52 Ancestors 2022: Week 5: Branching Out

 At just about 100,700 people in my family tree on Ancestry - you can say I've done a *bunch* of branching out over the years. I first started my Ancestry tree in 2008 when I was just fifteen years old. I'd already been doing genealogy for eight years at that point. This year makes twenty-two years for me. 

A handful of years ago - oh, around 2011 or 2012 - I started on a personal mission to figure out how I was related to every person buried in Henderson County, Kentucky. Realistically, I got about 45% of the way there. I extensively worked on every cemetery in the county except for the biggest ones -- Fernwood, Fairmont, St. Louis, and Roselawn. 

My most extensive project came in August/September 2021 when I decided to thoroughly go over each and every person buried in the two Gibson cemeteries in Corydon, Henderson County, Kentucky. Yes - I'm related to each person in those two cemeteries, and it was definitely a rollercoaster ride in figuring out how. 

I know some people like to keep their family trees for 'direct ancestors' only but... where's the fun in that? Sometimes the 'juicy' relatives are your collateral lines. Look at Ed Singleton - the man who started John Dillinger into his road of mischief and debauchery... Ed was my 5th cousin 3x removed. 

President Abraham Lincoln, with whom I share a birthday, is the husband of the sister-in-law of my 3rd cousin 5x removed. The midwife present during his birth was Margaret "Peggy" (LaRue) Walters -- her Grandparents were my 7x Grandparents... but she was also the wife of my 5th Great-Granduncle, Conrad Walters. 

President James Madison was my 2nd cousin 8x removed. President George Washington was the Great-Granduncle of the wife of my 5th Great-Granduncle. 

Pocahontas was a wife of my 13x Great-Grandfather, John Rolfe Jr. I descend through his wife, Jane Pierce, and their daughter Elizabeth Pierce Rolfe. (I will be able to prove this 100% once I (or my Mom) does our mtDNA testing since it'll go back much further than autosomal.)

Governor Lazarus Whitehead Powell Jr was the nephew of the husband of my 2nd cousin 5x removed. Politician John Y. Brown was the husband of my 7th cousin 7x removed. General Samuel Hopkins, our towns founder, was the Uncle of the wife of the paternal grandfather of the husband of the wife of my 8th cousin 6x removed. Now that's distant! 

It's those "rabbit holes" we go down when doing genealogy that can really prove the most fun and interesting! 

Look at the neat people I've figured out I'm related to via DNA that are distant cousins -- Scott Porter from the Tennessee Wraith Chasers (TV shows like Ghost Asylum & Haunted Towns) is my 3rd cousin 1x removed through the Mefford's. Ryan Upchurch is my 4th cousin 2x removed through our Burgess lines that's *if* I have my Burgess mystery solved.

Hugh Hefner was the 4th cousin 1x removed of the husband of my 7th cousin 2x removed. 

I'm telling ya -- branch out! You never know who or what you might discover. I grew up with the folklore that I was descended from Daniel Boone -- that wasn't true... but we are related. 3rd Great-Granduncle of the husband of my 3rd cousin 3x removed. I think we *might* have a slightly closer relationship because my 4x Grandmother was indeed Rosella (Boone) Blandford. 

So take that chance sometime. Work on that random sixth cousin that sounds interesting. Heck, I've got a Wilder line and y'all have no idea how badly I wanted to be kin to Almanzo Wilder and thus related to Laura (Ingalls) Wilder, one of my favorite authors of ALL time.

Go. Down. The. Bunny. Holes!

See y'all on the other side. 

52 Ancestors 2022: Week 4: Curious

Originally, I wrote this blog in November of 2021 just to chronicle how I went about finding Owen Koonce in the census. It took some real sleuthing and deciphering. When I noticed the week four prompt was "curious," I decided to repurpose this post for that because, let's face it, "Koonce" being transcribed as "Wacek," that's pretty curious in my book, isn't it yours? 

So follow along here of how I discovered "Wacek" to be Owen Lawrence Koonce.

For pretty much the entirety of Henderson County - and even other areas I have family and have researched extensively - the 1880 census is absolute trash in quality. Most pages look like they were filled out by a 2 year old and scanned onto Ancestry by a 3 year old. That's even being kind about it.

For some odd reason, all the pages look smudged, cut off, and crooked. I wish I understood why. I really wish I had a proper explanation as to why the 1880 census looks so horrible (maybe I'll Google it later) but for right now, I don't. Sometimes, pages worth of the 1880 census aren't even transcribed on Ancestry, because you honestly cannot read it. 

Unless you had the physical copy of it and used a magnifying glass, you can't transcribe it, and not in the least bit transcribing it accurately. So Ancestry's auto-transcription is totally useless, and so are those of us who try and help Ancestry along by transcribing and fixing errors. We do the absolute best we can.

Sometimes, other decades of the census look like complete garbage, too. I've seen a few pages of the 1850, 1860, 1870, and even 1900 be unreadable. This particular instance pertains to a couple pages of the 1900 census here in Henderson County. 

The person I was working on back in late August was Owen Lawrence Koonce. Owen was the first of many Owen's to come in his family line. He was born to Wendell Koonce and Nancy Woods on December 29th, 1819, in Tennessee; perhaps the Rutherford County area. 

On June 11th, 1841, in Rutherford County, he married Miss Arrena Sims. By the 1850 census, they're living in Wilson County, TN, and by the 1870 census - they're in the Cairo area of Henderson County, Kentucky. They truly became the patriarch and matriarch of the Henderson County Koonce's. 

Arrena and Owen are both buried out in the Gibson Cemetery. Going with dates on their tombstones - I know Arrena died in 1889. But Owen's supposed death date on his tombstone is November 11th, 1907. Well - his tombstone is difficult to read. It's in desperate need of some tender love and care. I couldn't for the life of me find him in the 1900 census, so I had started to wonder if he died in 1897, instead. Maybe someone had transcribed his tombstone wrong (originally transcribed in the 1960's.) 

I decided to give it one last try to find him and this time, not by the name Owen or the last name Koonce. I restricted Ancestry's search perimeters to "Exact location: Henderson County, Kentucky," and for anyone born within 5 years of 1819 in Tennessee. 

I started going through the matches and curiously found one transcribed as just simply: Wacek. Hmm, Wacek. That sounds Russian or something. Could it be an indentured servant? Could it be a foreign relative? Henderson doesn't have many Russian families, but we've got lots of German ones. Maybe Wacek is a German first name. Curiously enough though, it says that Wacek was born about 1820, in Tennessee, and his parents hailed from North Carolina, and that he's widowed. 

Well by golly, Wacek, you match the description of Owen Koonce. Wacek's name is towards the top of the page, so the head of household is on the page before it. Flipping to the page before, it's slightly more legible and sure enough, the head of household is John Beverly Gibson, Owen's son-in-law. So he was living with his son-in-law and daughter, Sarah Jane (Koonce) Gibson. 

Going back to the page Wacek is listed on... you really can't even make out anything. I don't think what it says is even remotely close to 'Wacek.' It probably says, "Koonce, O.L." or "Koonce, Owen," and I can only imagine Koonce could be spelled wrong. I've seen it as Koontz, Counce, Coontz, etc. 

Satisfied with my findings though, I edited "Wacek" to "Koonce, Owen," and left a note that the transcription was wrong, and the image is down right unreadable. 

Ultimately, Owen, you're lost no longer in the 1900 census. 

As you can see, his tombstone is in desperate need of some gentle (but very thorough) cleaning. I've bought some D/2 over the Christmas holiday and plan to get out to my ancestral cemetery for some cleanings very soon. I'd have been out there this week (third week of March) but I've been down with E. Coli, unfortunately. Maybe next week!