Tag Archives: Cassidy

2025 Week 10

09 Sunday Mar 2025

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While researching Wanda Delaney (4th cousin 1x removed) I’ve come across a bit of a conundrum. A marriage record for her and Marion Sherman says they were married in 1950. Three days later, they are listed in the 1950 census with three children ages two to seven. Wanda died in 1967 and Marion remarried. His obituary clearly states that Wanda was his first wife. Her find-a-grave memorial states they were married in 1943 but no location is listed and a marriage record does not readily come up. I also cannot find the birth record for the oldest child where said child indicated she was born on her marriage record. Was Wanda and Marion married before the kids were born, had a falling out and got remarried in 1950? I have no idea. I guess I could expend a lot of energy on this one and try to find out. Or, I could move on and see if anything pops up at a later date. I’m leaning toward the latter since this is a distant collateral family. My musings have been documented on my tree so if anyone wants to pursue that search, I give you my blessing.

While a significant fraction of Martha and Jerome McCain’s family migrated from Pike County, Indiana to Cass County, Indiana to settle and raise their families, the family of Della McCain and Charles DeWeese landed in Martinsville, Indiana. Martinsville holds some personal interest since I have a sibling who lives there. I wonder if she has had interactions with any of these distant cousins of ours. We may never know.

I am about half done with Della’s family and should have that wrapped up this week. YAY. That will leave me with one more McCain sibling and my plan is to complete that family as well. Then I can start on the next child of Rebecca Cassidy and Isaac Arnold. Hmm? Someone posted on one of my Facebook groups the oath Benedict Arnold signed to the colonies before he sold us out. I wonder if this family is descended from him? I will not be falling head first down that rabbit hole.

Nothing remarkable to say about my DNA matches this week. Maybe someone will shake out of the tree next week.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5271 errors in the tree–390 possible duplicates, 4273 with no documents, 608 other errors.

  • The first one was the mother-in-law of a distant cousin. I no longer add the parents of someone who marries into my tree unless there are multiple siblings that do so. I have decided to remove her and her husband as they aren’t really a member of family. While I was at it, I reviewed the hints provided for their son.
  • The second was for a distant cousin who had no records attached. Reviewed some hints, cleaned up the record for his wife and added a child.
  • The third one was for the husband of a distant cousin who had no records. Unfortunately, the only record I have for his wife is from the Tanguay Collection which I cannot view using my US only subscription. I have tagged both of them as Canadian and will revisit when there is a free Canadian records weekend. Did I mention they were from the 1700s?

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.

344 years ago – birth of Louis DeMoss (7th ggf)
330 years ago – birth of Elizabeth Norton (8th ggm)
262 years ago – death of Elizabeth Bennett (7th ggm)
247 years ago – birth of Sarah Kerr (5th ggm)
226 years ago – birth of Nancy Squires (4th ggm)
222 years ago – birth of Henry Thompson (4th ggf)
201 years ago – death of Michael Keller (5th ggf)
192 years ago – birth of Isaac DeMoss (3rd ggf)
173 years ago – death of Therese Lefebre (6th ggm)
167 years ago – death of William Fielden (4th ggf)
143 years ago – death of Francoise Courtright (4th ggm)
80 years ago – death of Samuel Isaac DeMoss (ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,485 people
End of Week: 27,549 people
Change = +64 people – goal MET!!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and continue researching the Isaac and Rebecca Arnold descendants, specifically the Martha and Jerome McCain family this week.

2025 Week 9

02 Sunday Mar 2025

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I was pleasantly surprised this week when I discovered one of my first cousins had submitted an Ancestry DNA kit and she appeared as a match! Easy enough to assign her to the tree. I decided to sort all of my common ancestor matches by branch. I may choose every now and again to briefly work on one of those lines just to change things up. There were actually a couple of matches that were easily added to the tree since those lines were built out pretty well. I am still bit frustrated with the algorithm Ancestry uses to predetermine matches. It has at least a dozen matches that are attributed to my 4th great grandmother Elizabeth Lowe DeMoss that should be attached to her sister Catherine Elizabeth Lowe Ishmael. Also, why did they remove “5th cousin” on the relationship dropdown? I am forced to call these individuals a generic “distant relationship” and add notes.

I made some decent progress on the Arnold-Cassidy family. This week the focus was on their daughter Martha who married Jerome McCain. I’m about half finished researching their family. One of their grandsons, Maurice Delaney, served in World War II. He was in the US Navy, stationed in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. He sadly lost his life while trying to help another sailor who was caught in an undertow while swimming, as reported in The Pharos-Tribune on October 10, 1947. His remains were shipped home in 1947.

I looked a bit more into the tree score. I have a feeling mine will be stuck at 9.4 for a long time. Apparently I have 5232 possible errors, with 4235 of those being people with no documentation. Resolving three a week will be like paying down the national debt.

  • The first one was another floater which I decided to delete.
  • The second was for a distant cousin who had an approximate birth date but no documentation. That was easily fixed
  • The third one was a descendant of my DeMoss line, but for some reason I had not fully reviewed all the hints. I went back and completed my review of him and ended up adding several more distant cousins 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 which will occur during the week ahead.
318 years ago – Birth of Elizabeth Bennett (7th ggm)
227 years ago – Death of Eleanor Robinson (6th ggm)
224 years ago – Death of Joseph Coppock (5th ggf)
222 years ago – Birth of Joshua Frost (4th ggf)
207 years ago – Death of Reuben Staton (5th ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,340 people
End of Week: 27,485 people
Change = +145 people – goal MET!!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and continue researching the Isaac and Rebecca Arnold descendants, specifically the Martha and Jerome McCain family this week.

2025 Week 8

23 Sunday Feb 2025

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Mary Frances Arnold has been found! I did not locate her in the Pike County Newspaper, but I did find her in her sister Bertha’s obituary before locating her own obituary in the April 30, 1938 edition of the Princeton Daily Clarion (shown here). Mary Frances married Marcellus Chew and they had two children. Other researchers trees with Mary Frances in them make my head hurt. One such tree has documents with three different sets of parents. How does that even make sense?

The Chews are providing me with plenty of material this week. A second interesting puzzle was found in the 1940 census for Clarence and Audi Fowler Chew. Clarence was the son of Mary and Marcellus. In 1940, Clarence and Audi were in their early 50s. There was, presumably, a 7 month old girl named Carolyn Sue listed as their daughter. While not completely impossible, the probability of Carolyn Sue being the biological daughter of this couple is not very high. Checking the birth records for Pike County in late 1939, a birth certificate for Carolyn Sue Roberts born in Jefferson Township in September was found. Checking FindAGrave, Carolyn’s birth parents Floyd and Jewel lived long lives and Carolyn’s memorial was attached to theirs. Still not convinced Carolyn was a Chew, I flipped a couple pages back and found Floyd and Jewel at the bottom of Sheet 10A. Clarence and Audi were at the bottom of Sheet 10B. Carolyn was listed at the top of 11A. I then compared the household numbers…BINGO! The pages were recorded out of order! What a mess!

Tip of the Week: Leverage those FAN Clubs!

This week’s take away…check those FAN Clubs! You would be amazed how many questions can be answered by checking out those Friends/Family, Associates and Neighbors.

Sadly, I have discovered several individuals who died at a relatively young age for various reasons. One was an apparent suicide, one an overdose, and two were casualties of war. Sgt James Herschel Arnold (1916-1945) served in the US Army 152nd Infantry during World War II. His younger cousin, Pfc. Charles Ajay Arnold (1924-1945), was a member of the 132nd Infantry and fatally wounded assisting a wounded teammate to safety during battle. Both men lost their lives in the Philippines. We will be forever grateful for the sacrifice they made for our country.

I added two new DNA matches on my mother’s side of the family tree. One was fairly easy to add as his daughters are already tagged as matches in my tree. The other only required a small number of updates to add.

With the new updates Ancestry has added to their site, they now give trees a score. Mine is 9.4. They then give you hints to bring that score up. I was given three tasks to do.

  • One was for a floater which I decided to delete.
  • The second was for a distant cousin who did not have any dates associated with her. I found her marriage record which listed her approximate birth year to clear that one.
  • The last one had a census record dated before her assumed date of birth. Considering she was born around 1870, there was no official record of her birth. The birth year on her death certificate likely was a guess and her age was actually underestimated. I made an executive decision that she was born in 1869 not 1872.

We’ll see what my new score is tomorrow.

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.
217 years ago – Birth of Gesina Brake Sievers (4th ggm)
217 years ago – Birth of Eva Korz Keller (4 ggm)
196 years ago – Marriage of Isaac Lowe (5th ggf) and his second wife Sarah Beckner
186 years ago – Marriage of Suzanne Board (4th ggm) and Isaac Catt (4th ggf)
185 years ago – Birth of Amanda Newcomb Butler (3rd ggm)
161 years ago – Death of Sarah Ireland Reeve (4th ggm)
152 years ago – Death of Zeresh Puckett Coppock (3rd ggm)
115 years ago – Death of Joseph E. Cardinal (3rd ggf)
113 years ago – Death of Michael Kaiser (2nd ggf)
107 years ago – Birth of Samuel T. DeMoss Sr (gf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,220 people
End of Week: 27,340 people
Change = +120 people – goal MET!!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and continue researching the Isaac and Rebecca Arnold descendants. Barring any rabbit holes, it could take into early or mid April to complete.

2025 Week 7

16 Sunday Feb 2025

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I feel like I have made some progress this week, closing out the family of Martha Cassidy Rhodes on Monday. She has quite the extensive family that was and still seems to be mostly concentrated in Central Illinois and in Central California.

Moving on to Martha’s sibling Sarah, I cannot find any information on her after the 1850 Census. She was born about 1849 most likely in Perry County, Indiana. After that it would seem she has vaporized. I can only speculate at this time that she died as a young child between 1850 and 1860 in either Perry County or Pike County, Indiana…or somewhere inbetween. Her mother died in 1855 in Pike County and the remaining family was still there in 1860. Maybe something useful will surface as I flesh out her other siblings. There is at least one researcher on Ancestry who has attributed some facts to her that belong to her sister Rebecca Jane who is now the focus of my research. I’m fairly confident that they were two different persons as they were both listed in the 1850 Census.

Rebecca Jane married Isaac Arnold in Pike County, Indiana. I’m a bit remiss in that I don’t know a whole lot about this county which borders the one I grew up in. On initial review, it would seem the Arnolds, for the most part, remained in the Pike County area. As best as I can tell Rebecca and Isaac had seven children. Their oldest, Mary F, is already giving me heartburn.

There seems to be no trace of Mary after 1880, and other researchers seemingly are confusing her with her younger sister Martha. I usually try not to fall head first down rabbit holes, but I really want to try and find something about Mary Arnold. The Pike County Democrat is available on the Hoosier State Chronicles website and the pages are transcribed using OCR technology. The newspaper is a weekly publication and issues up to 1900 are available for viewing. Local community information is included on page 3 of the paper and I’m up to 1886 at the moment looking for any trace of the Arnolds. Hopefully I can find something about Mary.

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.
311 years ago – Marriage of Jeanne Duguay (7th ggm) and Jacques J. Cardinal (7th ggf)
273 years ago – Birth of James C Butler (6th ggf)
244 years ago – Death of Abraham Short Jr (7th ggf)
199 years ago – Marriage of Sarah Carroll (4th ggm) and Joshua Frost (4th ggf)
197 years ago – Death of Sybilla Braun (5th ggm)
187 years ago – Marriage of Francoise Courtright (4th ggm) and James D. Cardinal (4th ggf)
130 years ago – Birth of Magdelena Kaiser Keller (ggm)
107 years ago – Death of Mary Sievers Gravel (3rd ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,182 people
End of Week: 27,220 people
Change = +38 people – goal not met.
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and continue researching the Isaac Arnold descendants.

2025 Week 6

09 Sunday Feb 2025

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This week was a busy non-genealogy week, and I’m surprised I was able to find much time to work on the family tree. While I met my people goal, I was not as successful with the completion of the Jarboe family. I still have two of Sara Rhodes Jarboe’s children left to research. I’m confident that I can finish that task in the coming week. This will also wrap up the Rhodes family as well. Sara was the youngest daughter of Sylvester and Martha. I can then move on to the fourth known daughter of Luke and Martha Cox Cassidy…yet another Sarah.

For the most part it was a fairly unremarkable genealogy week. No DNA matches added to the tree. No murders, tragic accidents, or unusual deaths. Just very large farm families who made their roots in Central Illinois. Maybe the coming week will be more exciting!

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.
292 years ago – Death of Susanna Whitehead Bunnell (10th ggm)
257 years ago – Marriage of Hannah Sanderson (6th ggm) and William Johnson (6th ggf)
255 years ago – Birth of John Coppock (4th ggf)
214 years ago – Birth of Sarah Ireland Reeve (4th ggm)
200 years ago – Death of Margaretha Nikolaus (5th ggm)
191 years ago – Marriage of Eva Korz (4th ggm) and Michael Keller (4th ggf)
185 years ago – Birth of Apollonia Braun Keller (3rd ggm)
171 years ago – Death of Nicolaus Sievers (4th ggf)
152 years ago – Death of Francis W Gravel (4th ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,112 people
End of Week: 27,182 people
Change = +70 people – GOAL MET!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and finish up Sara Rhodes Jarboe’s family.

2025 Week 2

12 Sunday Jan 2025

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It was a rather uneventful research week for me.

On the DNA front, no new matches that I could easily insert into my tree were produced. There were tons of new matches with little to no helpful information. What strikes me funny is there were a couple people who tagged themselves “willing to help”. These individuals did not have a linked tree associated with their results. You know what would be helpful? BUILD. YOUR. TREE.

I did some place name clean up. It will take forever and a day to clean up my place name list in Family Tree Maker. Some time ago I tried to do a clean up. It was a rather discouraging task and I hardly made a dent. I focused this week on places in Perry County, Indiana since that is where the family I am working on is located. I think it is important to have a system established for place names and try to adhere to it for clarity. It can be quite confusing if the place is listed as “Perry, Indiana”. Is this Perry County or a Perry Township? How many counties in Indiana have a Perry Township? It could be as many as ninety-two!

Perry County, Indiana 1876
Indiana Historical Society

I’m continuing with my build out of the descendants of Gabriel and Nancy Cox through their granddaughter Martha Cassidy Rhodes. The thing that captured my attention this week is that a couple of the women in this line, sisters in fact, married late in their thirties and tried to have children. Unfortunately, the babies only lived a couple days. The cause of death for one of the infants was Bandl’s Ring. Not familiar with this term, I looked it up.

Bandl’s ring occurs when the uterus retracts during contractions, but the cervix doesn’t dilate quickly enough. The ring forms around the baby’s neck or shoulders, obstructing labor. 
–Google AI

How tragic! Family history research is definitely filled with learning opportunities on many different topics, including geography and medicine.

I still have three of Rhodes children to finish up before moving on. Hopefully, I can do that by the end of January.

Beginning of Week: 26,821 people
End of Week: 26,878 people
Change = +57 people – GOAL MET!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people

2025 Week 1

05 Sunday Jan 2025

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I do this every year. Resolve to blog regularly and then it falls to the wayside. Let’s see how long I stick with it this year. I’ll start with a summary of what I accomplished last year and move on from there.

I’m continuing to work on the ancestry of my paternal grandfather, Samuel Thomas DeMoss, Sr. I moved on from the DeMoss line to the Cox line in 2024. With the release of the Full Text Search functionality on FamilySearch last year, I have found some interesting details about the family of my 4th great grandparents William J. DeMoss and Elizabeth Lowe DeMoss. Divorce records and land deed records cleared up several details that were still out there for me. Their son Isaac (my 3rd great grandfather) has a ton of land deed transactions on the books in both Knox and Daviess Counties. Every month or so I will do a quick follow up search to see if anything new and exciting pops up.

I put the DeMoss line on pause with my 4th great grandparents. The documentation currently available for Fleming County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s doesn’t amount to much for William and Polly DeMoss. It doesn’t appear that he was too involved in local politics or was at odds with the law, but it’s not clear exactly who he descends from or where he was prior to Fleming County. At this time, the only thing that might solve this riddle is if we had Y DNA results from my male cousin or his male descendants.

I’m about a year into my research on the Cox line. I am cleaning up what I already had and filling in the branches downward. My 2nd great grandfather Frank Cox lived quite the life and I continue to find more documents on him every time I search. He’s now up to four (4) wives! I’m still looking for definitive proof that John S Cox (my 3rd great grandfather) is the son of Gabriel and Nancy Cox. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that needs to be sorted through before I can feel confident in this parental assignment.

I am currently building out the descendants of Martha Ann Cox who married Luke Cassidy. I have six confirmed DNA matches through Martha. Luke and Martha had six known children and resided in Perry County, Indiana. Some of their descendants still live in the general area in south central Indiana, while others have migrated to the Pacific Northwest. This week I am specifically working on the family of Martha Henrietta Cassidy Rhodes and discovering my “5th cousins”. She and Sylvester had six children that I am aware of. I’m currently working on daughter #2. I expect the Rhodes family will take me a month to complete, depending on how much basic information I can find.

There were two individuals that stood out to me this week. These are usually younger individuals that catch my attention. The first was a 30 year old male in the late 1940s who died of a stabbing to his femoral artery. According to the man who ultimately was convicted of manslaughter, the victim had tried to rob him and he was merely acting in self-defense. The other was a 23 year old woman who was driving to work at a hospital in Evansville. Apparently the roads were slick and she was trying to pass another vehicle on or near a bridge. She lost control and died instantly from her injuries.

Unrelated to my Cox research, I had one new DNA match that I was able to place in my tree down my Roderick branch.

Progress: Tree contains 26,821 people
Goal: Add 50 new people this week