Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Genealogical tangles: 6G Grandpa "Edward Lee" OUGHT to be easy to find all about

Part of the problem of researching Edward Lee (about 1752-1782) is getting overwhelmed by Google hits for Robert Edward Lee. For my "Edward Lee" there are Goochland County VA property documents and then Burke County (later Caldwell) NC property documents, but I have not found his parents. Now, Lee's NC estate papers show clearly that his widow Judith married my 6Great Grandfather Charles Coker and that (about the same time) his daughter [first name uncertain] married my 5Great Grandfather William (Buck) Coker.  Judith Lee was my step-grandmother as well as my actual grandmother. Buck's new little half brothers and sisters were his wife's half brothers and sisters and the uncles and aunts (two ways) of Buck's many children.  Buck (or maybe his son Joe) is the host to Schoolcraft in the 1821 TOUR that influenced Longfellow. Buck is a storied man--the leading actor in Turnbo's Arkansas narratives. It was half-Cherokee Coker descendants of Buck that William Monks assured his readers in 1907 were "very dangerous men when drinking." What I was always told is that they were very dangerous men when sober. But Edward Lee of Goochland County and Burke County--who were his parents? And his wife Judith goes back to the Hackley family. One of the cousins from that link was a very poetic man when dying in 1863: "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." Was Cousin Thomas Jonathan Jackson suitable for mentioning in a book called "ORNERY PEOPLE: WHAT WAS A DEPRESSION OKIE?"?

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