full-blooded sisters and his mother and specifically stated that she was to have control of whatever he gave her, not her husband. Nothing was left to the half-siblings who were still minors in their own right.

The next two children of James and Susannah were Thomas and Sarah. Neither of them married. Little is known about Sarah’s death other than she was still a young woman. Thomas was listed as the head of household in 1850 with several family members residing with him, including his mother and Perlina’s youngest daughter Emma. Thomas died in his early 40s from a “painful illness”1. I haven’t located a will yet, although two of his brothers were tasked with managing his estate through probate.

I’m now working on son #3 William Harrison Ballard. He was actually married twice. His first marriage was short and resulted in no children. His second marriage to Mary McQuiddy was more fruitful with at least eight children born. As I am working through those individuals, I’m a bit frustrated with their son Barnett. Seems he married in 1886 and then he took off to roam the Great Plains leaving his wife behind. There were no children and she never remarried. It’s not clear if they ever divorced–at one time divorces in Kentucky required approval from the state legislature, and both identified as widowed in multiple census records. One newspaper article mentioned that he left for health reasons and he ultimately ended up in New Mexico and West Texas where it is much drier. For a period of time, he did serve as postmaster for one small town.

I also did some cleanup on my tree which explains why I had a decrease in people this week. When I am adding family members from an obituary, it is common for the wife to be listed without her maiden name. I have a bad habit of adding them with “?” as the last name. As you can imagine, I have a lot of women with the last name “?”. I decided to start working through this list and finding their last names. Mixed in with the wives of cousins are the mothers-in-law of cousins. These were added before I made the decision not to include the in-laws in my tree and they haven’t yet been cleaned up. So far I have sorted through the first names starting with “A” and I now only have 5 that I could not assign a last name. I’ve deleted about 150 people. I’ve also run a “floaters” report. It’s 18 pages long. I will be busy in my clean up efforts in the coming weeks.

And for good measure…don’t forget to back up your trees! If you have made a lot of changes, you may also want to go through a compacting process if your software has that feature. It’s been a while since I compacted my tree and it compacted more than 4%!

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5281 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4299 with no documents, 606 other errors.

  • The first is the wife of a 6th cousin. She recently passed so I was able to add a few references for her.
  • A 4th cousin 2x removed that is a DNA match with no citations. Unfortunately not much could be found about this young girl.
  • A 2nd cousin 5x removed with no citations. I was able to find a couple of references for her.

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.
405 years ago – death of Francoise Deschallais (11th ggm)
258 years ago – death of Colonel John Quincy (8th ggf)
237 years ago – birth of James Ireland (6th ggf)
201 years ago – death of James Shields (6th ggf)
174 years ago – marriage of Henry Thompson (4th ggf) and his 2nd wife Rebecca Beck
167 years ago – birth of Rebecca Coppock Mattox (2nd ggm)
161 years ago – death of Elizabeth Lowe DeMoss (4th ggm)
108 years ago – marriage of Zeda Mattox (ggm) and Frank Fielden (ggf)
60 years ago – death of Blanche Cox DeMoss Robertson (ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 28,019 people
End of Week: 27,866 people
Change = -153 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Susannah Cox + James Ballard, specifically son William Harrison Ballard
  • 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
  • Review History of Mariah Creek Christian Church
  • Review bio of James Ballard, husband of Susannah Cox
  1. Obituary, The Weekly Shelby News, 1 Dec 1852, page 3, column 5, newspapers.com. ↩︎

2025 Week 26

29 Sunday Jun 2025

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Not a lot of research was completed this week as real life got in the way as it sometimes does. I did have a few new DNA matches that I tagged for later. There was one for a 4th cousin that I had most of the line documented already so I finished connecting her and expanding out her family a bit.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5320 errors in the tree–402 possible duplicates, 4312 with no documents, 606 other errors. There was a significant increase in the number of possible duplicates so I also ran a duplicate report in Family Tree Maker. There were 25 true duplicates that I could find. There were several sets of twins with similar names that I ruled out as duplicates.

  • A 5th cousin without any references.
  • A 2nd cousin 4x removed listed with a possible duplication error. It was not an error. It was confusing her with a younger sister who had a similar name.
  • A 2nd cousin 5x removed without any references. Luckily she was listed in the 1850 census.

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.
238 years ago – marriage of Lydia Smith (6th ggm) and James Ireland Sr (6th ggf)
163 years ago – death of Sarah Harmon Boord (6th ggm)
149 years ago – marriage of Francis Cox (2nd ggf) and his 1st wife Eliza Hollingsworth
136 years ago – birth of Samuel Isaac DeMoss (ggf)
129 years ago – death of Elizabeth Moyer (3rd ggm)
82 years ago – birth of Samuel T. DeMoss Jr (happy heavenly birthday Dad!)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 28,039 people
End of Week: 28,019 people
Change = -20 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Susannah Cox + James Ballard, specifically daughter Perlina
  • 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
  • Review History of Mariah Creek Christian Church
  • Review bio of James Ballard, husband of Susannah Cox

2025 Week 25

22 Sunday Jun 2025

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This week I had a DNA match appear through John Squires and Mary Gott. I was a bit excited since I don’t have many DNA matches for this set of great-grandparents. The connecting relative was a Martha Mount. Oddly enough, there were two Martha Mounts who were about the same age and lived in neighboring counties. They married different men and, as it turned out, my Martha Mount was not the same Martha Mount belonging to my match. They very well could have been cousins to each other, but the other Martha was not my cousin since Alfred Mount married into my line. So I dug a bit further and looked at our common matches. It would seem this match shares DNA with cousins along my Fielden and Mattox lines. I’ll need to examine her relationship to me closer when I get to those lines.

This week’s research focus was on Benjamin C Ballard, second child and oldest son of James and Susanna Cox Ballard. He married in Shelby County, Kentucky in 1829 and started his family there. In the mid 1830s, they migrated to Greene County, Indiana and settled near Worthington. He had five children with his first wife who died in 1839 at the age of 30. He remarried and added two more children to his family before his death in 1844. He was fairly active in the community. There were numerous references to him in probate records of others, serving as administrator and even guardian in an instance or two. The family continued to maintain a prominent standing in the community after his death. Details regarding the family could be found in biographies of Catherine Stalcup Ballard and John J Ballard in Biographical Memoirs of Greene County, Indiana published in 1908. The book can be found on Google Books for free.

The next Ballard child is Perlina Ballard. Perlina married her first cousin Benjamin Simpson. It should be a quick review of my previous research. Hopefully I can also put some time in on child #4 Thomas next week as well.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5288 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4308 with no documents, 604 other errors.

  • Wife of a distant cousin was missing sources. I updated both her and her husband.
  • A 6th cousin with no sources which was updated.
  • Pryor Smallwood, a 6th great-granduncle with no sources attached. An extensive genealogy of the Smallwood Family in Maryland Genealogies provided the needed information on this uncle. This reference will be useful when I get to researching the Smallwood family.

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.
259 years ago – marriage of Mary Saunders (6th ggm) and John McCullough (6th ggf)
192 years ago – death of Stewart Cunningham (5th ggf)
100 years ago – birth of Dorothy Cardinal Keller – Happy Birthday Grandma!
76 years ago – death of Ethel Thompson Cardinal (ggm)
67 years ago – marriage of Edeine Fielden DeMoss (gm) and John Heath her 2nd husband
58 years ago – marriage of Phyllis Keller and Samuel DeMoss Jr (my parents!)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,990 people
End of Week: 28,039 people
Change = +49 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Susannah Cox + James Ballard
  • 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
  • Review History of Mariah Creek Christian Church
  • Review bio of James Ballard, husband of Susannah Cox

2025 Week 24

16 Monday Jun 2025

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Not much exciting this week research-wise. I started on Susannah Cox Ballard and her husband James Ballard. I was able to research their first born, Elizabeth Ballard who married Robert Gregory. I did explore their three children a bit. Two married and moved to the Kansas City area. William, the second son, was mayor for a short time and later operated a wholesale grocery store in that town. The third remained married for a number of years, but divorced and lived a long life in Memphis. I would have enjoyed exploring this family further, however, it is not in the scope of this project. There is a fair amount of information in The Other Polks and I may revisit these cousins at a later date. I must move on to Elizabeth’s brother Benjamin.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5291 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4311 with no documents, 604 other errors.

  • A 3rd cousin with no records attached. Found a record to clear the error.
  • A mother-in-law of a distant cousin with no records attached. She was deleted.
  • The spouse of a 1st cousin 2x removed with no records attached. Found several records to clear 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.
282 years ago – death of Louis DeMoss (7th ggf)
270 years ago – birth of John McCullough (5th ggf)
166 years ago – death of Eva Korz Keller (4th ggm)
164 years ago – birth of James S Cardinal (2nd ggf)
158 years ago – marriage of Amanda Newcomb (3rd ggm) and Eli T. Butler (3rd ggf)
144 years ago – birth of Junie Bennett Fielden (2nd ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,977 people
End of Week: 27,990 people
Change = +13 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on Susannah Cox + James Ballard
  • 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
  • Review History of Mariah Creek Christian Church
  • Review bio of James Ballard, husband of Susannah Cox