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
Digging Up My Roots 