30 Mothers in 30 Days: Catherine

Catherine Alexander McCoy is one of my 6th Great Grandmothers. If there is one name that defines the early years of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, it is that of the Alexander family. Of Scotch-Irish origins, our line began with one John Alexander who married Margaret Gleason of Glasgow in 1735 and afterwards moved to Armagh in Ireland. Not abiding there long, they were off to America by 1740 with his two nephews, Hugh and James and their sister, who had married a Mr. Polk.

They stayed for a short time in Chester County, PA before migrating to Mecklenburg County, NC and making their mark.








I am the descendant of 5 Signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and Catherines father, Colonel Adam Alexander was one of them. In the Revolutionary War, Adam was a Colonel and his father William was a Captain. He served in the Clear Creek Militia. Adam had married Mary Shelby who was born in Frederick County, Maryland. Her brother Evan Shelby was a General  of the French and Indian War and her nephew Col. Isaac Shelby, who fought at the Battle of King's Mountain would wind up as the Governor of Kentucky.






Adam himself, was a prominant man. He served as a delegate to the Catawba Indians. He built two homes and ran a store and a mill. He was Civic-minded and a proponent of Liberty, serving both as a Justice of the Peace and then later, as an Elder of Clear Creek Methodist Church.


So into this era of Patriotism and Rebellion from the Crown is born young Catherine, known as Kate. She was the 5th of the 9 chidren of Adam and Mary Shelby Alexander and arrived on April 6, 1759.

Mecklenburg County topography

Mecklenburg at this time was a veritable wilderness, with rolling hills, and multiple creeks that could be seen babbling along, not trash-filled streams funneled into culverts under massive highways. There were Indians and Buffalo and Bear, instead of traffic and strips malls and skyscrapers.


Clear Creek, where the Adam Alexander family lived, was near the Mecklenburg/Cabarrus County border. Today, we would consider it Mint Hill. The Scotch Irish families in this place and time were all very tribal and connected to each other. They intermarried, interacted and stayed bound into one unifying force. The names in this limb of my family tree were very the same, and all a part of this Mecklenburg diasphora: Alexander, McKnitt, McDowell, Wallace, Walker, McCoy, White and Shelby.

According to the historian Edward Tunis:


These people were by temperament the utter antithesis of Quaker calm and of German thrift. They took the land they wanted and dared anybody to move them; seldom did anyone do so. They were fiercely independent and stubbornly belligerent. It is said that when the break came with England, there was not even one Tory to be found among the Scots-Irish.









Children participated heavily in the tasks that it took to survive in such a rural and challenging place. It took large families to survive, cultivate the land and fend off enemies. It was not misspoken to say the Scots were clannish. There was no loyalty to the British among them and they formed a uniquely independant and defiant community along the Carolina Border. These were the people who formed "The Hornets Nest".

There's not much known of Catherines childhood except that she grew up in a devoutly religious home and that Civil duty and separatist values were driven into her and her siblings. By the time her father and associates signed The Mecklenburg Declaration of Indepence, after hearing of the Battle of Lexington, Kate was 16 years old. She heard the rumblings all during her childhood, and as she approached young womanhood, her father and older brothers would go to war.

Among this atmosphere of War and Rebellion, Kate would meet the dashing young soldier,  John McCoy. Born in Cecil County, Maryland, John McCoy was of the same cloth and kilt as Catherine Alexander. He was McCoy, Beatty, Alexander and McKnitt. His father was Ezekial Beaty McCoy, son of John McCoy and Esther Beaty. His mother was Margaret Alexander, daughter of Captain James Robert Yeoman Alexander and Abigail McKnitt and sister to two more signers of the Declaration, Hezekiah Alexander and John McKnitt Alexander.



John was 6 years older than Kate, born in 1753. They were married in the midst of Revolution, on July 31, 1779, in Mecklenburg County.




They would purchase land on 3 mile creek. After the War, they seemed to settle down into the quiet country life of the antebellum period between wars. Like her mother, Catherine would become mother to a large group of children:

1) Adam Alexander McCoy
2) Jane Shelby McCoy
3) William Beaty McCoy
4) Marshall Rodolphus McCoy
5) Catherine Alexander McCoy
6) Nancy T. McCoy
7) Margaret C. McCoy
8) Matilda H McCoy
9) Charles T. McCoy

Some also attribute Elvira Davis McCoy to this couple, but she just doesn't fit as their are no Davis's in this family line.





The photo above is Marshall Rodolphus McCoy, a son of Kate Alexande McCoy.

The life on 3 mile Creek was one of Antebellum bliss. The family prospered and their children grew, to become contributary and "useful" citizens of Mecklenburg County, or to migrate on to Tennesse, as some did.




Daughter Margaret C. McCoy, whom they called "Peggy", would marry William Thomas Lemmonds and settle in Union County. She would become the mother of John Q. Lemmonds, whom I mentioned in my last post on his wife, Harriet C. Means.


Catherine Alexander McCoy would live a long life for that time period, and die on August 18, 1840.
She was 81. Her descendants were woven deep in the Mecklenburg and Union County fabric.

Happy Mother's Day Granny Kate. I ne'er knew ye.

Am I My Mother's Daughter?

Taking DNA tests to aid in genealogical research is a trip, literally. Learning the dozens of countries your ancestors come from is interesting and sometimes enlightening, but if you are hoping to solve some mysteries or knock down some brickwalls, its the cousin matches that can be the most enlightening.



Now, not every cousin match is going to be helpful. Some choose to keep their family tree private, taking the test for ethnicity only and no interest in discovering lineage. Some just have not done enough research for you to be able to find a connection. If they have only 8 people in their tree, you are probably not going to be able to see how you are related, unless you are siblings. On Ancestry.com, they will make the connections for you if you have the same people in your tree. Its these that are the most helpful.

The one fact that became oddly clear when I first garnered my test was that I was without any doubt, my father's child. Every cousin that had a tracked link, that formed a tree showing the connection on Ancestry.com, was from my fathers side of the family.

Ancestry has even formed DNA "groups" of people. With many others, I'm in the "Taylor Burris" Group, the "Job and Vashti Calloway" Group and the "James Ludwell Carpenter" Group. I've discovered that certain ancestors, like Revolutionary War Soldier, Solomon Burris, father of Taylor and Tillman Helms, have spawned a large number of descendants from far and wide.


I do not check the DNA site that often, but do occasionally, when Ancestry reminds me to, to see if any new cousins were about.

And as all my tracked connections were on my fathers' side, I was beginning to doubt that I was actually my mother's daughter. Well, not really, I look just like her, but the one brickwall I've been hoping to breakdown has not been made any easier with DNA. So, I have been wondering if somewhere there is a break in my mother's family tree. Not in recent generations, but further back. Not that the research is incorrect, but perhaps an ancestor, genetically, was not who they were supposed to be, or not who they were on paper. An unknown adoption, perhaps, or the result of a secret affair.

Michael Klein

6th Great-Grandfather

&

Anna Catherine Schuffert

6th Great-Grandmother

I checked out some new cousins today however, with some pleasant surprises. I found connections from my mother's side of the tree.

One cousin connects back to the Harris line. I did not know that Mary Harris Winfield, mother of Peter Winfield who was the one to arrive in this area from Virginia, was the sister of West Harris. I have seen the name West Harris in old records, not knowing he was a several great-uncle of mine. But they had the same father, Edward Harris, born and died in the same places in the same years and DNA says we are a match.
The Edward Harris Family by Marie Harris Key

Another new cousin with only 94 people in her tree, ends up being my third cousin once removed, on my mother's side of the family. Her ancestor, George Samuel Turner, was a brother to my second great-grandfather, William A. Turner, both sons of George Washington Turner and wife, Elizabeth Wincy Morton Turner. My mother's paternal grandmother was Penny Wayne Turner Davis, and this is my Turner line. So, I at least know I am without doubt a Turner.

William A. Turner

I found a new cousin through the Lemmonds line, and this was the first match I had through that line, which is my paternal grandmothers line, but again, on my Dads side, and another dna match through my Means and Work lines, which are in that Lemmonds line.  This cousins Isabella Caroline Means was a sister to my Harriett C Means who married a Lemmonds, their father being John Works Means, son of William Melvin Means and Isabella Work.

William Thomas Lemmond

4th Great-Grandfather

&

Margaret C 'Peggy' McCoy

4th Great-Grandmother

Several of these cousins, whose roots are evidently primarily in Stanly County, or the surrounding counties, no matter their current location, share more than one line with me. A part of the Stanly County soup. Such was one new cousin who shared a Cagle line on my mothers side and a Hathcock line on my fathers side.

William Melvin Means

5th Great-Grandfather

&

Isabelle Work

5th Great-Grandmother

I have now come across 3 or 4 cousins who connect to me through the Aldridge line, so I am definately an Aldridge. This is also my mothers line as my Paternal Grandfathers paternal grandmother was an Aldridge.

I  also connect to several people who have Whitley in their lines. Now, it could just be that Rebecca Cagle who married George Whitley and Rebecca Louise Cagle who married Caleb Aldridge were closely related. Maybe they were first cousins both named for an earlier common ancector named Rebecca. Or it could be this was the breaking point. My second great-grandmother was known to have two children whose father was a Whitley prior to her marriage to my Second Great-Grandfather. Maybe my Great-Grandfather, who was born two years after the marriage, was actually a Whitley. After all, I'm not finding any links in my dna to his surname. This is an assumption, but completely a possibility.

For the first time, I also found a match through the Searcy line, which is also on my mother's side and through the Aldridge/Murray line, which could verify the fact that I have Jesse Murray, a third Great-Grandfather's, ancestry correct as the son of Jane Pearce Murray, whose grandmother was Mary Searcy.

I've had two connections through the Starnes line now, which is my father's side, and several who also descend from the Rev. Samuel Parsons Morton aka "Crying Sammy", a very moving and reknowned circuit preacher who happens to be my 4th Great-Grandfather.

The History of Anson County by Mary Louise Medley, 'Crying Sammy P Morton

Going down through all the new cousins, I find several more in the German ancestors of my father, Specks, Klines, Starnes. I would really like to find a connection to someone who descends from a Byram or Fincher.

But again, wow were those Burris's prolific.