52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 33: Family Legends

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

When I first started researching my family I was told about all kinds of possible relatives
  • We’re related to Will Rogers.
  • We’re related to the Coors family
  • We have Native American roots, possibly Cherokee

It’s funny, that all of these “legends” are on my maternal grandmother’s family. As I worked through the research, one generation at a time, I have disproved these legends.

Rogers Angle. We do have Rodger/Roger ancestors. Eliza A. Rodgers married Ebenezer Loveless on 19 March 1871 in Chattooga County, Georgia. They later moved to Faulkner County, Arkansas. Eliza’s parents might be David Rodgers and Rebecca Waddell. They might have had nine children, all born in South Carolina. I suppose it is still possible that an ancestor of Will Rogers and an ancestor of Eliza Rodgers might be the same. But see below.

Coors Angle. Now the Coors family came from the Rhine area of Germany and arrived in the U.S. in 1868[1] and my Coor family has been in the United States since the early 1700s. There is likely no relationship.

Native American Angle. I haven’t found any reference to Native American roots either. All of my paper research points to our ancestors as being Caucasian. The DNA evidence points to the same. It’s funny how the stories get past down. I’ve had second and third cousins say they heard the same story.

When I look at a biography of Will Rogers, I read he was part Cherokee Indian, born in Oklahoma. It is possible these two stories have merged. If we’re related to Will Rogers, we must also be part Cherokee. But reviewing Will Rogers’ line, his father, Clement Vann Rogers, and grandfather, Robert Rogers, Jr. were living in Georgia and moved to Oklahoma before the removal of Cherokees.[2] Our Rodgers line was living in South Carolina and were not moved to Oklahoma.

My grandmother’s ancestry shows her family has been here a long time, since before the American Revolution. However, they were mostly poor farmers. Perhaps this wishful thinking elevated their standing, at least in their minds and stories.

[1] “Adolph Coors,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Coors.
[2] “Clement V. Rogers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_V._Rogers.

Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family

Comments

  1. TeresaAugust 16, 2018 at 12:24 PM

    Interesting how you were able to trace back and disprove the legends! Thanks for sharing :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments on this blog will be previewed by the author to prevent spammers and unkind visitors to the site. The blog is open to other-than-just family members particularly those interested in family history and genealogy.

Popular posts from this blog

Last One Standing: Reginald F. Lancaster

Image
It is important to document the lives of those who left no descendants. I have been researching and writing as much as I can about family members who either never married or who married but had no children. They have no descendants who will do the research or even take DNA tests. But they will not be forgotten. Reginald F. Lancaster, my second great-uncle, was the son of George Wilson Lancaster and Martha Jane Polly. He was born 22 July 1887 in Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona, the fifth child of six. [1] His parents divorced when he was five. [2] His father moved back to Texas and Reggie probably never saw his father again. Reggie’s mother married Noah Flood Parks in 1893 and he grew up with two younger half-sisters. Sometime in the early 1900s, the family moved to Imperial County, California, to do farming. When Reggie registered for the draft, he was working at ranching. At age 29, he was of medium height and weight and had blue eyes and brown hair. He was still single. [3] I have
Read more

John Coor of Copiah County Made an Agreement with Joel Hoggatt

Image
This week at RootsTech 2024, FamilySearch announced a new feature that an every-word search was available for U.S. deeds and probates. It is still in the trial mode and can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/ . This is the search screen. It clearly states it is for US land and probate records and Mexico notary records. You can do a keyword search or if you click on the “more options” you can add a name. My Find I immediately gave it a try and searched first for records of the COOR family using the keyword search. Up first came deeds from Wayne County, North Carolina.  At the top, you can filter using record year, record type, record place, and collection. For the past few days, I have mainly filtered by record place. I filtered down to Mississippi. You can even filter to the county. The first entry was a document I had not seen before. It was an 1826 agreement between John Coor and Joel Hoggatt to build a set of grist and sawmills. John Coor is my 4x-great-grandfath
Read more

Locating the Comic Book that Named My Great-Uncle

Image
Have you ever thought to look for an ancestor in a comic book? Many years ago, while speaking with my grandmother, she told me that a comic book had been written about her brother, Rayburn D. (R.D.) Lancaster while he was serving in the Army Air Forces in World War II. I thought that interesting and tried several times to locate this comic book in comic book stores. However, none of the proprietors knew what I was talking about. These stores were more focused on superhero comics. R. D. Lancaster enlisted in the Army Air Corps on 14 January 1942 as an aviation cadet. He was twenty-one years old. [1] He trained in Chickasha, Oklahoma. When he wrote home, he said he had acquired the nickname “Rip.” During his first solo flight, in checking his parachute, he noticed a string and upon pulling on the errant string, caused him to be lifted several feet off the ground. [2] Fast forward in time, a fellow volunteer at the History Center where I volunteer is an avid fan of comic books, so
Read more