Tag Archives: Cox

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

UPDATE: Cox and McCullough

25 Sunday Feb 2024

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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

Naomi Cox

26 Tuesday May 2020

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On May 26, 1865, a daughter named Naomi was born to John L. Cox and Naomi Steen of Washington Township in Knox County, Indiana. Naomi had four older brothers and three half-brothers from her father’s first marriage. A couple years later her parents would give her a little sister named Caroline.

Naomi attended school as a girl and lived on the family farm until her marriage to Samuel Kitts on September 7, 1904. She took on the role of farmer’s wife as she and Samuel settled into their life together. They did not have any children of their own, but did have several nieces and nephews.

In October 1947, Naomi suffered a fall which broke her hip. She did not fully recover from the injury. She died eight months later on June 16, 1948 at Good Samaritan Hospital from heart failure at the age of eighty-three.

Naomi Cox was my second cousin, 4x removed on my dad’s side.

REFERENCES

  • United States Census, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940
  • Indiana Marriage Index
  • Indiana Death Certificates
  • Vincennes Sun-Commercial, October 14, 1947

Mura Mae Cox

10 Sunday May 2020

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Mura May Cox

On May 10, 1897 in Vigo Township, Knox County, Indiana, Mura Mae Cox was born to Emily Arabelle McCullough and Frank Cox.  She was the third of five siblings that lived to adulthood–Raymond and Blanche were older, and Anna and Jessie were younger.  Her father supported the family through farming.

Soon after the birth of Jessie in 1904, the family moved to Welch Township in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri.  Frank remarried in 1907 to Mollie Bugg Givens Schwepker.  It is unclear what Arabelle’s fate was between 1904 and 1907.  The Deed Record Index for the land purchase in Welch Township indicated that both Frank and Arabelle were listed in the transfer.  That would lend credence that she possibly perished in Missouri.

With the addition of a step-mother, the 1910 Census actually has the five siblings rather scattered.  Raymond and Mura were living at home with their father.  Blanche worked as a servant for a private family.  Anna and Jessie could be found back in Knox County living with different families.  The exact circumstances surrounding this situation are unknown.  Anna was listed as a ward of Mr. and Mrs Bode Goodman in Bicknell.  Ann and Charles Rogers were raising Jessie in Westphalia.  Ann was Frank’s sister and Jessie’s aunt.

Mura Mae saw both of her older siblings marry in 1911.  In January 1915, her father died of tuberculosis in Vincennes.  It’s possible they were back in Indiana visiting family over the holidays.  Since her father did not have a will, the widow was placed in charge of the estate and Mura Mae basically was homeless.  She was found in 1920 to be living with her father’s cousin Nathan Killion and his wife Cordelia in Daviess County, Indiana.  In November 1920, Mura Mae married Jesse Thomson and they moved to Indianapolis.

Mura and Jesse had three children: Colleen, Shirley and Ramon.  In 1930, they were living on Sugar Grove Avenue, just a few miles from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  The house they lived in then may still be there today.  It is possible it was a duplex at the time.  Jesse supported the family as a sales manager for a hardware store.  By 1940, he had risen up to the rank of territorial manager.  They had moved to the Crown Hill part of Indianapolis which not far from the present day Children’s Museum.

Over the years, their children grew up and started families of their own while Mura and Jesse continued to live in Indiana’s capital.  Despite the lack of a cohesive childhood together, pictures of Mura and her brother and sisters would indicate they remained close throughout the years.  In 1965, her sister Blanche died of colon cancer.  Raymond followed in 1968.  On December 22, 1975 at the age of 78, Mura was a victim of breast cancer.

Mura Mae Cox

Mura Mae was my 2nd great aunt on my dad’s side.

REFERENCES

  • United States Census – 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940
  • Indiana Death Certificates
  • Indiana Marriage Certificates
  • Find a Grave website
  • Deed Records 1805-1910, Cape Girardeau County MO
  • Missouri Marriage Records
  • Missouri Wills and Probate Records

Related Pages

John L. Cox

04 Monday May 2020

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John L Cox was the first of at least five children born to Jonathan Piety Cox and Rachel Lemen Tigert.  He was born on May 4, 1820 in Knox County, Indiana.  There are some variations on his middle name with some sources listing it as Lemen, a family name from his mother’s side, and others referring to him as Lemuel.  His siblings included Mary J, Harvey Innes, Alexander and Harriet.  Mary was the mother of Henrietta Polk and Alexander was the father of Rachel Cox Rafferty, both women who were recently the subject of biographies on this blog.

John lived his entire life in Knox County, in the area between Bruceville and Bicknell.  He actually amassed a respectable-sized farm which in 1880 totaled more than 300 acres.  John was married twice.  His first marriage began on October 3, 1849 to Mary Robinson.  She gave him three sons, John Crittenden and twins Harmon and Jonathan.  She died at the age of 23 in 1852.

John L Cox Washington Twp

A couple years passed and John married Naomi Steen on September 21, 1854.  Together, John and Naomi added at least six children to their family, all reaching adulthood and all but one living into their late sixties or beyond.  The children in order of birth: Enoch S, James L, Richard T, Logan, Naomi and Caroline.

All of the family was well-known and respected in the community.  Logan, after serving in the military, went to medical school.  Unfortunately, just week’s shy of graduating, he was stricken with a debilitating ailment which slowly killed him for over a year.  He died in 1894 at the age of 32.  John C, the oldest of the nine siblings, was elected County Sheriff in 1898.  Harmon, one of the twins, died at the age of 46.  He was a business man in Daviess County.

After fifty-six years of marriage at the age of 80, John Lemuel Cox passed away at the family home from jaundice.  He is buried in the Asbury Chapel Cemetery located in Ragsdale, Indiana, as are many of his family.

 

John L Cox is my 1st cousin 5x removed on my dad’s side.

REFERENCES

  • United States Census, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900
  • Indiana Death Certifcates
  • Indiana Marriage Index
  • United States Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1880
  • The Indianapolis Journal, November 14, 1900 via Newspapers.com
  • The Vincennes Commercial, July 2, 1898 & August 14, 1894

Rachel Cox

28 Tuesday Apr 2020

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On April 28, 1860, Rachel Cox was born in Widner Township, Knox County, Indiana to Alexander Cox and Angeline Sartor.  She was the third child born to this family of at least seven children.  Of her six siblings, two were sisters (Mara Alice and Flora) and four were brothers (Elliott, John, Charles, and Lew).  Alex supported the family through farming until the early 1880s when they packed the house and moved to Elm Grove, Kansas.  It is in Elm Grove where Rachel met Benjamin Franklin Rafferty.  He worked on a neighboring farm and on July 4, 1886, he married Rachel.  In January 1887, Rachel’s mother Angeline died and was buried in Kansas.  Her father died of Bright’s disease in 1905 at his home in Welch, Indian Territory.

Rachel and Frank returned to Indiana and northern Knox County not long after they were married.  Their daughter Roxie Ruth was born in 1888 and their son Charles Russell followed in 1895.  Frank was working as a day laborer in 1900 living outside of Bicknell, Indiana.  The family then moved to Indianapolis prior to 1905.  Not long after, on Jun 16, 1909, Rachel died of breast cancer.

Rachel Cox

Rachel Cox was my 2nd cousin 4x removed on my dad’s side.

REFERENCES

  • United States Census, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900
  • Kansas State Census, 1885
  • Indiana Death Certificates
  • Find a Grave website
  • Kansas County Marriage Records
  • Vincennes Commercial, December 12, 1905

Henrietta Polk

23 Thursday Apr 2020

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On April 23, 1848, Henrietta Polk was the third child born to Isaac Polk and Mary Jane Cox.  She was preceded by Jeannette and Benjamin, and followed by six more siblings–Charles, Rachel, Alice, Harriet, Florence and Jonathan.  The family resided in the Oak Station (Widner Township) area of Knox County, Indiana, where her father apparently had a sizable farm.  When Henrietta was eleven, her mother died, leaving Isaac with many mouths to feed.  Two years later, Isaac married Martha Couchman Ferguson, the widow of John Ferguson.  They added three more daughters to the family–Delilah, Hester and Eva for a total of twelve children born to Isaac.

Henrietta attended school as a youngster and lived on her father’s farm well into her twenties.  On November 8, 1879, she married single father Ellis Hill.  Ellis had been married and widowed twice previously–first to Lavinia Risley and then to Henrietta’s older sister Jeanette.  Both women appear to have died as a result of childbirth complications.  Henrietta, consequently, became a stepmother to nine year old Mary.

Ellis and Henrietta made their home in the north central part of Washington Township in Knox County where Ellis farmed 80 acres of land.  Over the next two decades, they had five children, three of which made it to adolescence–Walter, Fannie and Hallie.  Hallie apparently had some health issues and was sent to live with an aunt in Idaho where the climate was more favorable for her.  Unfortunately, the improvement was short lived and she died in April 1906 in Idaho.  Henrietta, who suffered from paralysis, passed away a few short months later on July 17, 1906 on the family farm on the outskirts of  Bicknell, Indiana.

Henrietta Polk Widner

Isaac Polk farm in Widner Township, Knox County IN

Henrietta Polk Washington

Ellis Hill farm in Washington Township, Knox County, IN

 

Henrietta Polk was my 2nd cousin 4x removed on my dad’s side.

REFERENCES

  • United States Census, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900
  • Indiana Death Certificates
  • Indiana Marriage Index
  • Find A Grave
  • The Western Sun, April 27, 1906
  • Combined Atlases of Knox County, Indiana, 1880-1903

 

It’s all in the details, Frank Cox.

22 Saturday Feb 2020

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Recently, I have been doing some housekeeping in my family tree.  Things like do I have a birth record, marriage record and death record? Do I have a census record for all available years? Do I have an obituary?  As I go through this exercise, I add details to my ancestors’ files that might be on those records such as occupations or cause of death.  These are all details I want to include when I write their biographies.  My end goal is to at least paint a bit of a picture of who these people were.

This brings me to my 2nd great grandfather, Frank Cox.  I’ve mentioned Frank before when I discussed his daughter Blanche and again as I presented his parents, John and Mary.   Frank married Arabelle McCullough in Missouri in 1888 and they had 5 children–Raymond, Blanche, Mura Mae, Anna and Jessie.  In 1907, Frank married Molly Schwepker in Missouri and in 1910, Jessie was living with her aunt and uncle in Knox County, Indiana.  The big mystery is what happened to Arabelle between Jessie’s birth in January 1904 and Frank’s marriage in 1907.

As I examined Frank’s documentation, I found some things that I had previously overlooked.  In 1880, he is living with his half-brother Thomas Azbell In Sandborn, IN.  What struck me as odd was he was listed as married, however, no wife was listed.  It was also well before 1888 when he married Arabelle.   Hmmm.  I kept searching and found an Eliza J Cox with a two year old daughter named Carola living with Daniel Hollingsworth in the next township.  Eliza is listed as Daniel’s daughter.

In the June 24, 1881 edition of The Western Sun, an altercation between Frank and a John Cooper was reported.  The article mentioned that Frank had been estranged from his wife for two years which would be consistent with the 1880 census information.  A compilation of family histories, “Descendants of Some Early Settlers in Knox and Sullivan Counties, Indiana” found at FamilySearch.org, provided further evidence that Frank Cox married a Jenny Hollingsworth, daughter of Daniel, although an exact date was not included in the document.

So Frank had a family before the one he had with Arabelle.   What happened to Jenny and Carola?  With a little work, I was able to piece together the rest of Jenny’s short life.  It would seem that Jenny was able to secure a divorce from Frank.  In 1884, Jenny married James William McFadden.  He appears to be the brother-in-law of one of Jenny’s sisters. In 1888, the McFaddens were living in Sullivan County and Jenny gave birth to a son (Jesse) in February.  She died a few days later, likely from complications.  James went on to marry again and had another son, Philip.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been as lucky determining what happened to Carola after her mother died.  Did she stay on with her step-father James McFadden? Or was she raised by one of her Hollingsworth relatives?  Was she even alive?  Other than the 1880 census, there really is no paper trail for my 2nd great aunt.  Hopefully a shred of evidence will surface in the future.

 

 

 

Oliver P. & Rachel Frost McCullough

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Oliver P McCullough (3rd great-grandfather) was born circa 1825 in Kentucky.  He married Eliza Grimsley in 1843 in Daviess County, Indiana.  As best as can be determined, they had four children: James, Mary, Perlina and Jesse.  The 1850 census has them in Elmore Township in Daviess County, then in 1860 they had relocated southward to Steele Township.  Oliver’s wife is listed as Rebecca in 1860, so it is unclear if this is Eliza or another wife.

Indiana marriage records has Oliver wedded to Rachel Frost in Knox County, IN, in July 1862.  This is  one month before he mustered with the 83rd Infantry, Company F in southeastern Indiana as a lieutenant.  He mustered out less than a year later, in June 1863.  In 1870, the McCulloughs could be found in Richland Township, Greene County (Bloomfield), along with Oliver’s mother Elizabeth.  In 1880, they were back in Daviess County.  Oliver and Rachel had the following children:

  1. Sarah (1863-?)
  2. William (1868-?)
  3. Emily Arabelle (1870-ca. 1904) m. Frank Cox (2nd great grandparents)
  4. Perry (1873-?)
  5. Thomas (1875-?)
  6. Miranda (1879-?)

Little is known about Oliver’s parents other than his mother’s first name was Elizabeth and she was born ca 1798 in Kentucky.  I have not been able to locate Rachel prior to 1862 and her parents are a mystery as well.  Oliver and Rachel’s whereabouts are also unknown after 1880.