On This Day: Family Members Born on February 29

On this day, February 29, I found four leap year births in my family tree.

Family Events
1828 - Birth: Ann Jemima Coor-877, Copiah Co, Mississippi, USA
1868 - Birth: Eunice Belle Sabin-3861, Cedar Falls, Black Hawk Co, Iowa, USA
1868 - Birth: Linnie Sarah Gorrell-205, Cooper Co, Missouri, USA
1884 - Birth: Frank W. Hork-342, Muskegon, Muskegon Co, Michigan, USA

First One Has Conflicts
The first one listed above was on my mother’s side, a third great-aunt, Ann Jemima Coor. According to my genealogy database, she was born 29 February 1828 in Copiah County, Mississippi to John Coor and Ann Kethley as the fifth known child and the sister of my third great-grandfather, James Madison Coor. James and Ann married brothers and sisters Dempsey P. and Melissa Ann Welch. I wrote about Ann and Dempsey’s marriage here.

The problem with the above date, the source is a cemetery index book that only lists the birth and death years for both Dempsey P and Ann J Welch.[1] When I check Find A Grave, I can see an image of the tombstone and the birth and death years are all that are engraved on the stones.[2]

The date that was listed in the memorial was 19 February 1827. Of course, Find a Grave has no sources for the information. The tombstone certainly isn’t a source for the month and day of birth and death, as it only lists the years. I cannot message Ken Jones, who created the memorial, as he has passed away.

One of the sources I received early in my researching endeavors was a book called Welch Family written by Mary Helen Sims.[3] Mary Helen (Sanders) Sims was the daughter of Bessie V. Welch, granddaughter of Thomas Griffin Welch, Jr., great-granddaughter of Thomas Griffin Welch, who was the brother of Dempsey P. Welch. She was eleven when her grandfather died in 1935, but her great-grandparents were both dead before her birth. The sources for the book included family members, Autobiography of Jacob Perry Welch, the Department of Archives and History in Jackson, Mississippi, family bibles, and court records in Copiah County, Mississippi. However, none of the individual facts are sourced.

Ann Jemima Coor was listed twice in the book, first as wife of Dempsey Perry Welch. Here her birth was recorded as 17 February 1827.[4] There is also a whole section on the Coor family, copied from family records, where her birth was listed as 29 February 1828.[5] Along with the Find A Grave memorial, we have three conflicting dates for her birth with no source listed. Perhaps family papers meant a family bible, but could have also meant just family memory. Her mother (1892-1983) was only two when Dempsey and Ann died. Her grandfather, Thomas Griffin Welch (1865-1935) was old enough to have known his granduncle well, as they lived in the same community in Erath County, Texas.

Still, not knowing the sources for each of the dates, it is difficult to resolve the conflict. At this time, there are no newspapers at the Portal for Texas History website for January and February 1902 in this location of Erath County. I have emailed the librarian at the Stephenville Library for information about their newspapers in their collection, though I believe the online papers from Erath County came from the library’s collection. The death record recording in Erath County didn’t begin until 1903 according to the the FamilySearch catalog listing. 

I’ll save the other births for another post in the future.

[1] Shirley Brittain & Weldon I. Hudson Cawyer, Erath County Texas Cemetery Inscriptions Vol. 1 (Texas: n.p., n.d.), 166.
[2] Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 29 February 2020), memorial page for Angelina Jennine “Ann” Coor Welch (19 Feb 1827–28 Jan 1902), memorial no. 24126480, Huckabay Cemetery, Huckabay, Erath County, Texas, USA ; created by Ken Jones, maintained by Find A Grave (contributor 8).
[3] Mary Helen Sims, Welch Family, (Vicksburg, MS, n.d.).
[4] ibid, p. 39.
[5] ibid, p. 46.

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

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