Week 10: The Name’s the Same – Eight Generations of Dempseys

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

My maternal side of the family is all southern ancestry. I probably have family in every southern state from Virginia all the way west to Texas. One of the names that is prevalent in my mother’s Coor and Welch family lines is the first name Dempsey. There are eight generations of men named Dempsey. I shall keep them straight by referring to them with their birth year.

The earliest named Dempsey that I have found is Dempsey Welch, supposedly born in 1725 in Virginia, and husband of Priscilla Perry, who was born in 1731 in North Carolina. I have not yet researched this family personally, but a proposed father of Dempsey was Jacob Welch. However, there is no wife's name. Could she have been a Dempsey?

Dempsey Welch (1725) and Priscilla Perry Welch had seven known children and the fifth was Dempsey Welch (1755) who was born in Georgia.

Dempsey Welch (1755) married Millie Wilkins. They had five known children, and perhaps the first son was Dempsey (1798), who was born in Georgia.

Dempsey Welch (1798) married Elizabeth Rebecca Young in Clarke County, Alabama on 21 Jan 1821.[1] They had perhaps sixteen children, but only seven have known dates of birth and deaths. It is possible these other children died young and were buried in the Welch Cemetery in Copiah County, Mississippi.[2] Their oldest son was Dempsey Perry Welch, born 11 May 1822 in Mississippi.[3]

Dempsey Perry Welch (1822) married Ann Jemima Coor on 16 Nov 1847 in Copiah County, Mississippi.[4] They had eleven children, the eldest named Dempsey Delmore Welch (1848), who was born in Copiah County, Mississippi.

Dempsey Welch (1798) and Elizabeth Rebecca Young also had a daughter, Melissa Welch, who married James Madison Coor on 9 October 1856 in Copiah County, Mississippi.[5] Their oldest son was named Dempsey Perry Coor, who was born 19 Aug 1858. Dempsey Perry Coor (1858) married Mary Victoria Pair on 24 February 1889 in Erath County, Texas.[6] Their fifth child was Dempsey Bryant Coor (1895). Dempsey Perry Coor also had a grandson named Sterling Dempsey Elms (1924).

There were at least two more Dempsey Welches. Dempsey P. Welch (1822) had a grandson named Dempsey Ward Welch (1906) who was the son of William Madison Welch and Sara Ann Ward. He also had a great-grandson named Dempsey Martin Welch (1914) who was the son of Robert E. Welch and Julia Belle Miller and the grandson of Thomas Griffin Welch and Dorcas Mariah Hennington.

This makes a total of eleven known men who were named Dempsey in the Welch and Coor family lines. I have not researched each collateral line thoroughly. There may be even more.

Where did the Dempsey name come from? Could it have been Jacob Welch’s wife’s maiden name? According to Wikipedia the Dempsey surname is of Irish origin, an anglicized form of O Diomasaigh.[7] Other browser returns are for other people with Dempsey as a surname, such as Clint Dempsey, the soccer player, and Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight boxer. At the website baby names hub, since 1880, 1154 boys have been given the name Dempsey.[8]

It is pretty clear that all of the names in my family tree were named after fathers or grandfathers in the Welch and Coor family line. It all goes back to the first Dempsey (1725).


[1] Clarke County, Alabama, Marriages, Vol. A, 1814-1834, p. 111, 1821, Welch-Young; FHL film 1290227.

[2] “Welch Plantation Cemetery,” Copiah County, Mississippi, USGENWEB (https://www.msgw.org/copiah/Resources/Cemeteries/Cemeteries_P_to_Z/Welch/welch.html : accessed 10 March 2021).

[3] Shirley Brittain & Weldon I. Hudson Cawyer, Erath County Texas Cemetery Inscriptions Vol. 1 (Texas: n.p., n.d.), 166, Huckabay Cemetery, Dempsey P. Welch.

[4] Copiah County, Mississippi, Marriage Records, Bk B, p 422, 1847, Welch-Coor, FHL film 876488.

[5] Copiah County, Mississippi, Marriage Records, vol. C, p. 444, JM Coor to Malissa A. Pittman, FHL film 876489.

[6] Erath County, Texas, Marriages, Bk E, p4, D.P. Coor to Miss M.V. Pair, 1889; FHL film 1026025.

[7] “Dempsey,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dempsey.

[8] https://www.babynameshub.com/gendercompare.cfm?Name=Dempsey.


Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

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