Over the next few weeks, you’ll be seeing some changes in the Data Archives section as I am in the midst of migrating the contents of this site to a new version of the site. As the individual items are moved to the new site, they will be removed from this version of the site. The new version of the site is already active, so you can go there and see how things are progressing: http://penn.usgensites.com/chester

The new interface for the site includes makes it much easier to organize the data in a sensible fashion and provides many new features that cannot be done with the current site, such as the new Locations Map that plots the actual location of places that are included on the site.

Because the new interface utilizes a whole new database on the back-end, it will be necessary to re-register on the new site, which I suggest doing now. Once the migration is complete, the new site will completely replace this version, though that process will undoubtedly take several weeks.

Most of us are quite familiar with Futhey and Cope’s book History of Chester County, written at the end of the 1800’s, but there have been other writers who have covered local history as well. These other books though can be rather hard to find at times, as they are often produced in small numbers with limited distribution. So, I’m particularly happy to see two new books arrive in the marketplace, written by a local writer, Mark E. Dixon. Mark has been writing articles for Main Line Today since 2003, so he may already be a familiar name for some of you. Others may recognize his name from some of the genealogy mailing lists that concern our area. But, even if his name is totally new to you, I think you’ll be interested in his two new books.

The Hidden History of the Main Line: From Philadelphia to Malvern (PA)

The Hidden History of Delaware County (PA): Untold Tales from Cobb’s Creek to the Brandywine

Enjoy!

hi all

my name is lesley,i am from Heanor in the uk.i am searching for my ancestors who emigrated to chester county pa.my connection is their brother isiah walker was my grt grandfather.philip i understand married gertrude and did quite well for himself.abner seems to disappear from the 1930 census.another relative also emigrated her name was priscilla walker she married a british canadian by the name of johnston.would love to hear from present day reletives or any details about philip,abner or priscillas lives in america.

thank you.

Not that I’ve ever had to worry about such things (the odd things I do have nothing to do with having too much money, alas). This particular article caught my eye as I was searching for old articles related to West Chester:

Trenton Times, 12/20/1906
Mrs. Henry Brinton Coxe, Who Was To Have Wed, Restrained

West Chester, Pa., Dec. 30. The jury in lunacy in the case of Mrs. Isabel Brinton Coxe, the widow of the late Henry Brinton Coxe, filed its report in court here yesterday, finding her of unsound mind, and the report recommended that she be given into the care of her son, Alexander Brown Cox. The Girard Trust Company, of Philadelphia, was some time ago appointed trustee of her estate of $1,300,000.

Mrs. Coxe is at present in New York, and is said to be in ill health as the result of a stroke of apoplexy. She was formerly Miss Belle Brown the daughter of Alexander Brown, a prominent Philadelphia banker.

Some time ago she created a sensation by her determination to marry Dr. Hill, of Liverpool, whom she had met while in Europe.

Though it doesn’t mention her late husband’s family, he was the son of Charles Sidney Coxe and Ann Maria Brinton. Isabel passed away in 1907, the bulk of her large estate going to her three sons, mostly in the form of trusts.

One of my goals as a researcher has been to determine where my various ancestors were laid to rest. While of them have been relatively easy to find, such as my parents and their parents, the path get pretty murky soon after that first group. While I would ultimately like to have photographs of their stones, in some cases, I’d be content just to know where they are buried. One of the more challenging groups of these missing ancestors have been part of my McFarland grouping. My maternal grandfather’s mother was Elizabeth Watt McFarland, daughter of David Meconkey McFarland (I) and she and her parents, David and Mary (Rothrock) McFarland are all buried at Oaklands in West Chester. It is Elizabeth’s paternal grandparents that are giving me a fit, specifically her grandfather, James McFarland.

James was born in 1804 and married Mary Meconkey about 1827 and were the parents of seven children: Elizabeth, Carrie, Maggie, John, David, Mary and Sallie. From 1840 until sometime in 1844, James ran the Fountain Inn in Phoenixville, but in 1844 the application for the tavern license was denied and James headed out to Mercer County with his brother-in-law, John King, to work in the iron industry. It was not a healthy occupation, apparently, as James died on 4/19/1850, showing up in the Mortality Index for Mercer County with the cause of death shown as lung inflammation. His widow, Mary, and the children except for David M., are all listed in the Mercer County census for 1850, but they removed sometime after that, settling around Galesburg in Knox County, Illinois. At some point, Mary must have brought the family back to West Chester, as her daughter Elizabeth died in 1854 and was buried at Oaklands, and daughter Caroline was married there in 1853 to John C. Stewart. By 1857, they’re in Galesburg, where daughter died in 1857 and was buried at Hope Cemetery. When she died in 1890, Mary was buried at Hope, as were all of her daughters, except Elizabeth, and their husbands. Son John headed to California and is probably buried out there. But, at this point, I still have no idea where James McFarland was buried and my best guess is that he lies somewhere in Mercer County.

Yep, guilty as charged. I’ve put together a calendar at Zazzle featuring some of the Quaker meeting houses in Chester County that might make someone you know a nice gift.  Each month features a different meeting house from my personal collection of photographs that I’ve taken over the last few years. I’m also working on a series of notecards of scenes from Chester County that will be available soon as well. Enjoy!

Chester County Quaker Meetings by StudioMarandy

One of the typical errors that we make when we first start researching our roots is to not properly document the information that we find. It’s probably safe to say that we’re all guilty of this to a certain extent. Perhaps a more problematic error, however, is that of not looking far enough when conducting searches and settling for the first bits of data that we find and not going any further. Simply put, the more collaborating data we can gather to support an idea, the more faith we can put in our ideas and the more reliable and valuable our research becomes.

If you think of your research in terms of a scientific approach, it may become easier to visualize a good approach for conducting the research needed. Start with the idea that you are trying to prove and consider the steps necessary to verify the data. When it comes to proving an idea to be true, keep in mind that using someone’s online genealogy data is not likely to be considered valid proof for any but the most casual researcher. Think about the types of records that might exist for the time period involved and see how many exist that support your idea. Records that were produced closer to the time period in which you are interested will usually prove more valuable than more modern resources As a case in point, in the most recent article in the Spotlight, several different types of older resources are used to pinpoint the modern location of an old cemetery.

Since my two primary hobbies are genealogy and gardening. my husband likes to describe me as “collecting dead people and playing in the dirt”, so I often find myself wondering what thoughts might be going through the listener’s mind when they hear that description. Are they wondering if the two are related, and, if so, how? To his credit, he didn’t even balk when we wandered through a graveyard or two while honeymooning in Chester County - ok, it may have been three. He’s a history buff himself, so he really does understand, mostly. He did mention at one point though that it was a good thing that we don’t actually live in Chester County, as I would probably disappear for weeks on end in the stacks at the historical society, rather than just my occasional day trips now. And either he’s really good at faking interest, or he actually does get a kick out of some of the more unusual stories that I come across while researching. How tolerant is YOUR family of your hobby?

Well, at least I BELIEVE I am, but I have a missing link.

The above Isaac had a son named John (1712-1791), who in turn had a son named John (1746-1795). The younger son’s wife was Susanna Jackson (a descendant of Ephraim Jackson (1658-1731) of Concordville PA and probably unrelated to the Isaac line). This John and his family were Loyalist sympathizers during the Revolution, and left for the Pennfield Colony near Beaver Harbour in Nova Scotia (now New Brunswick) in 1783…after his property had been seized by PA authorities for having sold blankets to the British Army in Philadelphia, and supposedly having joined the British Army there in 1780.

This Jackson family apparently had trouble adjusting to the pioneering life in Canada, and the parents, as Quakers, apparently ‘disowned’ one another…after the birth there in 1788 of a son named Thomas, the only child of theirs actually born in Canada. (Thomas’ birth was recorded in Chester County Quaker records). The mother, Susanna, petitioned the Philadelphia Quaker Yearly Meeting in 1788 for assistance in returning to the US. It was granted, and she was able to return to the Wilmington, Delaware domain of the Society of Friends, along with some of her children, including the infant Thomas. (The father, John, instead went to the domain of the Baltimore MD Yearly Meeting, at the meeting in Gunpowder, where he died, probably as a reinstated Quaker, in 1795.)

The last record I’ve been able to find of Susanna and her son Thomas is from 1799, when their Quaker records were transferred from one of the local Quaker Monthly Meetings in New Castle County, DE, to the Kennett Monthly Meeting in nearby Kennet Square, PA.  From that point on, I’ve not been able to find anything more on her or definitively on her son Thomas, although there were many Thomas Jacksons living in Chester and nearby PA, MD and DE counties between 1800 and 1850.

Thomas is my potential missing link.

From US Censuses taken in Illinois and Michigan between 1860 and 1880, my KNOWN greatgrandfather, John C. Jackson, reported that he had been born in Pennsylvania in about 1815, and that his parents were born in Canada. Given that Jackson is a common name, and was especially so among the 19th Century Quaker communities, there were many Thomas Jacksons in Chester County in those years. Which one MAY have been the man who MAY have been the father of my greatgrandfather, I have no idea.  The first record I’ve been able to find about my known greatgrandfather is that, in October, 1855, in Lake County, Illinois, he married a widow named Anastacia Redmond Nolan, and they in turn became the parents of my grandfather, John Charles Jackson, born there in 1859.  Another of their children was a Thomas Jackson, born in the 1860’s, but no longer censused after 1870.

The chances are remote that I’ll ever solve this missing brick from my wall in the person of this presumed Thomas Jackson, but there is always a glimmer of hope. 

Sandy Ferguson has been very patient with me for the last couple of years as I have been searching for this Thomas, and I could not have gotten this far in this project without her help.

Bob Wilson

Beaufort SC

July 7, 2010

When researching our roots, we may have a  tendency to overlook some areas that might prove fruitful, just because they may not seem to apply to our immediate search. Or, we may ignore such information because we feel that we already have enough info on the person, so don’t feel the need to look at more records.

As a case in point, I was recently looking at ancestral lines for my aunt’s ancestors. Specifically, I was looking for her mother’s birth data, since I had come across conflicting data. In the process, I discovered that ships passenger logs quite often include both the passenger’s birth date as well as their birth place. Ah HA! Taking the info from the ship’s list allowed me to verify the SSN death record, which in turn let me verify the obituary (which had no birthdate). Knowing then that I was on the right track, I could find her parents and on up the line.

To help keep this concept fresh, I’m adding a section in the Forum for Tips and Tricks so feel free to your own suggestions there. And please remember that the best way to get answers to questions on this site is to post a Query rather than sending me feedback. Using a Query allows all the visitors to the site to see your question, rather than just me, so you’re far more likely to get some help!