Tag Archives: Kentucky

2025 Week 51

21 Sunday Dec 2025

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As I continue writing the short biographies for my 5th great grandfather’s children, it has occurred to me, more than once, that my families recycle names…a lot. It makes it difficult at times to sort out which documents belong to which person. Not only that, but as I index my manuscript, I may end up with a single name indexing multiple persons. So, what are my options to separate out these many individuals with the same monikers?

Middle names help, if they exist. However, not everyone had a middle name or if they had an initial, it isn’t always known what that initial represents. For example, my dad’s name was Samuel Thomas DeMoss, as was his father. My 2nd great grandfather has only ever been documented as Samuel T. DeMoss. I can distinguish these three as Jr., Sr, and Samuel T.

In some instances, though, middle names aren’t that helpful because both individuals have the same middle name as well. I have two Sarah Piety Coxes in my tree, so far. One was the daughter of Ben and Sarah Cox and lived from 1785 to 1860. The other was a granddaughter of the couple and lived from 1826 to 1888. I could just number them in the text–Sarah Piety (1) and Sarah Piety (2), however, that doesn’t help much when referencing the book index. I have opted in the index to list them as Sarah Piety (1785-1860) and Sarah Piety (1826-1888). This will actually allow the end user to find the individual they are looking for much more quickly.

I didn’t get as much done this week as I had hoped. A lot of holiday festivities required my attention, however, I am hopeful with a couple days off this coming week, AND two scheduled shifts at the genealogical library, will help me get back on track just before the year ends. I was able to write the bio for Austin Piety Cox and his wife Rebecca Phillips. I still need to do the indexing, but that should not take very long to update.

Error resolution. The last available update: I have 4918 errors in the tree–374 possible duplicates, 4088 with no documents, 456 other errors.

  • Distant cousin needs a source. He was named in his grandmother’s obituary, but little can be found. His parents are likely still alive so there really isn’t much to go on.
  • Another distant cousin needing a source. Again, not a lot of information out there except obituaries of the parents.
  • The last error to be resolved was the second husband of a distant cousin. I was able to add a name for him as well.

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.
269 years ago – birth of Catherine Bowen (6th ggm)
225 years ago – birth of Ellinor Johnson (4th ggm)
199 years ago – death of James Butler (6th ggf)
125 years ago – death of Calvin Mattox (2nd ggf)
114 years ago – marriage of Blanche Cox DeMoss (ggm) and her 2nd husband Coen Robertson
107 years ago – birth of Francis Keller Sr (gf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,006 people
End of Week: 27,011 people
Change = +5 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Finish writing the biographies of the family of Benjamin and Sarah Piety Cox.
  • Review the information in The Other Polks to see if there is anything I don’t already have.
  • 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 50

14 Sunday Dec 2025

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Last weekend was a travel weekend which didn’t leave much time for genealogy. Of course, a whirlwind trip cross-country to spend less than 48 hours with my sisters during cold and flu season can take a toll and I ended up with a massive head cold as a result. I’m on the mend and ready to finish up Ben and Sarah’s family narrative.

But first, Ancestry has compiled a few year-end statistics for me.

  • Apparently 131,000 new hints were added to my tree
  • 26,850 of those hints came from new collections that were added to the site this year
  • I viewed 8703 records
  • I added 2138 people to my tree
  • My tree helped 1661 other researchers
  • My DNA matches increased by 2510 people

I did accomplish a bit of writing this weekend. I sorted out Joseph Cox who was the focus back in Week 32. He was the one who had previously been identified as a bachelor at the time of his death, but appears to have actually had six children! I also merged duplicate files for him on FamilySearch.

I should be able to finish up Jonathan Piety Cox’s bio before the day is over. He was my focus during Week 33. Since he had not yet reached his majority when he married in 1817, he needed his father’s permission to obtain the marriage license. I think it is so cool that an image of the permission note is available and carries the handwriting and signature of my 5th great-grandfather.

Permission for Jonathan Piety Cox to obtain a marriage license signed by his father Benjamin Cox.

I’ve been playing around with Google’s NotebookLM. I really like the concept of the Infographic. Too bad the free version only gives you three per day. Need to be selective in what you create! I have noticed that when I do a document dump, it tends to make up names and dates, making the graphic worthless. I decided to upload the narrative I wrote for a single family unit–in this case, Gabriel and Nancy (Squires) Cox–to see what it might do. So. Much. Better! It didn’t mention John S Cox having served and died in the Civil War, but that was because his story was told in a previous chapter, focusing on him. I’ll have to decide what to include about the linking child on future runs. At any rate, I thought I’d share the output of my experiment on Gabriel and Nancy. Once I get the process perfected, I think including these in my manuscript will break up the monotony of lots of text.

Since I missed a week, I have 6 error hints to resolve. The last available update: I have 4926 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4094 with no documents, 456 other errors.

  • Distant cousin needed a source.
  • Husband of a distant cousin needed a first name and a source. I have not been able to identify this individual.
  • Husband of a distant cousin. I used a marriage announcement for the cousin’s brother (also a cousin), to ballpark marriage dates for the siblings and their spouses.
  • Father-in-law for a distant great-granduncle has no sources attached. Since I am pruning extended family from the tree, I deleted him and his wife.
  • Father-in-law for a distant cousin has no sources attached. Again, since I am pruning the tree, he and his wife were also deleted.
  • Distant cousin has no sources attached. I found a few sources for him and cleaned up his family while I was at it.

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.
325 years ago – birth of Anna Schmidt (7th ggm)
304 years ago – birth of Elizabeth Quincy (7th ggm)
298 years ago – birth of Rachel Van Winkle (7th ggm)
264 years ago – marriage of Rachel Maquinet (6th ggm) and John J Pea (6th ggf)
243 years ago – birth of Joseph Cardinal (5th ggf)
235 years ago – birth of Jonathan McCullough (4th ggf)
227 years ago – marriage of Barbara Mattox (5th ggm) and Samuel Wilks (5th ggf)
213 years ago – death of Rachel Van Winkle (7th ggm)
193 years ago – birth of Eli T Butler (3rd ggf)
190 years ago – death of Rebecca Jones (5th ggm)
187 years ago – birth of Joseph Ellis Cardinal (3rd ggf)
170 years ago – marriage of Louisa Reeve (3rd ggm) and Isaac DeMoss (3rd ggf)
165 years ago – death of Margaret Gray (5th ggm)
164 years ago – marriage of George Winkler (3rd ggf) and his second wife Katie Bean
162 years ago – death of Nancy Squires Cox (3rd ggm)
140 years ago – death of Letitia Casey (4th ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,008 people
End of Week: 27,006 people
Change = -2 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Finish writing the biographies of the family of Benjamin and Sarah Piety Cox.
  • Review the information in The Other Polks to see if there is anything I don’t already have.
  • 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 48

30 Sunday Nov 2025

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With a long holiday ahead of me, I’m digging into who Benjamin Cox was as a person. This requires me to incorporate the history of the places where he lived and how he might have contributed.

First order of business was to map out where Benjamin resided throughout his life. He was born in Hampshire County, Virginia about 1757. Since this is pre-Revolutionary War Era, the Colonies were expanding and counties were being organized. To keep up with the rapidly changing boundaries of these government units, I found a really cool website that includes interactive maps of the states: Maps of US. I whole-heartedly recommend you check it out if you are exploring how boundaries changed over time.

My second task was to reread Evelyn C. Adams’ “The Coxes of Cox’s Creek, Kentucky”. Mrs. Adams provided footnotes for her article on the Cox family which led to some additional references I had not considered. She mentioned that Benjamin and his brothers often served in various capacities in the community when they were residing in Yohogania County. As luck would have it, the Minute Book of the Virginia Court held for Yohogania County, 1776-1780 is available digitally on FamilySearch.org. I am sure I will reference it often, especially while researching the next generation of Coxes.

There was mention that a Benjamin Cox served on a jury in May 1778. It is not clear if this was my Benjamin Cox or his older cousin. If it was my Benjamin, this would support a birth of 1757 or earlier, not 1765 as family lore would suggest.

Taking into account the boundary changes during this time period, a full text search of FamilySearch for Washington County, Pennsylvania, did not produce any documentation for Benjamin prior to 1780. Jefferson County, Virginia/Kentucky after 1776 was nearly as fruitless with one deed transfer. A search of Nelson County, however, was quite bountiful. One of the earliest documents was from a tithable tax list from 1787.

References identified in Kester’s The Other Polks included manuscripts and papers in the Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston collection, a descendant of Benjamin and Sarah. Unfortunately, those do not appear to be digitized at this time so a trip to Louisville to visit the Filson Club is now on the genealogy bucket list.

On some of the genealogy groups, I’ve been hearing about NotebookLM, a Google AI application. Since I am currently in a writing phase, I thought I’d try it out and see if it is something I want to maybe use. I’m not sure I want to go back and rewrite everything I have already put together, but maybe it can wordsmith things a bit better going forward.

I keep a folder for each set of grandparents on my computer. In it are copies of vital records, census records, draft cards, newspaper clippings, and tombstone photos. One thing I haven’t been including in these folders are excerpts from books. I keep the books elsewhere. To try out NotebookLM, I started a new notebook and uploaded all the documents from my grandparents’ folder. The app initially spit out a one paragraph summary of what I had uploaded, hitting some highlights. I then tried out some of the other features the application boasts in the Studio.

  • Flashcards – This tool created a series of flashcards with facts about my grandparents such as where was Edeine born, etc. Not necessarily a useful feature for genealogy, but possibly would be for other subject matter. This might be useful for a student studying for an exam.
  • Mind Map – This tool broke the main topic into a handful of subtopics and continued to drill down within each layer to more detail. This might be useful for organizing facts into categories for later presentation.
  • Audio Overview – This is a narrative with commentary breaking down the subject matter in the the source documents. In this case, my grandparents lives. It incorporated current events at the time and gave color to what might be otherwise a boring stack of documents. There is a limit of three of these that can be generated each day.
  • Reports – This tool can generate several kinds of reports depending on the angle you want to project. Do I want to focus on my grandfather or my grandmother? Do I want a summary or a blog post? Lots of options here.

I thought the audio overview was rather cool. It brought some perspective to events of my grandparents’ lives. The fact that they married young at the end of the Great Depression. Their first child died after only a few weeks. My grandfather escaped with his life from a coal mine explosion. A discussion as to why he might have needed to do coal mining in addition to farming. The financial impact of having a large family. My grandmother’s resiliency of being a young widow with a passel of children to support.

Initially I didn’t include birth certificates for all of their children. I still don’t have anything in the source stack for my aunt who is still living. The written reports are riddled with errors, but at least those can be manually fixed if I were to use those reports in any way. You are limited to 100 notebooks and each notebook is limited to 50 source documents that can be included. The test runs I did used about half that. I’m curious to try out the Infographic and the Slide Deck, but those features were not active today. I am likely to utilize this set of tools to enhance my biographical writings, but I will continue to do the writing myself.

3 Error hints to resolve. The last available update: I have 4926 errors in the tree–368 possible duplicates, 4102 with no documents, 456 other errors.

  • A distant cousin with no sources attached. Found her with her parents in the 1860 Census.
  • Another distant cousin with no sources attached. I probably won’t find anything for this individual since he likely just graduated from high school.
  • Last is a stepson of a distant cousin. I was able to find a birth record for him.

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.
264 years ago – birth of Therese Lefebre (6th ggm)
230 years ago – marriage of Martha Smith (5th ggm) and Reuben Staton (5th ggf)
182 years ago – marriage of Oliver McCullough (3rd ggf) and his first wife Eliza Grimsley
133 years ago – marriage George W Winkler (3rd ggf) and his second wife Katie Bean
88 years ago – death of Samuel T DeMoss (2nd ggf)
10 years ago – death of Dorothy Cardinal Keller (gm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,007 people
End of Week: 27,008 people
Change = +1 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Write the biographies of the family of Benjamin and Sarah Piety Cox.
  • Review the information in The Other Polks to see if there is anything I don’t already have.
  • 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 44

02 Sunday Nov 2025

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This week I am finishing up the off-spring of John C Cox and his wife Eliza. First up is their son Benjamin Harrison Cox. Benjamin served in the ministry, as did several others in his family. When his sister died, he became guardian for her son Oliver. Census records from 1900-1920 all state he was widowed, and Kester mentions a wife named Elizabeth Reeser. A marriage record was found from 1885 for Benjamin and Bettie Reasor. Her life was cut short just four years later.

It should be noted that Benjamin was referred to as “Elder B.H. Cox” in most newspaper mentions. This is a good reminder to try different naming variations when doing searches for individuals.

Julia Cox, the ninth child of John and Eliza, married Dr. Samuel Smith. They resided in Frankfort, Kentucky. She died in 1885, leaving behind three children. The youngest has been unidentified by name, as far as I can tell. Samuel died in 1892.

Margaret Cox was married to James McDonald and they had one son, James B. He only lived to be eighteen and it is unclear how or why he died, as it was before recording deaths was mandatory. After her husband died in 1905, Maggie lived with her brother Benjamin in the home of their nephew. Her death was rather tragic and indirectly caused that of Benjamin. While sitting by the fire in January, a cinder from the fire escaped the grate and caught her dress on fire. Benjamin and their nephew worked to get the fire out, but she was burned severely. Benjamin had a heart attack shortly after the incident due to all the stress and excitement. Maggie died a few days later due to her injuries.

The youngest of the Cox siblings, Fannie, has been a bit of a challenge to completely document. She married Landon Coleman and they had three sons. Around 1880 or 1881, Landon was involved in some sort of incident which left him disabled and apparently addled to some extent. Fannie received a payout for half of the value of his insurance policy with the Royal Templars of Temperance. Landon was then placed in some sort of institution while Fannie and the boys went to live with her family in Middletown. In 1884, it was reported that Landon returned to Frankfort, hale and hearty, and Fannie also returned. Shortly thereafter, Landon relocated to Shelby County to work in the confectionery business, but no mention of Fannie and the boys was made. Fannie is mentioned as residing in Kansas City in 1891 in her mother’s obituary. Their son Willis was living there in 1900 with his family. He worked for the railroad. Fannie was not listed with the family which would hint that she might be deceased. Landon is living with Fannie’s brother Benjamin in 1900, identifying as a widow in the census.

The Royal Templars of Temperance was a fraternal organization founded in 1870 in Buffalo, New York. Its members attempted to close saloons on Sundays and advocated abstinence. Its members practiced rituals borrowed from Freemasonry.

https://www.viennapedia.org/organizations/royal-templars-of-temperance

Some researchers have attributed a death to a Frances Coleman in Howard County, Indiana in 1896 to Fannie, but that seems a bit far fetched without something more substantial placing her there. Also, I have not seen any documentation calling her “Frances”. At this time, I’ll opt to list her death as after 1891.

Tree Ratings are back! I have 3 from this week to resolve. I have 4949 errors in the tree–372 possible duplicates, 4117 with no documents, 460 other errors.

  • Here’s a new one I haven’t come across before. Both parents were too young to have had a child when the daughter was born. This would indicate that either the parents birth dates are incorrect or the child’s. It could also mean that she wasn’t their child, but a foster child of some sort. As it turns out, she was listed as a “daughter” in the 1920 census, but she carried a different last name, than either of the two parents. At any rate, she is not a blood relation. Based on the criteria I have set for my database, she will be removed.
  • The second person needing an error cleared will be difficult to clear. Web links are not considered sources by the Tree Checker. This distant cousin is still in her teens. I will need to revisit this one at another time.
  • The last error needing cleared also appears to be rather difficult this week. The known residence location, Oklahoma, doesn’t have much available online for marriages or births and nothing was populating from the newspapers. I may need to revisit this one as well.

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.
253 years ago – marriage of John McCullough (5th ggf) and his first wife Margaret Peters
228 years ago – marriage of Margaret McLees (5th ggm) and Isaac Lowe (5th ggf)
207 years ago – birth of James Denis Cardinal (4th ggf)
70 years ago – death of Samuel T. DeMoss Sr (gf)
43 years ago – death of Frank Fielden (ggf)
28 years ago – death Samuel T. DeMoss Jr (RIP Dad. Miss you.)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 26,947 people
End of Week: 26,965 people
Change = +18 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Return to Knox County and start reviewing the family of Benjamin Cox and Elizabeth Shepherd.
  • 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 43

26 Sunday Oct 2025

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This week I have started on the family of John Calhoun Cox and his wife Eliza Garrett. They are documented to have had eleven children. After Ben and Sarah died, John and Eliza lived in their farmhouse in Shelby County. In their later years, they lived with one or more of their children in both Franklin County and Jefferson County.

Research for Eliza was pretty straight forward. John, however, is proving to be a little more difficult. Some researchers have assigned a death date of 1869 for John, however, he was still alive in the 1870 census. The 1869 death was for a John Cox who resided in Butler County, so I’m not convinced this is the correct information for Eliza’s husband. Other sources have provided a death date in 1878. This would be consistent with Eliza stating she was a widow in 1880, however, I cannot find any documentation supporting this date either. As for now, it will remain a mystery.

JC and Eliza’s first son, Dr. Henry Clay Cox, married Mary Jane Newland in 1859. Mary Jane died in 1926. Her obituary stated that she lived with her husband until his death in Shelby County and in Crestwood (Oldham County). It later states that she resided with her son Ben and/or his wife for the past thirty-seven years. Could that mean that Henry died around 1889? Also, his mother Eliza passed in 1891. He was not listed as a surviving child of hers at that time. This would be consistent with a ca. 1889 death. I have not found any mention of his demise in the papers and there is nothing on Find-a-Grave. For now, I’ll stick with a death of about 1889.

Daughters Martha and Elizabeth were fairly straight forward to research, but Mary was a little more complicated. She was actually Martha’s twin sister, and the algorithm kept insisting that she was actually Martha. Since Kester’s book named Mary’s husband as Samuel C. Long, I was able to research her through him. Similarly, Ancestry wanted to confuse brothers Willis and Wallace, although they were not twins.

Sarah “Sallie” Cox was slim on the documentation. While the family lived in Franklin County, she apparently married a man by the name of Edward Hancock in 1868. Oddly enough, she was listed with her parents in the 1870 census sans Edward. Sallie died in 1874 but she did have a will. She names her brother Benjamin guardian of her minor son Oliver Hancock.
Oliver was living with his uncle and grandmother in 1880, but he disappears into the ether beyond that. When Oliver was born is also in question. The 1880 census claims he is twelve, but he was not listed in the 1870 census. Was he left out on purpose? Was his age inflated in 1880? This is another question that likely won’t be answered.
It’s unclear if Sallie and Edward separated, divorced or if he actually died. Her death record states she was a widow. Some researchers claim that Edward remained in Franklin County and lived to a ripe old age, but didn’t appear to marry again.

I wasn’t quite able to finish up JC and Eliza’s children this week. There were just so many! I have four left to tidy up then I can move on to JC’s brother Benjamin. Yes, another of the Benjamin Coxes.

Tree Ratings are back! I have 3 from this week to resolve. I have 4948 errors in the tree–372 possible duplicates, 4116 with no documents, 460 other errors.

  • The first error was a potential duplicate. The algorithm postulated that sisters Martha and Mary were the same person. This was debunked by the fact that both girls were listed on the 1860 Census.
  • A distant cousin who needed a citation. Finding documentation for him was difficult, but I did find an obituary for his older brother.
  • Finally, another suspected duplicate. This time, it truly was a duplicate. I confirmed it with several other documents and merged the two records.

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.
97 years ago – marriage of Mathias Keller (2nd ggf) and his 2nd wife Mary Bouvy Bowman
81 years ago – marriage of Dorothy Cardinal (gm) and Francis W Keller (gf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 26,923 people
End of Week: 26,947 people
Change = +24 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Finish family of John Calhoun Cox and Eliza Garrett; return to Knox County and start reviewing the family of Benjamin Cox and Elizabeth Shepherd.
  • 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 42

19 Sunday Oct 2025

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Finally, we’ve moved on to another of Ben and Sarah Cox’s children…Austin. Austin was child number eight, born in 1799. He spent his adult years in Frankfort, Kentucky, marrying Rebecca Phillips in 1831. In addition to farming, Austin was known to have served as a land surveyor and as a clerk. He was briefly appointed to the role of Secretary of State of Kentucky from February to August 1836 by Governor James Morehead. Austin and Rebecca reportedly had ten children, most of which were daughters.

Nothing unusual cropped up in researching their oldest daughter Elizabeth. Sarah, however, raised a question or two. Kester’s The Other Polks listed Sarah’s date of death as July 25, 1850. Sarah was enumerated in the 1850 US Census. The date Austin’s household was recorded was on September 10, 1850. This would seem to be a discrepancy in the data. Unfortunately, Franklin County, KY, didn’t start recording deaths until 1852. However, careful examination of the instructions for the census state the name of every person whose usual place of abode on the 1st day of June 1850. Furthermore, Sarah’s death was published in The Frankfort Commonwealth on August 6, 1850, supporting the fact that she died on July 25th.

An interesting fact about Austin P. Cox was revealed in the obituary of his daughter Laura Cox Kearns published in the Kentucky Post in 1906. There is an irregular boundary between Kentucky and Tennessee in Simpson County commonly referred to as the “Triangular Jog”. Apparently when the boundary was originally surveyed in 1780, the surveyors could not keep a straight bearing due to several factors present at the time. Several attempts were made to correct the issue and finally it was resolved in 1859 by Austin Cox and Benjamin Peeples. A historical marker identifies the site along US Hwy 31-W at the Tennessee-Kentucky State Line. You can read more about this dispute on the Kentucky Historical Society‘s website.

I was able to complete my research on Austin and Rebecca’s children this week. Interesting facts included:

  • a set of girl twins born in 1835 (Mary and Laura),
  • a couple daughters did not live past their teens (Sarah and Charlotte), and
  • a couple daughters never married (Mary and Rebecca).

One son, Wallace, was listed in Kester’s book but I could not corroborate with any documentation. He died as an infant in 1844.

I will now move forward to child number nine of Ben and Sarah–John Calhoun Cox. John married Eliza Garrett and they had eleven children. A descendant of at least one of those children is a DNA match for me. In the meantime, I’ll do a little clean up of danglers and placenames.

Tree Ratings are back! I have 3 from this week to resolve. I have 5017 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4142 with no documents, 499 other errors.

  • Up first is a second cousin whose family I think I worked on last week. He needed some citations, as did a couple of his brothers, so I fixed them up.
  • The next was a father-in-law of a distant great uncle. Since I am not keeping in-laws in my database, I have deleted him and his wife.
  • Finally, I have Francoise Bonneau who was born in 1786. She is a distant cousin with no citations. I was able to find one church record–thank you to the Catholic priests of Old Cathedral. There might be more information available in the Canadian records when I am ready to dive into that.

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.
210 years ago – marriage of Elizabeth Staton (4th ggm) and Jonathan McCullough (4th ggf)
200 years ago – marriage of Michael Keller Jr (4th ggf) and his first wife Barbara Klein
177 years ago – marriage of Mary Caywood (3rd ggm) and John S Cox (3rd ggf)
154 years ago – birth of John F Thompson (2nd ggf)
125 years ago – death of Isaac DeMoss (3rd ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,106 people
End of Week: 26,923 people
Change = -183 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Focus on family of John Calhoun Cox and Eliza Garrett
  • 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 36

07 Sunday Sep 2025

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Sally Cox. She was the first daughter born to Jonathan Piety Cox and Rachel Lemen Tigert. There really isn’t much, if any information on her existence. Robertine Cox Dees, the great-granddaughter of Jonathan and Rachel, named Sally as their daughter born in 1822.1 It would seem that Sally possibly died as a small child. She cannot be accounted for in the 1830 Census. There is only one female between the ages of five and nine identified and that likely references her sister Mary who was born in 1824. Other researchers, including Ancestry’s hints, try to attribute this Sally to one who married David Huff in 1842 in Hancock County, Kentucky. While that Sally’s father’s name was also Jonathan, it must be remembered that Jonathan was a popular Cox family name. It is not very likely that after Jonathan and Rachel moved the family north to Knox County in 1823ish, that they would have married her off to someone in a county they were not native to some distance away.

That said, all I can and will say about Sally is that she was born circa 1822, probably in Shelby County, Kentucky.

Moving on, Mary J Cox certainly has a few more details to consider. I have a couple DNA matches through her as well. There also seems to be some confusion between this Mary and another Mary who resided in Warrick County, Indiana during the same time period. The DNA algorithms are trying to attribute Warrick County Mary as a daughter of JP. She likely is descended through another branch of my Cox line. I’m sure there will be more on that later.

Mary married her distant cousin Isaac Polk. They had nine children together before her death in 1859. Isaac married a second time, however, I will research those three daughters at a later date. Mary and Isaac’s son Benjamin Franklin Polk served as county treasurer for one term in the 1880s. The family mainly resided in northern Knox County as prominent farmers and livestock growers. Both Jeanette and Henrietta were married to Ellis Hill, although not at the same time. A common ailment leading to death in this family was Bright’s Disease, an old school term for a general group of kidney diseases.

Revisiting a question from a couple weeks ago regarding Benjamin Cox, son of Jonathan and Rachel…nothing concrete was found regarding the parents of the Benjamin Cox in Montgomery County. No land records in Montgomery County were found indicating where Benjamin might have resided at the time of purchase. The Find a Grave memorial does include an obituary which states that Benjamin arrived in Montgomery Co in 1853, and he is attached to a William and Ida Cox from the Lexington, KY area. The 1880 census states his parents were born in England which is inline with information available on William and Ida.

A will for Jonathan Piety Cox was not found, so whether or not Benjamin was still alive in 1874 when JP died cannot be determined. However, I think it can be surmised that JP’s son did not move to Montgomery County and marry Mary Srader.

A lot of progress was made this week, including the pruning of several unattached branches in the tree. Next week I will continue with the descendants of Harvey Innes Cox.

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.
362 years ago – birth of Anna Shepard (9th ggm)
202 years ago – death of Jane Wilson (5th ggm)
130 years ago – birth of Ethel Thompson (ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,336 people
End of Week: 27,020 people
Change = -316 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
  1. “Indiana Genealogy, Answers #638” The Indianapolis Star, 2 Jun 1929, page 74, newspapers.com. ↩︎

2025 Week 35

31 Sunday Aug 2025

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This week I am focusing my research on John Lemen Cox, son of Jonathan Piety Cox and Rachel Lemen Tigert. He was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, but lived out the rest of his life in Knox County, Indiana. He died in November 1900.

Among the many documents available for John is the 1880 plat map. I have always been fascinated with maps and comparing how things change over time. Having grown up in Knox County, I’m always curious as to where an ancestor’s land was located compared to today’s landmarks. I will say up front that my photoshopping skills are incredibly basic. I have taken the plat map for Washington Township and overlaid it on the map from Google, using the Price Cemetery and the town of Bruceville to line things up.

I was initially curious about the railroad that runs through Bruceville and snakes across the bottom of the image. That was the Indianapolis and Vincennes Railroad which has since been dismantled. What I did wonder was if it ran along the same path as State Road 67. Some sources mention that SR 67 was laid in the railroad bed in some places. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Washington Township, but may be so further north.

I was then curious as to where John L Cox’s farm was. Newspaper accounts state he lived on this farm for 65 years! He had several sections of land which are in the red rectangle. There is a small dot near the middle top of the rectangle indicating where the residence was. Closer examination reveals that SR 67 cuts through the middle of John’s land, and his property appears to be a stone’s throw from the Knox County Fairgrounds! How very cool is that?

The review of John’s family was fairly straight forward as I already had a lot of documents collected for them. John was married twice. He had three sons with his first wife, including a set of twins. After her death, he married Naomi Steen and together they had six children who lived to adulthood. Among his children was John Crittenden Cox, elected sheriff in Knox County from 1899 to 1900.

Most of John’s nine children never married. Of those that did, there were only four grandchildren produced. Interestingly, Caroline and James, both who never married, made each other the primary beneficiaries of their estates. Caroline died first in March 1936, leaving almost everything to James. James died later that year in September. Both of them made provisions that if the other predeceased them, their respective estates moved to one of their named nieces.

Caution was necessary when researching James. There was another James Cox who was of similar age who also lived in Knox County. He was born in 1858 and died in 1935. This alternate James had been married and had several children. Some sources confuse the two men.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5170 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4235 with no documents, 559 other errors.

  • BUMMER! The tree score is gone. I don’t know if that is a temporary change or not. They are having a sale on the ProTools until Tuesday. I’ll pass for now

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.
289 years ago – death of Nathaniel Bunnell Jr (9th ggf)
245 years ago – birth of Catherine Catt (5th ggm)
225 years ago – birth of Rebecca Wilks (4th ggm)
183 years ago – marriage of Rebecca WIlliams (4th ggm) and William Briscoe (4th ggf)
181 years ago – death of Phillip Catt (7th ggf)
177 years ago – death of Joshua Frost (4th ggf)
45 years ago – death of Magdelena Kaiser Keller (ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,307 people
End of Week: 27,336 people
Change = +29 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – Sally 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
  • September 6th – FS Full Text Search at library of Benjamin F Cox (1819-?)

2025 Week 34

24 Sunday Aug 2025

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Let’s talk Benjamins–Benjamin Coxes, that is. I have ten of them. Let’s sort them out.

  • Benjamin Cox #1 (1757-1829) – This Benjamin is the granddaddy of them all, literally. He’s married to Sarah Piety.
  • Benjamin F Cox #2 (1804-1887) – This Benjamin Cox is the son of Benjamin #1. He was married first to Elizabeth Shepherd, then to Lucinda Williams. He spent his adult years in Knox County, Indiana.
  • Benjamin Cox #3 (1771-?) – This Benjamin is the son of John Cox, older brother of Benjamin #1. He was born in Maryland. He would be a cousin to #2.
  • Benjamin Cox #4 (1841-?) – This Benjamin is a grandson of Benjamin #1, through his son John Calhoun Cox.
  • Benjamin F Cox #5 (1819-?) – This Benjamin Cox is another grandson of Benjamin #1, this one through Jonathan Piety Cox. He is the focus of this week’s research.
  • Benjamin F Cox #6 (1820-1845) – This Benjamin Cox is yet a third grandson of Benjamin #1, a son of Gabriel Cox.
  • Benjamin Ballard Cox #7 (1869-?) – This Benjamin Cox is the great-grandson of Benjamin #1. He is descended through Isaac Cox and William Benjamin Cox.
  • Benjamin Franklin Cox #8 (1852-1905) – This Benjamin Cox is another great-grandson of Benjamin #1, descended through Gabriel and his son Thomas P Cox. He married Minnie Martin and lived in the Knox County, Indiana area.
  • Benjamin Franklin Cox #9 (1862-?) – This Benjamin Cox is also a great-grandson of Benjamin #1, descended from Jonathan Piety Cox and Harvey Innes Cox.
  • Benjamin Cox #10 (?-?) – This Benjamin Cox is the son of Friend Cox. This would make him a cousin of Benjamin #1.

That’s quite a collection of Benjamins. Unfortunately, I’m having a bit of difficulty with Benjamin #5. He appears to have left home by 1850–he was thirty years old–and was not listed near the family in the census. Someone on FamilySearch mistook him for someone fifteen years his junior so that relationship needed to be severed in the tree. Kester reports in his family history of the Polks that #5 married Patsy Shepherd. I can’t seem to find a marriage record for them and without an actual citation documenting this fact, I’m not sure where exactly to start looking. Benjamin #2 did marry an Elizabeth Shepherd in 1834, but #5 would have been too young to be party to that union.

Ancestry is trying to convince me that #5 moved to Montgomery County in central Indiana, married Mary Srader and raised his family there. While not completely out of the question, I haven’t found any evidence indicating that this is #5. To the best of my knowledge, I do not have any DNA matches connecting this line to my own. Of course, this would be pushing the limits of autosomal DNA matches.

Before I commit to #5 having married Mary Srader, I want to try and find something to substantiate the familial tie. I should try to locate a will for Jonathan Piety Cox in Knox County in 1874. Since court records for this county are restricted on FamilySearch, I will need to explore this more during my next visit to the library in a few weeks. Montgomery County newspapers around 1880 aren’t readily available online, so I am unable to find a death notice.

Also of concern is the spelling of Benjamin with an “e” on the end. This is not consistent with the spelling of Benjamin in my Cox family. This may be of no concern or it could be a significant detail. The 1880 Census states that B.F. Cox’s parents were born in England. #5’s parents were born in Kentucky. The more I look at this, the more I am convinced that the Montgomery County man is not the one I’m searching for. I will table research for Benjamin until September 6th. If I cannot find anything, I will add this to my to-do list for my next trip to Salt Lake City.

For now I’ll move on to the next child of JP and Rachel…John Lemen Cox.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5170 errors in the tree–376 possible duplicates, 4235 with no documents, 559 other errors.

  • A grand daughter of Harvey Innes Cox with no sources. I haven’t gotten to this family yet, but I have now updated them.
  • A 7th cousin with no sources attached. Could not locate one that was definitively him.
  • A 5th cousin with no sources attached. He was named in his grandmother’s obituary.

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.
302 years ago – birth of Nicolas Cardinal (6th ggf)
263 years ago – death of Jean Creely (8th ggf)
261 years ago – birth of Jacob Pea Jr (6th ggf)
245 years ago – death of Francis Moore (8th ggf)
229 years ago – birth of Michael Keller Jr (4th ggf)
199 years ago – death of Jerome Creely (6th ggf)
192 years ago – death of Johannes Korz (5th ggf)
168 years ago – marriage of Mary Sievers (3rd ggm) and Henry Gravel (3rd ggf)
159 years ago – marriage of Mary Briscoe (3rd ggm) and Richard O. Bennett (3rd ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,557 people
End of Week: 27,307 people
Change = -250 persons
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue focus on Jonathan P. Cox and family – John Lemen 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
  • September 6th – FS Full Text Search at library of Benjamin F Cox (1819-?)

2025 Week 33

17 Sunday Aug 2025

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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