This week I want to do something a little different–DNA match investigation. I’m looking at the matches descending from Benjamin Cox and Sarah Piety. I want to tag the shared matches to see if I can pull any additional matches into my tree.

ELIZABETH COX MILLER: Ben and Sarah’s daughter Elizabeth married widower Samuel Miller for her second husband. Unfortunately, the algorithm is attaching two of his daughters from the first marriage to Elizabeth. The first one, AA, is through his daughter Louisiana. She has two shared matches that are in my tree already. Interestingly, one is connected through my Lowe line. The other is through Elizabeth Cox.

There are two matches descended from Margaret Miller. The first, ME, has a shared match that is descended through Mary Gott. Mary Gott was the mother of Nancy Squires Cox. The other, MA, did not have any shared matches currently in the tree.

SUSANNAH COX BALLARD: Susannah Cox Ballard has one match (DF) the algorithm has descended through her son Bland Ballard, however, it would seem it has attached her to the wrong Bland Ballard. This match does not have a shared matches in my tree.

JOSEPH COX: Four of my matches in my tree are descended through Joseph’s daughter Mary Elizabeth. From what I can tell, Mary Elizabeth’s daughter Isabelle was born out of wedlock and her father, to the best of my knowledge, is unidentified. Mary Elizabeth’s brother Henry played a significant role in Isabelle’s life and is misattributed as her father.

JONATHAN PIETY COX: ThruLines has assigned two different Mary Jane Coxes to Jonathan. Based on preliminary findings in FamilySearch, the second Mary Jane might be the daughter of Jonathan Cox who was the son of David Cox who married Margaret Bruce. I will need to investigate this further.

NANCY COX: ThruLines has attributed a Nancy Cox Nelson as a daughter of Ben and Sarah, however, I have no record of them having a daughter with that name. Also, the documents other researchers have attached to her all have her residing in Maryland and never in Kentucky.

SARAH COX: The Sarah Cox ThruLines has assigned as a daughter of Ben and Sarah was born in Tennessee. Ben and Sarah’s daughter never married and has no known children.

BENJAMIN F COX: The algorithm has a match (LD) descended through BF’s son Albert. There is conflicting information from other researchers about the parentage of Albert. Based on his location, it is doubtful BF’s son Albert is the ancestor to LD.

After tagging all the shared matches with those I have added to my tree, I then filtered by each of the eight lines.

• Finetta Cox only has seven shared matches and none of them overlapped with any of her siblings’ groups.
• Isaac Cox has nineteen shared matches. Five of those have already been matched to my tree and all five shared matches with at least one descendant of Isaac’s siblings, most frequently Joseph. There were two who are not in my tree and there is not enough information available to add them.
• Elizabeth Cox has thirty-four shared matches. Two of Elizabeth’s matches are shared matches with descendants of Joseph. Not enough information is available to match the others to my tree.
• Susannah Cox has one hundred two shared matches. Forty-four of those matched were shared matches with descendants of Jonathan, John Calhoun, and Austin.
  • I was able to correct a misassigned match and have three generations of the same family tagged in my tree. They actually descend from Isaac and Susannah Tomlinson Cox through their daughter Mary Cox. Mary married John Lemen and had a son named Gabriel. Gabriel married Mary Gott Squires Caplinger’s daughter Mary Caplinger which may have given the DNA a bit of a boost. Mary Caplinger is the half-sister of my 4th great grandmother Nancy Squires Cox.
  • I was also able to assign the mother of a match in my tree.
• Austin Cox has one hundred thirty-four shared matches. The vast majority shared matches with at least one of Austin’s siblings, if not two or three.
• Joseph Cox had one hundred fifty-nine shared matches. There were a good number of these shared matches that were not common with the other siblings.
  • A huge boon was discovered sifting through these shared matches. A seventh cousin one time removed was discovered! She is descended from FRIEND COX!!! This gives me some proof that the Friend Cox and Isaac Cox lines are related.
  • There are a couple shared matches that potentially connect back to the Polk line. This would make sense since Sarah Piety’s mother was a Polk. Their lineage didn’t quite match up with what I have entered so I will need to readdress that later when I am researching the Polks.
• Jonathan Piety Cox has two hundred twenty shared matches. What was interesting is that several of them are identified as primarily being a match on my mom’s side of the family, not my dad’s. This could make sense, however, since Jonathan migrated to Knox County with Gabriel. Jonathan’s descendants could have intermarried with ancestors on my mother’s side. This would theoretically boost the DNA count since there were multiple sources in common with my own.

Having made a DNA match with a descendant of Friend Cox, I have filtered by those twenty-nine shared matches.

• Match MD appears to be descended from a Charles Cox. Friend’s son Benjamin had a son named Charles. To better confirm this match, I will need to build out the tree from Benjamin. That was on my to do list anyway.

The last thing I want to do in this exercise is check those matches that supposedly have Ben and Sarah as a common ancestor to see if any of they share any of my potential Cox matches. The ones that do not exhibit any shared DNA with my possible Cox matches will be relegated to my unknown match list for review at a later date.

• LD has several to my Briscoe line. There is one shared Cox match, but nothing to make me believe this person is related through the Cox family.
• AA shares DNA was a match on my Lowe Line.
• MH has no shared Cox matches.
• PH has no shared Cox matches.
• KP has several who share matches with Joseph Cox. I am inclined to think that she is related further back on the Polk line.
• MC has a few shared Cox matches.
• CT & ET has one shared Cox match. They are managed by the same person.
• JLF has no shared Cox matches.
• KAH has one shared Cox match…Friend Cox.
• DF only has one shared Cox match…Elizabeth.
• MT only has one shared Cox match…Joseph.

Overall, I think this was a worthwhile exercise. I was able to make a few matches with my tree. More importantly, I was able to link Isaac Cox’s family to Friend Cox’s family through my DNA match. I am more convinced now that I should include information about Friend and Gabriel’s family in my manuscript.

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Error resolution. The last available update: I have 5018 errors in the tree–511 possible duplicates, 4059 with no documents, 448 other errors.

• The first error to correct this week is the father-in-law of a distant cousin. Normally I delete these, however, his wife is a Cox. I haven’t figured out if she is part of the Cox family I am currently researching or a different one. He was missing references so I found a couple census records for him.
• The second is a distant cousin needing references…the 1950 census got that ball rolling.
• The last error to fix is actually two errors. This 3rd cousin had a possible duplicate and no references. He is not a duplicate; his mother’s obituary clearly states she had two sons named John. The first died as an infant. It took a ChatGPT search to find his obituary.

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Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,279 people
End of Week: 27,321 people
Change = +42 persons
Tasks for coming week:

• Continue research on Isaac Cox, “The Immigrant” and his wife Susannah Tomlinson.
• Review Coxes of Cox Creek
• Run newspaper search, especially for articles recounting local history
• Review the Cox package of information from Sweden
• Look for documents in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky

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