Emma Florence Cox 1862-1941

In an older blog I wrote, entitled Genealogy Bug Bites Me I mentioned not knowing the maiden name of my Great Grandmother Emma Cox.  I still haven’t solved the mystery of her family past.  Being an amateur at this, I thought I’d toss it out to the experts who have done this for years and are very good.  Also, looking at the trees on Ancestry and Family Search, others have this same missing limb.

First of all, I’ll tell you what I know. 

Emily Florence Cox, called Emma by her family, was born December 5, 1862 in Cherokee County Alabama.  Sadly, the Cherokee County courthouse suffered fires which destroyed records in both 1882 and 1895.

She married Albert Henry Cox, b1857, in Etowah County, Alabama, on Sunday November 2, 1879 by H. M. Brock who was the Justice of the Peace.  Emma would have been 17 years old.  Etowah Courthouse records have her last name as Cox on the marriage records. 

The 1880 United States Census has them residing alone, at Beat 10 & 17(same page of records) Duck Springs, Attalla, Etowah, Alabama.  I believe this would have been near the Cox Gap home of Albert’s Dad, Thomas Gale Amis Cox.  The 1880 Census has her name spelled Emely F. Cox.  Every other census only lists her as Emma Cox.

Albert and Emma had the following children;

Ollie Cox                        1882-1914

James Willie Cox            1884-1975

Eula Cox                         1886-1971

Wallace Henry Cox         1888-1981

Knox Cox                        1891-1968

Claudia Ann Cox             1894-1985

Alva Mae Cox                 1896-1987

Albert died in 1915 at 58 years old, in Etowah County Alabama.  The 1940 census has Emma living with her son, Will and his wife, Amy in Alabama City, Alabama.  She passed away October 29, 1941 at 79 years old.  I have a copy of her death certificate that has parents as “unknown”.   Emma & Albert are buried in the Cox Family Cemetery on Cox Gap Road in Etowah County.

 Last week, I traveled back to Gadsden to visit the Nichols Memorial Library, which is home to the Northeast Alabama Genealogical Society.  They had four folders on Etowah County Cox families.  Most contained information I already had.  The last folder was compiled by the late Jerry Jones.  Jerry was a well known historian and genealogist.  Most of his entries for Emma were the standard “Emma F. Cox” I’ve seen everywhere, except for the last page.  Almost out of place, even.  He had Emma’s maiden name as “Wester”.   So, if this is correct, I need to find Emma Florence Wester’s family origins from Cherokee County, Alabama.

An interesting coincidence is the 1880 census I mentioned earlier.  In the house almost next door to Albert and Emma resided a Ms. Wester with two sons, Franklin and Thomas.

One other note, our son had an Ancestry DNA test done.  In his results, there were no direct connections to a Wester, but two of those listed had a Wester in their tree.  A Milly Wester, born 1770 in Warren, Georgia and Nancy Sarah Wester, born 1736 in Franklin, North Carolina.  I struck out on connections to either.

Hopefully, this will help someone solve this mystery for the rest of us.  If you are the Sherlock Holmes for Emma Cox, I will make sure everyone knows who to give the credit to.  Just leave me a comment and we'll talk!

I’ll close with a quote on genealogy I came across from an unknown author.  Some family trees have beautiful leaves, and some have just a bunch of nuts.  Remember, it is the nuts that make the tree worth shaking.

Genealogy Bug Bites Me

I came home from work recently to find that my wife had decided to do a trial membershp with Ancestry.com.  I thought, Ok, I’ve got seven days to fill in the blanks on my six or seven generation list.  At the time, I believed that was plenty, kind of like Bill Gates with his “64k should be enough for everyone”.

Quickly learning that genealogy can be addictive, I spent the next five evenings between arriving at home and bedtime, digging into the past.  I found my way around Ancestry.com quickly and discovered  how difficult it can be to solve the tiniest of mysteries.  On my Grandfather, Wallace Cox’s side, I couldn’t get past the fact no one seemed to know his mother, Emma Cox’s maiden name.  I hit a wall that couldn’t be scaled.  It would have been so simple to ask, “Hey Granddaddy, what was your Mom’s maiden name?”  But I never did, and all those who would have know it, have also died.  I’ve sent out some emails and will come back to solve that problem later.

With that problem unresolved, I jumped over to the Bynum side and traced the family’s migration from John Bainham’s voyage from England to Surry, Virginia in 1616 at the age of 26.  Spelling was more phonetic back then and the name eventually changed to Bynum.  Each generation seemed to want a new place.    There were relocations from Surry, Isle of Wight County Virginia, to Abermarle, North Carolina by 1746, then Pendleton County, South Carolina in 1781.  Isaac Newton Bynum(1757-1845) moved to Maynard’s Cove, in Jackson County, Alabama, after the Indians had been driven out.  His ancentors moved on to Blount and Dekalb Counties.

The name Isaac Newton Bynum intriqued me so I decided to go to Maynard’s Cove to take a picture of his grave marker as a primary photo in my genealogy list.  With the help of Google maps I found the cove near Scottsboro, Alabama, which was only a two hour drive.  Google also marked the cemetery halfway around the loop of highway 28 which was the main road through the cove.  All too easy I thought…

Not wanting to seem overly excited about a road trip to a cemetery, I suggested that we make a shopping trip to an old favorite store we visited several years ago called “Unclaimed Baggage” in downtown Scottsboro.  That worked well, so the next weekend four of us went shopping with only a quick side trip on the agenda for Maynard’s Cove.

The shopping stop was a dissappointment with zero good buys.  I was hoping the Cove wouldn’t be another.  We followed E. Willow St. and turned left on Tupelo Road which is County Highway 21.  The road was narrow leaving Scottsboro and gave me the feeling the asphalt would soon turn into dirt, but it did not.  About ten minutes out of town the scenery opened up to wide vista’s between two or three mountains of the Appalachian chain.  We stopped a couple of times for pictures then turned right on County Road 28.  It was nice scenery all the way and I understood why it would have been a great place to settle in.

We stopped near an old farmhouse to take pictures and suddenly realized there were no man-made noises.  It was awesome.  Another discovery a minute later was there were no bars on the cell phone, again, to me awesome!


Everyone enjoyed the trip to one of our families historical sites.  We did not find the cemetery on that trip and being pushed for time, had to start home.   We finished the Highway 28 loop and turned right on Highway 33 and headed toward the town of Hollywood and Highway 72.  On Highway 33, we quickly were back in civilization with many run down homes and a trailer park which had seen better days.  I was thinking that time seemed to have slowed down, maybe even rewound a bit while we were in the Cove.  That’s about when then the cooling towers of Belefonte Nuclear power plant came into view, a startling reminder that time and progress march on.

Judy and I went back to the Cove the following Saturday when we had more time and I did my research properly.  I’ll tell you about that next time.

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