Tag Archives: Kansas

2025 Week 41

12 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by in Genealogy, maps

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Time to wrap up the family of Jonathan and Rachel Cox. Their youngest daughter was Harriet. She married Thomas Hollingsworth. Thomas served in the Civil War and drew a pension until his death in 1882. Harriet made a widow’s claim at that time, but I didn’t have any better proof for her date of death. Her widow’s pension is not yet available at Fold 3. Only 22% of those have been digitized to date.

A search of the newspapers found an article in 1885 reporting on the annual Old Settlers gathering in the Knox County area. It was published in early August and Harriet was listed on the report from the Necrology Committee. In the following months, there were multiple legal notices in the papers regarding her estate. It would seem that one of her brothers served as administrator. After checking probate records, I was able to determine that she died on July 16, 1885 in Knox County, Indiana.

Of course, not all of Harriet’s children have been so easy to research. The children seemed to go in various directions. Millard married and moved to Wichita. Edward (aka Ellis) headed west and settled in Seattle. After Thomas died, Harriet returned to Knox County, taking Dora with her. John migrated north to Iowa, finally settling in Nebraska after several moves. Benjamin and Mary were elusive. Mary was mentioned in Millard’s obituary as still being alive, but nothing could be found for either sibling.

And with that, we return to Kentucky to research Austin Piety Cox, Ben and Sarah’s eighth child. With his wife Rebecca Phillips, they had ten children, seven of which were daughters. I’ll start Austin’s family next week.

I love maps! They help to tell the story, especially with migration. I found a new (to me) site that has me all giddy about creating maps. It’s called Ultimaps. I am forever wanting to illustrate where certain counties are in relation to others. This site has a blank county map of Kentucky and I can colorize it however I want! I’ve started by shading in the counties where my DeMosses are and where my Cox families are. I do have other lines that came thru Kentucky which I will add later.

Tree Ratings are back! I have 3 from this week to resolve. I have 5049 errors in the tree–374 possible duplicates, 4176 with no documents, 499 other errors.

  • First this week, is the husband of a distant cousin who I don’t have any references for and I don’t know his first name. Luckily, I found a wedding announcement for them right off the bat!
  • Another spouse of a distant cousin needs some references. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how she became connected to this cousin, because I can find no reference to her in any of his information. She’s been deleted.
  • Finally, a distant cousin without references. Of course, she would have six sisters who were all married and had a ton of kids…all without references. This exercise should make a dent in my errors for next week.

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 the week ahead.
209 years ago – death of George Catt (6th ggf)
194 years ago – marriage of Tamer Pool (4th ggm) and John Butler (4th ggf)
182 years ago – death of Hannah Puckett (5th ggm)
178 years ago – marriage of Francis Roderick (4th ggf) and his 2nd wife Eliza Pea
167 years ago – death of Gesina Brake Sievers (4th ggm)
165 years ago – marriage of Sarah Roderick (3rd ggm) and Robert Thompson (3rd ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,078 people
End of Week: 27,106 people
Change = +28 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on family of Austin P Cox and Rebecca Phillips
  • 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 40

05 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by in Genealogy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

This week, my research began with Finetta Cox, daughter of Jonathan and Rachel. According to a newspaper entry by the great-granddaughter of Jonathan, Finetta was born in 1828. The 1830 census does account for one female under the age of five, so this is likely Finetta. However, the 1840 census does not provide for a female between ten and fifteen. This would lead me to believe that Finetta died at some point during the 1830s. No further mention of her has been found and I shall move on.

Alexander Cox is the eighth known child of Jonathan and Rachel. He married Angeline Sartor and they moved to Kansas in the early 1880s. They had seven children who reached adulthood. His obituaries are kind of confusing, especially with respect to his younger children. That could be because they were published in Vincennes and the information was from someone other than the immediate family.

Filling in the details for Alexander and Angeline’s children was fairly straight forward. The only child that was difficult to find information on was their son John. John moved to Stockton, California some time before 1893, when he was listed in the Stockton city directory. The last evidence of John’s whereabouts was in the 1920 census. No obvious death information has been found in Stockton, Knox County or Labette County, the three most obvious places where he might have been laid to rest.

I have one last child of Jonathan and Rachel to review and then I can move on to the next sibling!

Tree Ratings are back! I have 3 errors from last week and 3 from this week to resolve. I have 5057 errors in the tree–374 possible duplicates, 4183 with no documents, 500 other errors.

  • Husband of a 5th cousin was lacking source documents. Using their residence location when her parents died, I was able to pull a few sources from the hints.
  • A dangler who was also suspected to be a duplicate of his brother. He was deleted, removing 2 errors at once!
  • The husband of a distant cousin was also lacking sources. By updating others in the family, I was able to find his first name and supply at least one source.

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 the week ahead.
249 years ago – death of Marie Creely (8th ggm)
217 years ago – death of Benjamin Bonnell Jr (6th ggf)
196 years ago – marriage of Sarah Ireland (4th ggm) and Joseph Reeve (4th ggf)
195 years ago – death of Thomas Butler (5th ggf)
188 years ago – marriage of Elizabeth Moyer (3rd ggm) and James Mattox (3rd ggf)
169 years ago – birth of Samuel T DeMoss (2nd ggf)
155 years ago – birth of Emma Nagele Keller (2nd ggm)
151 years ago – birth of Arely Fielden (2nd ggf)
89 years ago – death of Sarah Winkler DeMoss (2nd ggm)
78 years ago – birth of my mom Phyllis!

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,053 people
End of Week: 27,078 people
Change = +25 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Harriet 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 39

28 Sunday Sep 2025

Posted by in Genealogy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Mykonos, Greece

So, I took another week off from my blog. This time my husband and I went on a cruise in Greece with friends. I didn’t take my laptop, but I did get some genealogy done during our At Sea Days, albeit very little was done on my family tree. My husband showed some interest in his maternal grandmother’s family roots. We didn’t really know all that much about her family. Growing up, the adults had been rather tight-lipped about the family’s origins. We actually learned quite a bit with very little effort. Some of the highlights included:

  • his grandmother had an older half-brother
  • his grandmother had a younger brother who was killed in an automobile accident at age 31
  • we found the Dawes Census Card linking his family to the Chickasaw Tribe on his grandfather’s side of the family.

I’ll work on his tree a little at a time. I have a lot to do on my own.

When I left off on my own tree, I was working on the children of Harvey Innes Cox and Mary Nicholson. I was down to the last two children–Andrew and Rachel.

Andrew Campbell Cox has been rather difficult to flesh out. He married Minnie Burton in 1897 in Labette County, Kansas. The 1900 census includes an infant daughter, possibly named Iris. A short newspaper blurb later that year, states Minnie Cox was grieving the loss of her young child. There were several legal notices naming Andrew published in local papers a few years later regarding Minnie’s family. The last evidence of Andrew was in his father’s 1912 obituary saying Andrew was in Paris, Texas. No mention of him has been located after that time. Several researchers claim he died in Anchorage, Alaska in 1934, however, no documentation supporting this fact has been located. He was not mentioned in his brother Henry’s obituary in 1929.

Rachel Cox wasn’t nearly as difficult to research, but her husband Otis Morrow was rather elusive by 1910. The 1910 census states that Rachel was married, however, Otis was not in the household. She had four children which lived to adulthood.

Tree Ratings are back! I have 3 errors from last week and 3 from this week to resolve. I have 5055 errors in the tree–372 possible duplicates, 4182 with no documents, 501 other errors.

  • The three from last week all needed sources attached. Two were spouses of distant cousins and the third was a 5th cousin.
  • The first error this week was for an unattached person from the 1840s. I simply deleted her.
  • The second was a little harder to clean up. A Mary Polk listed as the daughter of General Thomas Polk had no sources attached. Ancestry also claimed she was her sister Margaret. Both sisters were mentioned in Polk Family and Kinsmen, however, little information about Mary/Polly was specifically provided. It did mention that she married a Daniel Brown and they had three children who died young.
  • The third was a spouse of a distant cousin who did not have a first name in my tree.

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.
309 years ago – death of John Norton (9th ggf)
274 years ago – birth of Jane Wilson (5th ggm)
266 years ago – birth of James Ireland (6th ggf)
263 years ago – birth of Elizabeth Pea (5th ggm)
262 years ago – death of Jacques Cardinal (7th ggf)
250 years ago – death of Elizabeth Quincy Smith (7th ggm)
238 years ago – birth of John S Cawood (4th ggf)
210 years ago – death of Daniel McLeese (6th ggf)
182 years ago – marriage of James Fielden (5th ggf) and his 2nd wife Jemima Neal
162 years ago – death of Isaac Catt (4th ggf)
157 years ago – birth of Mathias Keller (2nd ggf)
150 years ago – birth of Sarah Butler (2nd ggm)
148 years ago – marriage of Rebecca Coppock (2nd ggm) and Calvin Mattox (2nd ggf)
135 years ago – marriage of Mathias Keller (2nd ggf) and Emma Nagele (2nd ggm)
131 years ago – birth of Emmett Keller (ggf)
124 years ago – death of Richard Bennett (3rd ggf)
76 years ago – marriage of Blanche Cox DeMoss (ggm) and her second husband Coen Robertson
67 years ago – death of Emmett Keller (ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,029 people
End of Week: 27,053 people
Change = +24 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Finetta Ann 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 37

13 Saturday Sep 2025

Posted by in Genealogy, maps, Newspapers

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

This week I’m starting on the family of Harvey Innes Cox. I’ll get it started, but likely won’t finish it. His parents were Jonathan P Cox and Rachel Tigert Cox. He married Mary Nicholson in Knox County. They had nine kids that I know of. After he served in the Civil War, they picked up stakes and moved to Labette County, Kansas around 1868. This is where they remained until death.

Where exactly is Labette County? It is in the southeastern corner of Kansas, not too far west of Joplin, Missouri. Harvey’s family was mostly located in the Parsons area, in the northern part of the county, but over the years they could be found in the southern towns of Edna and Bartlett.

I have concerns about some of the information out there for Harvey’s descendants and families. His daughter Eliza appears in the 1860 census as a one year old, however, there is no trace of her after that. Some trees, and print books, list an actual date of birth and death, however no sources have yet to be found with this information. I would only hope there is a family bible out there somewhere that contains that information.

There is also erroneous information regarding the family of Benjamin F Cox, Harvey’s son. Benjamin married Etta Pond when she was 19. Some sources claim her maiden name was Stark based on her headstone, but this is incorrect. Benjamin’s obituary claims Etta died before his second marriage, but that is also incorrect. Scouring the newspapers, Etta filed for divorce from Benjamin in February 1916 according to The Times-Journal. It was granted in May. A marriage license for Etta Cox, 51, to William Wright was located in the South Kansas Tribune in January 1918. This was followed by a legal notice in the Parsons Daily Sun on April 21, 1921, where Etta Wright sues a William Wright for divorce. Part of her suit is to return her name to Etta Cox. Prior to 1930 Etta seems to have remarried to Eugene Stark, which explains the Stark name on her headstone. Pulling information from two very different obituaries for Etta ties the two women together.

I actually made more progress than I thought I would on this family this week. Three of the sons–Henry, and the twins Jonathan and Simon–appear to have never married so there wasn’t much drama to try and unfold. Two of the daughters–Eliza and Irene–seem to have died as small children so there was little to be found about them. The 1900 census mentions that Mary Nicholson Cox had 12 children, however, I have not been able to account for two of them. There does seem to be a significant gap between Harriet (b. 1851) and Henry (b. 1855). Researchers on FamilySearch have indicated there was a baby born in January 1853, however, no source is provided. The gap between Benjamin and Irene is likely due to Harvey being away at war for three years, so I would not expect a child to be hidden there.

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.
281 years ago – death of Louise Arrivee Cardinal (8th ggm)
258 years ago – birth of Lydia Smith (6th ggm)
242 years ago – death of Rev. William Smith (7th ggf)
228 years ago – marriage of Mary Gott (5th ggm) and John Squires (5th ggf)
193 years ago – birth of Benjamin Coppock (3rd ggf)
193 years ago – death of Richard Puckett (5th ggf)
179 years ago – death of George Boord (6th ggf)
148 years ago – marriage of Joseph E Cardinal (3rd ggf) and Elisabeth Carrie, his 2nd wife

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,020 people
End of Week: 27,029 people
Change = +9 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Harvey Innes 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 33

17 Sunday Aug 2025

Posted by in Genealogy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

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

The Migration of Lewis DeMoss’s Descendants

05 Saturday Nov 2022

Posted by in Genealogy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

As I make my way through the families, it is important to keep track of where they are going and where they have been. We’ve already looked at where William J DeMoss’s offspring settled. Since the first sibling I researched was Lewis, we’ll breakdown where his descendants went to see if there is any overlaps.

As we have discussed previously, Lewis DeMoss married Mary Cox in Fleming County, Kentucky in 1822. Mary and Lewis had the following children:

  • John W (1825-1912)
  • Samuel (1829-?)
  • James (1831-?)
  • Mary Margaret (1833-1877)
  • Joshua (1835-?)
  • Martha (1838-1875)
  • Thomas (1841-1928)
  • Milton William (1843-1940)

It is reasonable to assume all of these children were born in Fleming County where the family remained until shortly after 1850. They were in Platte County, Missouri just north of Kansas City by 1854 when John and Mary married Tritt siblings. We will now break down where each child’s family went from

John W DeMoss and Caroline Tritt settled in northern Platte County near Edgerton and remained there until their deaths in 1912 and 1923, respectively. Their six children all remained in the Edgerton area with the exception of Sarah. Sarah and her husband James P. Chaney resided in nearby St. Joseph. John and Caroline’s grandchildren remained in the general area as well, expanding into St. Joseph and Atchison, Kansas areas.

Mary Margaret DeMoss and Ira Tritt also settled in Platte County where their five children were born. Mary died in 1877 at the age of 43. In the mid-1880s, Ira and three of their children relocated to Logan County, Arkansas, just east of Fort Smith. Sons Thomas and William remained in the greater Kansas City area.

Martha DeMoss married Asa Reeves in 1868. They, too, remained in the northwestern Missouri area. Their son Louis Reeves migrated a bit further west and settled in Kansas. The Reeves were in Fleming County, Kentucky in 1850 and it’s highly probable that the families traveled to Missouri together.

Thomas DeMoss and Nancy Elizabeth Foster were married in 1871 and raised their family of four children in the Platte County area as well. After Nancy’s death in 1912, the entire family migrated to Delaware County, Oklahoma, located on the eastern border of that state with both Missouri and Arkansas. Thomas’s daughter Mary and her husband George Holtzclaw returned north about a decade later, landing in Ray County, Missouri. Thomas Jr and his wife Mary Pyle followed suit, living out their days in the Clay County area with their ten children.

Milton DeMoss and his wife Lucy Reeves settled in the Buchanan County, Missouri area as did their only daughter Susan and her husband William Jackson.

So far, there aren’t any overlaps in where the families of Lewis and William settled. As more of the siblings are added to the equation, there is likely to be some similarities which would strengthen the idea that they are kin.

Rachel Cox

28 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Genealogy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

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