Note to Self

I've gotten in the habit of writing notes in the comment section of Records in my search results at Ancestry.   The comments help me remember details about the image and to know that I have viewed the image.  This is a great timesaver when the image is of an index.  I leave notes on how to navigate to the page it references and sometimes details about the names listed in the records.  This is particularly helpful with common surnames in my research such as King and Cook where there are MANY men with the given names, John, William, Thomas etc. An example of one of my typical notes is shown below.  If my notes are helpful to others, that's even better.   

Reading thru some Cook(e) Confederate Pensions filed in Louisiana

In my efforts to find more on my Cook cousins I've started reading thru the Confederate Pension applications to see if I could locate any cousins from the lines of those that my brother most closely matches thru YDNA.  I started with Louisiana though I don't know if any of the Shem Cooke lines ended up there or were in the area for a time.  FamilySearch has the Louisiana Confederate Pension Applications at their site.  While they aren't searchable in the normal fashion they are listed alphabetically in groups and you can navigate to the surname of your choice within the group.  The Cook pension applications start on image 544 of 1454 in the section that covers
Como, Angie-Desire ------ Corley, Jackson S

Confederate Pensions Applications were State pensions and there are differences in the pension applications for each state that paid these as well as within each state over time.  Confederate pensions were applied for within the state of residence which many times wasn't the state where they had been living at the time of service or where they had enlisted.  Requirements for drawing a pension varied as well.

In the Louisiana Confederate Pension Applications, there were files for 26 Cook/Cooke soldiers.  Of those 26, 14 were filed by the widow.  If you are searching for the place of birth and birthdate for a soldier, and the soldier as applied you will likely find that info in his application along with the name of his wife and children if he married and had a family.  While widow's applications aren't as great for finding the place of birth or birthdate for the soldier, they do contain the marriage date and death date.
Less than half of the Cook/Cooke soldiers who applied in Louisiana were born there,   The image below is a list of the Places of Birth given for the files I read in which the POB was not in Louisiana.

The most interesting application was a widow's application where the soldier had begun filing for a divorce but had died before it was finalized.  The widow got her pension.  This file was full of information about the filing of the divorce and also many letters detailing a change of address for the widow after she had begun drawing the pension.

Riddles in New Mexico Prison & Correctional Records

One of my favorite things to do outside of my own research and helping adoptees find their bio families is to find an interesting database at Ancestry and search for one of my not so common surnames.   Today I searched the New Mexico, Prison and Correctional Records, 1905-1958 for the Riddle surname.  My Riddle line ends in East TN with the marriage of Millie Riddle to George Hitchcock.  You can read more about my Riddle line by searching on Riddle using the search at the top left portion of this page.

New Mexico, Prison and Correctional Records, 1905-1958
(https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=9171)

The search for Riddle in this database returned 4 items which detailed 3 different individuals.  Two of the results were about the same person.

In addition to their Name, alias and intake date you can find a great deal of information listed for each prisoner:  photos, physical description, names of relatives or friends, previous convictions, parents. names and places of birth are just a few of the additional items included.

If you do search this database, be sure that you click thru to the second image which is an outline of the human body with notes about scars, moles and other identifying marks.  The pictures from both of Milton Crume Riddle's intake papers are shown below.

Milton Crume Riddell 1931 intake picture

Milton Crume Riddle 1934 intake picture

His family has Virginia and Kentucky connections though they lived in Texas most of his life. Check those obscure databases.

Garrison King--Dickson Co TN--list of heirs

I don't know that this Garrison King has any connection to my own King line(or Cooke line for that matter as his wife was a Cook).  He and Gilford Cook are neighbors in 1840 census(Dickson Co TN) and they live near some of the ancestors of several of my autosomal DNA matches.  These are matches who match me on a segment(s) that I can attribute to having come from my paternal Grandfather whose parents were William Green Cook and Jane Bell King Cook.  Below is a page from Garrison King's Probate file which is on Ancestry in the TN Probate Records Database. It shows the distribution of the money from his estate to his heirs.

Tennessee, Wills and Probate Records, 1779-2008
https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=9176
Dickson County
Estate Settlements, 1800-1885, Jordan, John P-Northam, Samual
Garrison King"s Folder
Images 309-338 
(The above image is a cropped screenshot of image 321 accessed 1 June 2018)

I would love to find something like this for each of my ancestors.

My daughter's Full mtDNA results and analysis

During what has to be the busiest week for me in some time,  I've actually managed to make a bit of headway with my daughter's mtDNA results.  Her full mtDNA test was done thru FamilyTreeDNA. Usually, it's Tuesday when we get notifications of new matches.  I received a notification that she had a new match and was a bit confused when  I checked and it was actually a 4th cousin from my Hitchcock line but on his Dad's side  This is really interesting because while he does descend from Millie Riddle Hitchcock (see link for more info) who many Family Trees list as Millie Combs and sister to my Nancy Combs Fleming.  Millie's line is NOT his mtDNA line.  His matrilineal line goes back to a Sarah Combs who could be an older sister of my Nancy Combs or at least connected to Nancy's direct mother line..  So I've been looking at the full mtDNA matches who are Genetic Distance of Zero.  There are about 18 matches at that level,  of which about 7 have trees. In addition to those 7 with trees, 2 matches have their most distant FEMALE ancestor listed.  In between everything else I needed to get done I began building a mtDNA tree with the mtDNA lines of those that had trees.  If I can identify the others Most Distant Female Ancestor I will add them to the tree also.  I also added my daughters mtDNA line to the tree.  I build these out from the tester and add GD=0  in the Suffix box of the tester's profile so that I can identify & view their pedigree easily.

I realize mtDNA connections can be a good way back--many generations-a thousand(s) years even.  Our Haplogroup is H3-T152C!  Those who had trees with the exception of 1 seem to all lead back to early East Tennessee.  Unlike YDNA,  the surnames associated change with each generation.  I keep seeing Combs, Campbell, Wallace, Hoskins which makes me wonder if I am about to the point where we connect or have a group of families that traveled and interacted whose matrilineal line is intermarrying.  My mother, while she hasn't done the mtDNA, has done an autosomal test.  Her mtDNA should be the same as my daughter's since the mtDNA which I passed to my daughter was mtDNA I had received from her.  It also seems to me like the backward mutation was prior to 1800s as those Genetic Distance 0 folks who have their tree back beyond that point and have still not connected likely got it back before that point. We do have one of the Hoskin/Parkers who matches with us in our Autosomal tests(Moms)

Hopefully, I will get some time this next week to search thru our matches for some of the surnames that keep appearing within the early East TN time frame. 

I would be interested in hearing how others go about working with their mtDNA results--especially if they have done the mtFULL.  I've heard so many say they are disappointed by the results or don't know what to do with them.  I guess if you have a more common haplogroup that can really be hard to work with but still I think I'd be looking for those in the area where my mtDNA line was just to see if I could make connections that extend my research further back.  I'd be glad to inch back a generation at a time.  Everyone's approach will likely be different and dependent on how common the haplogroup is and the number of close matches.  If you have tested, what's your approach with your mtDNA results?  What works for you? 

Down the Rabbit Hole--Wades of Rutherford Co TN

This "rabbit hole" adventure starts out with me finding this snippet shown below on  Newspapers.com and wanting to know more about this Wade family.

The Tennessean 29 Dec 1889 Sunday morning edition  pg 15 People and Events Murfreesboro section  (www.newspapers.com)  listed as The Tennessean Paper at the time it was The Daily American (Nashville, TN)

Fount and Eth B. Wade appear to be sons of Levi Wade.  Just out of curiosity I pulled their 1850 Census entry where they are living in their father's household.

1850 US Federal Population Census, Rutherford Co. Tennessee Wilkinson Crossroad Dist. Stamped pg #191 written pg #381 https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=8054 images reproduced by FamilySearch  (household entry carries over onto the top of the following page)

This Levi Wade's place of birth is given as Maryland.   He appears to be the one who is listed as a son of James Wade and Ann Magruder in Ancestry's North American Family Histories Collection 1500-2000 with the information noted as coming from Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Book : NSDAR: Volume 159: 1920.  This entry also shows his connection to Maryland as he appears to be the great-grandson of Joseph Magruder who died in Montgomery Co MD in 1793.

I found 4 marriages for a Levi Wade all in Rutherford Co. TN.  The DAR lineage book noted that Mary Henderson was his 2nd marriage

1st Marriage to Mary A E. Bedford 17 Jan 1821
2nd Marriage to Mary Henderson 8 Jan 1828
3rd Marriage to Virginia Barksdale 5 Nov 1839
4th Marriage to Catherine E Thompson 7 Jan 1864(one compiled Ancestry.com source says 1863)

Virginia's FindAGrave entry says that Levi Wade was a widower with 12 children when he and Virginia married(see above link-Click on her name). She died sometime prior to Levi's marriage to Catherine likely around 1863 though her Find-A-Grave entry gives 1868 and is not sourced.

Imagine the number of descendants.  This is something to think about if you are a descendant and have done DNA testing.  You'd have 21 other possible lines of descent for cousins as Virginia and Levi went on to have 10 children.  According to some of the info I ran across while trying to see how many times he married, he was a TN state senator who voted for succession at the last minute and was away in Virginia when the Yankees took over his plantation. Levi filed a claim in 1876 with the Southern Claims Commision but it was disallowed.  He lived to be in his mid-80s.  There were many mentions of him in the Tennessee newspapers which you can read if you have access to Newspapers.com.  Virginia's family cemetery(Barksdale) has some details about the Union troops taking over the family plantation.