Making headway in the Rhodes branch of the Cox family this week. YAY! Time was spent building out the family of Anna Rhodes Meehan. The migration of this family was somewhat interesting and seems to be driven by Anna’s husband, Walter. Walter had been married twice before Anna, and she was a bit older than most first time brides at 34. Walter was originally from Iowa and had lived for a time in Gallatin County, Montana. I’m not exactly sure how he became connected with Anna who had lived her entire life in Perry County, Indiana. I do not see anything obvious in my tree where Walter would have crossed paths with a Rhodes or Cox family member in either Iowa or Montana. There could have been a friend of a friend who put them in contact with each other. Or Anna could have been a mail order bride. According to newspaper announcements of their marriage, he was highly respected by his pastor. This would support the first theory. It is an interesting question to pose, but not one I have the time to explore fully. After returning to Iowa for a few years, the Meehans moved to South Dakota until the late 1930s when they relocated to Merced County, California.
A mail-order bride was a woman whose introduction to her husband came through the mail, and one who made plans to marry him before meeting in person. -National Postal Museum
Just two Rhodes children to finish researching. I should be able to complete this task by month end.
Beginning of Week: 26,878 people End of Week: 26,954 people Change = +76 people – GOAL MET! Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people
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
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
Week 4 of the 52 Ancestors Challenge finds us exploring the topic “Witness to History”. There are so many individuals I could write about under this topic, most having served and fought for the freedoms we currently enjoy. Many of those same individuals I have already written about, but I haven’t yet focused my attention on my third great-grandfather Isaac DeMoss.
Isaac was born in Fleming County, Kentucky on March 13, 1833 to William DeMoss and Elizabeth “Betsey” Lowe.1 He is believed to be the fourth of ten children born to the couple. While still in diapers, his parents, along with several of his father’s siblings’ families, packed up the family and journeyed westward into Indiana, settling in southeastern Daviess County, Indiana.
Isaac remained on the family farm until the early to mid-1850s. He set out to make his own way, heading further westward, settling along the White River which separated Daviess County from Knox County to the west. On December 8, 1855, at the age of twenty-two, he married sixteen year old Louisa Reeve, daughter of Joseph Reeve and Sarah Ireland Reeve. The following June, Isaac acquired a land patent (certificate 39184) for thirty-three acres of land along the White River bottoms.
Isaac and Louisa did not waste time starting a family. Samuel T was born in October 1856 and Marion followed four years later. Life as a farmer was then interrupted when the Civil War broke out. Isaac, Louisa’s brother Samuel, and many of their friends and neighbors enlisted for a three year stint in the Union Army, becoming a private of Company C of the 80th Indiana Infantry. They mustered in on September 8, 1862 at Princeton, Indiana, and marched to Covington, Kentucky, where they joined forces with several units from Ohio. The first year of service was spent mostly in Kentucky. Notable campaigns included fighting Confederate forces at Perryville led by Major General Braxton Bragg. The Regiment had movements in Tennessee before engaging in a number of battles in Georgia in 1864. They circled back through Alabama to Tennessee once more before heading east to North Carolina in 1865. The 80th finished their tour of duty in Salisbury until they mustered out on June 22, 1865, returning home to Indiana. Isaac left the military with the rank of corporal.2
Unfortunately, when Isaac did return to Edwardsport, he did so as a widow. Louisa passed away on April 18, 1864. The cause is currently unknown, however, both Louisa’s mother Sarah and her mother-in-law Betsey also died within months of Louisa. It is not known if their deaths are related or merely coincidental. A year later, young Marion also died of an unknown cause, not having reached his sixth birthday.
At the age of thirty-three, Isaac married sixteen year old Laura Johnson. Within a year she gave him another son, William, however he died a week later. Isaac continued to amass his land holdings and in 1872, he and Laura welcomed another son John Franklin DeMoss. Personal accounts provided by various family members referred to John as Richard or “Dickie Popcorn”.3
Unlike some of his brothers-in-law (Louisa’s brothers), Isaac focused on farming and did not appear to branch into other trades or skills. He did, however, amass a sizeable amount of land in and around Vigo Township, mostly along the river. Much of this farmland was transferred to Samuel and Richard in the 1890s, as reported in the Vincennes papers.
Isaac took ill in the summer of 1900, contracting Rheumatic Fever. He suffered from this affliction for nearly three months, succumbing on October 19, 1900 at the age of sixty-seven.
Biography of Samuel T. DeMoss, History of Old Vincennes and Knox County, IN, George E. Greene, 1911, p. 271. ↩︎
A likely candidate for a sibling to William DeMoss is Polly DeMoss Harmon. Marriage records from Fleming County, Kentucky have Polly marrying Thomas Harmon in 1814. The family resided in Fleming County until the early 1830s at which time they migrated to Daviess County, Indiana. This is the same time period that William DeMoss’s family also relocated out of Kentucky. Polly is believed to have died sometime between 1839 when her daughter Fannie was born and 1843 when Thomas married Rachel Baker Gibson. A line by line search of the 1840 US Census did not find an entry for Thomas Harmon which would have provided some insight for a more exact date of death for Polly.
Old Union Church and Cemetery, Reeve Township, Daviess County, Indiana. Several members of this family are buried here.
Polly and Thomas had at least seven children during their time together. It’s possible that there were a few more as there is a large gap between William (b. 1819) and Matilda (b. 1829). According to the 1830 Census, there could be two daughters born in the 1820s that have not been accounted for. The children that have been documented are:
Elizabeth (1814-) m. Alexander Moren/Moran/Morin
Hannah (1816-1902) m. Jacob Hedrick
William (1819-1884) m. Indiana Alford
Matilda (1829-1860) m. Lewis Isham
Rebecca (1831-1859) m. William Edwards
David (1836-1870) m. Lavina Hedrick
Fannie (1839-1920) m. William Edwards
Thomas remarried in 1843 to Rachel Baker Gibson and added three more children to the family, Lavina, Robert and Lucinda. In 1860, Thomas is living with William’s family in St. Clair County, Missouri. The younger children are not living with them and Rachel cannot be located.
On June 4, 1834 in Brownstown, Indiana, David Ireland Reeve was born to Joseph Reeve and Sarah Ireland. He was the third child of ten born to the couple. Martha (who died in infancy) and Samuel were born before David. He was followed by Thomas who also died young. The family moved from Jackson County to Daviess County in the mid-1830s, where the remainder of his siblings were born…Louisa, Mary Elizabeth, Sarah, James, Lydia and Lucy. Lucy and James both died in infancy as well.
As a young man, David participated in farming with his father. About 1855, David married Harriet C. Lemon and they made their home in the Edwardsport area. David supported their family by building wagons and through farming. He later would add painter to his resume. He and Harriet raised a large family of eight children…Charles, Joseph (a prominent doctor in Vigo Township), Mary Ellen, Martha, Samuel, George, Robert, and Lillie.
At the age of fifty-four, David was afflicted with a carbuncle. It eventually led to blood poisoning and his death on November 30, 1888. He was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Edwardsport.
David Ireland Reeve was my 4th great uncle on my dad’s side.
On June 2, 1877 John Maxwell and Elvira Terrell were blessed with the birth of their first son William. The parents were originally from the Bloomfield, Indiana area, but did live for a bit around 1880 in the Steele Township community in Daviess County before returning to Bloomfield. William had an older sister Sarah and was followed by three brothers: Emery, Ira, and Carl.
William married Laura Reagon on May 6, 1900, likely in Greene County. They were blessed with their first child Zada Bell on December 12th that year. Zada was followed by brothers Charley, Jessie and Glen. A younger sister, Tressie, was born in 1909 however, she perished as a small child from complications due to bronchitis.
William supported his family in the early years doing farm labor. Later, around 1910 he could be found working in the local coal mines. By the mid-1910s he had transitioned to restaurant work.
On May 18, 1916 at a hospital in Indianapolis, William died at the age of thirty-eight from multiple liver abscesses. His wife Laura, with four children to support, remarried later that year.
William Maxwell was my 2nd cousin 3x removed on my dad’s side.
William Hedrick was born May 30, 1827 in Fleming County, Kentucky to Michael Dungan Hedrick and Elizabeth DeMoss. He had one sister named Amanda.
On September 10, 1850, William married Nancy West in Nicholas County, Kentucky. Their first son, Walter B. was born in Kentucky in 1851. Laura, their only daughter, was born in Indiana in 1854 and the family was found in Howard County in the 1860 Census. By the birth of their son Robert in 1861, the family was back in Nicholas County and had relocated to Fleming County by 1870. The family was still in Kentucky in 1876 when Laura married John Jones. At some point after that it would seem the family would make the journey westward to Cass County, Missouri. Based on birthdates, it’s not likely that everyone traveled together. Laura’s daughter was born in September 1878 in Missouri, but Bruce’s daughter Emma was born the same month in Kentucky. Everyone was in Cass County by 1880.
Unfortunately, William died on May 28, 1880 at the age of fifty-two. He is buried in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery.
Thomas Johnson was born on May 28, 1775 in the colony of Virginia. His parents were William Johnson and Hannah Sanderson from Lancashire, England.
Thomas was one of the earliest settlers in southern Knox County, along with Frederick Mehl, George Catt, Anthony Cary and many others. He arrived in the area around 1800 and married George Catt’s daughter Catherine. They cleared the land and took to farming as they grew their family as well as their farm. The children born to this marriage were Eleanor, Susan, Harriet, Payton, Fielding, Docia, Jane and Thomas Jr.
As did many of the early settlers of the area, Thomas fought under Captains Perry, Modrell, and Beckes during the War of 1812. Thomas was active in local politics, aligning himself with the Democratic Party of the time. As one of the most prominent residents and farmers of the area, the township, which is situated in the south central part of the county, was named after him. His family, especially the younger Thomas, went on to amass extensive land holdings throughout the 1800s.
Thomas and Catherine lived out their years on the family farm. Catherine passed away on August 15, 1862 and Thomas followed her a few months later on January 19, 1863. They were laid to rest in the Johnson Cemetery which still exists today, not far from the White River on Johnson Bend Road.
Thomas Johnson was my 5th great grandfather on my mom’s side.
REFERENCES
United States Census, 1840, 1850, 1860
US and International Marriage Records
Find a Grave website
The Catt Family in America, Dr. W Cary Anderson, 1989.
History of Knox and Daviess Counties, Indiana, page 545, Goodspeed Publishing, 1886.
History of Old Vincennes and Knox County, Indiana, pages 306 and 379, George E Greene, 1911.
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
Digging Up My Roots 