Cocke County, Tennessee
Archived Announcements


NOVEMBER 2012:  A huge thank-you to Marvin and Samme Templin for their contributions to the Find-A-Grave section for Cocke County, most recently the addition of Union Cemetery and the thousands of graves they documented there. Please visit to search for your relations there, at Union Cemetery, Cocke County, TN. We appreciate your many many hours of dedicated service to the genealogy community, Samme and Marvin.

JUNE 2012:  Several additions and updates this spring, courtesy of our generous contributors. Once again, Carolyn Whitaker has our thanks for letting us know about her wonderful new page on the 26TH TN INFANTRY REG, CO C. CSA, from our county. From our CIVIL WAR ANCESTORS pages, Paul L Kelley has submitted information on his ancestor JOSEPH KELLY/KELLEY. And John O'Neal submitted some considerable new information on his ancestor HENRY O'NEIL, SR. Finally, our thanks to Becki Ryan, another descendant of Henry O'Neil/O'Neal and Lucinda Gooch, who contributed their marriage information for our new collection of PRE-1876 FIRE MARRIAGES.

MARCH 2012:   SAM MCGINTY'S STORE LEDGER. We are extremely proud to announce a wonderful contribution to our site by Jacky Witt, who has preserved this rare family heirloom record and wishes to share it. The ledger contains a wealth of Cocke County surnames but it is also a glimpse of history as lived out in the day-to-day activity of county residents and visitors, especially those in the Wilsonville area. The LEDGER BOOK FROM SAMUEL MCGINTY'S STORE AND INN runs from the years 1860 to 1869. As it covers 120 pages total and transcription is ongoing, we are beginning in consecutive order, with additions as transcriptions are completed. The first fifteen pages include taxes Sam McGinty collected as authorized by the county. You may open the page from the above links, and it is also listed on the RECORDS page and can be reached from our HISTORY section below. And don't fail to let Jacky know if you have additional information about her ancestors and about the store and inn. Thank you so much, Jacky!

We are also proud to add three new listings to our CIVIL WAR ANCESTORS page, thanks to Lori Baxter for submitting several members of her BAXTER family. Please help us honor your own soldiers by contributing--from the basic facts to more detailed information if you have it. Many thanks, Lori, for your submission!

CIVIL WAR UPDATES: Lori Baxter has provided some additional information on her ancestors, HOLLOWAY BAXTER and REUBEN JUSTUS. And we have another new addition, submitted by Karen Lewis Dougherty, for JAMES NEWELL. Carolyn Whitaker has also added another page to her wonderful website, detailing a good deal of history involving the COCKE COUNTY UNION HOME GUARDS, including lists of men organized by Captain Jefferson Denton to protect their homes and families. As Carolyn explains, "There had been much raiding, pillaging, assaulting, and killing amongst the Confederates and Unionists in the neighborhoods south of Newport, where many of our families lived on Bogard Creek and the Cosby area. The heartbreak and devastation done by each other's families, brother to brother, father to son, son to father, and the poor widow's and children, who were left without fathers, was almost too much for them to bear." Visit her page to learn more, and perhaps locate some ancestors of your own who were part of this company.

FEBRUARY 2012:  We're rolling out some additions to our collection of materials here. Bruce Price has provided juicy genealogical abstracts to flesh out his previous submission of the Civil War Claims Index for Cocke County. Take a look at it HERE, and another link is found on the Military section of our RECORDS page. We have also been working to extract and collect PRE-1876 FIRE MARRIAGES from all the submissions on our site. If you have any you'd like to contribute, just drop us an email with the specifics. Marriages in this collection may not have occurred here, but the couples listed stayed in the county for a significant amount of time. To visit the page, click the hotlink above or find it on our RECORDS page in the Marriages section. We have also fixed some broken links, removed some dead ones and added new surname researchers. Finally, we encourage you to view a fascinating ongoing collection of old newspaper articles added to monthly by Phillip Walker on his blog, Cocke County Connections

NOVEMBER 2011:  "Take off your shoes and sit a spell!! Come on in and meet the REAL CHARACTERS in the book "CHRISTY" by Catherine Marshall, and join me in a journey through the lives of my Click cousins and their friends and neighbors, as they raised their families in an incredible true story that took place in the beautiful Smokey Mountains of Cocke County, Tennessee in the early 1900's." Carolyn Whitaker invites visitors to her web page that backgrounds this well-known and much loved book, Christy, set in the beautiful area of Del Rio in Cocke County, which is pictured in our photograph above. Visit the site HERE and enjoy!

MAY 2011:  Carolyn Whitaker shares a reminder to us all: "Since 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the War between the States, I think it is important for us to understand what turmoil existed in our families and the states where they resided." Visit her new web page for a poignant glimpse of her Yett and Faubion forbears from Cocke County, as they and our own ancestors navigated this harrowing time in our history. Hamilton Yett and Sarah Ann Faubion link.



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