Ancestry Saturday: A Break in the Snow

The snow melted and the next round of this brutal winter has yet to arrive. That allowed me to venture out to find the burial locations for the only known blood relatives in my home city. Found.

Curtis Verne Priest and the Cox-Priest family are at the southern end of Section One of Newark, Ohio's historic Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Ancestry Saturday: A Kinship with a Fourth Cousin Four Times Removed

One has a lot of fourth cousins.  So, one wouldn't want to dwell too much on fourth cousins four times removed unless they were famous. 

Curtis Verne Priest wasn't famous, but I'm tracking him nonetheless.

 

Verne lived in Newark, Ohio.  That's where I live.

 

Newark Advocate, 6 Dec 1961.  Cousin Verne is front row, far right.

He was a 1916 charter member of the Newark Rotary Club.  I'm a member of the Newark Rotary Club today. 

 

Since I grew up an hour and a half away and Verne's family was the only one I could ever find that has Newark roots, it's pretty extraordinary to have Newark Rotary in common as 2016 looms.  2016 is the 100th anniversary of Newark Rotary.

 

Newark Advocate, 8 Jul 1905 has Verne out at my stomping grounds almost 100 years before I stomped there

He is mentioned in the local newspaper for having been out to Black Hand Gorge in Eastern Licking County.  I've been mentioned in the same paper for my treks out to Black Hand Gorge.

 

In fact, I'd be willing to bet Verne ventured into the Black Hand Gorge interurban tunnel that was built in 1903.  I didn't go through it on a train, but I've walked through it dozens of times, albeit more than 100 years after cousin Verne.

 

I definitely feel a kinship to this kin.

 

Verne's third great grandfather, Gabriel Cock, was my seventh great grandfather.  He is part of that same family with the surnames Cox and Friend.

 

His mother was Agnes (Cox) Priest who was third cousin to my great great grandmother Lummie (Cox) Bernard.

 

I'm still tracking my fourth cousin four times removed.  Where else did he go that I've yet to discover in my town?

Ancestry Saturday: On a Flatboat Down The Ohio River

I'm not sure I'll ever know for sure, but the wharf at Wellsburg, West Virginia was a highly likely place where my ancestors got on a flat boat that brought them down the Ohio River.

My fourth great grandfather James McConnell, the ancestor for whom our family gained pre-Ohio-Statehood First Families of Ohio status, was one of them.  This would have been the closest place to get on the mighty Ohio from his home in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Friend Cox, my sixth great grandfather, was one of the early settlers of this part of Virginia when he came here and built a fort, Fort Cox, in 1771.  The wharf likely brought his grandson and my fourth great grandfather, Isaac Newton Cox, down the river too.

The Downing, Gutridge, and Naylor families all could have gotten on the path that brought them to Southwest Ohio right here at this wharf.

I'm glad they did that.  I'm glad my kids can still visit the place.