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.