User:Georgialea/Personal Research Pages

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Surnames
Cox
Elder
Sweeny
Ross-Owens
Places
Missouri
Indiana
Illinois
California
Oregon
Year range
1800 - 1930

My great great grandfather, John W Cox, travelled from Missouri to California with his family in 1849. His wife's name was Syrilda Mary and they had two children, James, age 6 and Greer, age 3. John was on the 1850 Census in Sutter county California and gave his birth state as Missouri. They settled in Butte county in the Oroville area and had a mill making shakes. Nine more children were born but only five of whom lived past age 20. John Woodson was the third child born and was born in California in Nov. 1850. In 1880 John moved, with several other families, to Shasta county into the town of Henderson now known as Big Bend. His brothers Richard and Charles, went with him. They all took out homesteads in the area. John married Sarah Tobiathy Elder about 1885 and had seven children. Augustus Lawrence was the eldest and my grandfather.

On the Elder side Sarah's father was James Washington Elder born in Indiana in 1834. He married Anna Elizabeth Sweeny, born in Illinois in 1850. They has seven or eight children and Sarah Tobiathy was born in 1868 in Indiana. They moved to California in the 1870s and in the 1880s moved into the Big Bend area. They homesteaded and James stayed there until his death in 1922. Anna divorced him around 1886 and remarried John Wesley Richardson in 1887. Sarah died in April 1902, about a year after the birth of her last child Velma. John Woodson Cox lived until October 1924.

Augustus L. Cox stayed in Big Bend and raised his family there. He married Jessie May Ross and they had eight children. My mother, Nellie Mae, was the third born. Augustus was known as Gus or Gussie and was born in 1886. He died in 1983. Jessie May was the daughter of William Clark Ross and Harriet Belle Owens. They met and married in Oregon in 1890. They later moved to Dunsmuir, CA and then to Oak Run. Harriet Belle died in 1904 and after about 10 years William left the family and never returned. He died in Trinity County CA. Harriet's parents were Arther G. Owens from Indiana and Victoria Ann King from Ohio. Harriet was born in Nebraska in 1874. A few years later the family moved out to Oregon. Harriet's first child did not live and her second, Wilford, was born in Oregon.