East Tennessee Genealogy - Cox and Associated Families

The Halls pamphlet refers not only to early settlers in the area but also real estate deals, local churches, preachers, schools, court members, businessmen, and early physicians in the community (including Bert Hansard, Prior McCloud, Chrit Hill, John T. Crippen, & Andrew Smith). As noted there are numerous family connections to these early settlers in the ranks of present day Halls' citizens and other nearby communities as represented by the historical surnames found in these pages.

Much more detail can be found at the link below. My thanks for permission to post this work.

Halls History (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~easttenngen/Halls(Crossroads)History)

The Colonial family of William Cox and Sarah Cocke Cox of Henrico County, Virginia are the ancestors of this early Cox family per some of our family researchers. There currently are 3 different Cox lines which have a tenuous claim to these same ancestors, but how does one determine which hypothesis is the most valid ?

Mr. Allen Jeffries, a long time Cox researcher & descendant, has made an interesting case for John Cox of Goochland Co., Virginia being the father of our Henry Cox who settled in Blount Co., Tennessee with his 2nd wife (Anne Madison) and their children ca. 1790's. He also has this John Cox who died testate in Goochland Co., Va. in 1785 as the son of Richard and Mary (Trent) Cox and is seeking input from other interested researchers to further test these ideas. After spending much of the past 25 years collecting and analyzing family history documents, Allen privately has shared his Cox research with a # of other family historians. Although dealing with some serious family health issues in this past year, he recently published a quite interesting & updated 'Summary of the Cox Family' to his own webpage. This is from a paper he has worked on over the past decade & has shared with many of today's current Cox researchers.

Family Lineage of Henry Cox (http://ajeffries.knox.googlepages.com/henrycox)

My first webpage (link below) contains many scanned image files for archived records from Virginia, east Tennessee, and Texas along with other states in the southeast, as one obtains hundreds of such historical records after several years of research. Please bear with me as I will be adding to and updating this site as my more limited free time permits. Currently I also have over 270 document images and photos with detailed descriptive comments on this ancientfaces webpage:

Cox Family Homepage (http://www.ancientfaces.com/familyspace/Cox/)

1802 Stephen Renfro, Sr. Will Pg 1 (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~easttenngen/Renfro/stephen_renfro_sr_will_1802.jpg)

Attached is a document from the January 1807 Sessions of Knox County Court re: An Account of the Sales of the Estate of Stephen Rentfro (Senior). It was returned to Court by Moses Looney, Executor and Admitted to Record, to wit.... Using the link below, one can see that most of the purchases of personal property were made by Stephen's extended family including by the executor, his stepson Moses Looney. You might notice there also are a # of slaves listed in this document. The first bequest listed in Stephen's 1802 will was that after his death his negro wench Jean and her 4th son Will be sait free; however, it can be seen in this later document that both these slaves, a negro woman and child named Jean and Will, were sold together as part of Stephen's estate to Jacob Lones for $461.00. After email discussion with several other Looney/Renfro researchers, we were in agreement that one could only speculate at the possible reason(s) for this change. However, each of us noted that we were personally aware of heirs making changes in the bequests of the deceased even in the present generation. A personal thank you to each of those who offered their valuable comments & analysis on this subject, including cousin Larry Johnson.

Stephen Renfro, Sr. Estate Sale (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~easttenngen/stephenrenfrosr_propsale.jpg)

It was this elder Stephen's son, 3g-gf Stephen Renfro, Jr. who died in the campaign against the Creek Indians at Crab Orchard, Tennessee. Not only is there a 1794 Knox County, Tennessee newspaper article about the battle noting the death of Stephen Renfro(e) & others, but a historical marker located within the city limits of Crab Orchard notes that a battle was fought between frontiersmen under the command of Lt. McClellan and the Creek Indians on August 13, 1794. Crab Orchard (TN) is located about 60 miles west of present day Knoxville.

Stephen Renfro, Jr's 1794 probate record from the October Sessions of the court for Knox County, Tennessee also is posted to this webpage & lists his wife Margaret _ as his executor, although her maiden name is not given. The sureties for her bond were John Crawford & Moses Looney. Moses Looney (son of Robert Looney, Jr) is documented to have been Stephen Jr's stepbrother, and John Crawford may well have been a relative of his wife, Margaret _.

There are 3 Revolutionary War pay vouchers for Stephen Renfro, dated from Aug 1782 to July 1783. Since Stephen Senior would have been almost 70 years old during this time, these appear to be for Stephen Renfro, Jr. The voucher dated June 1783 goes as follows: State of North Carolina - County of Sullivan - We the subscribers being first sworn do appraise a certain brown mare the property of Stephen Rentfrow in the service of this state on a tour of duty to South Carolina under the command of Col. Shelby in October __forty pounds _ pence. Witness our hands this 20th day of June 1783. State of Franklin - The auditors for the county of Washington and Sullivan do certify that Stephen Renfrow is allowed 40 pounds as pay voucher given under our hands this 15th of Aug. 1783. Anthony Bledsoe. The 2nd voucher reads: I certify that the within mentioned mare was received into the public service under the command of Col. Isaac Shelby to the aid of General Green and was killed by accident when in actual service. Given under my hand this _ day of July 1783. Anthony Bledsoe. The document images are posted on this site; see link at bottom of webpage for Uploaded Files.

One highly respected Renfro family researcher mentioned that Stephen Renfro, Sr. was probably the son of William Renfro (b. 1678) and wife Jane. She also noted that Stephen, Sr. had brothers James (b. 1703), Peter (b. 1705), and Joseph (b. 1709). This information apparently is from 1992 LDS microfiche found in Virginia; efforts are ongoing to find further documentation to confirm this hypothesis. My thanks to cousin Richard and Theresa for providing their input on this subject.

This same microfiche, film # 866909-sheet # 0038, also mentions a son named David Renfro born to Stephen and Margaret Rhea Looney ca. 1744. Since Margaret's previous husband (Robert Looney, Jr) wasn't killed by the indians until Feb. 1756, this can't be entirely accurate. However, cousin Larry of Texas has a Nov 1773 Indenture between Margaret (Rhea/Looney) Renfro & John Looney which specifically states that David Renfro is the son of said Margaret Renfro and the said Stephen Renfro, Senior. This document shows that Margaret was paid 5 shillings and provided a 16 year old slave named Pattey (In Trust) for giving up her Dower rights in a certain tract of land. Note this document was found in the files of now deceased Looney family matriarch, Miss Elizabeth Looney of Washington, DC.

David Renfro - Son of Stephen Renfro, Sr & wife Margaret Rhea Looney Renfro (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~easttenngen/Renfro/david_renfro.jpg)

A # of insightful Renfro family researchers have taken a page from Dr. Manschardt's efforts & graciously accept and incorporate any newly produced evidence into their own postings so as to be as accurate as possible. On webpages where no contact information is given and/or no documented evidence is presented to confirm a hypothesis, other researchers can only assume there is no interest in correcting any erroneous data in ones' research or discussing other possibilities based on actual documentation.

This past several years I have received many comments from other veteran researchers about numerous instances of genealogical misinformation and outright falsehoods found online. That prompts the thought that much of this is caused by inaccurate or incomplete oral histories, wishful thinking, and hypotheses which are unsupported by any type of documented evidence. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with creativity & presenting hypotheses for further testing; however, it is treating such as proven fact that causes confusion and frustration for other researchers.

This writer is uncertain whether Katherine's reference may actually pertain to the participants at Kings Mountain, or if it is a more general list of Revolutionary War pensioners which was misinterpreted by Pat. It is obvious from his pension claim (S3169) on file in Knox County, Tennessee that Curd's participation at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina in 1781 is listed as his only claim to a pension. If any exists, anyone who could provide acceptable documented evidence to the National Park Service of his participation at Kings Mountain would be doing the rest of Curd's descendants a valuable service.

A fairly recent enquiry shows there are those who disagree with this conclusion. A distant cousin/correspondent mentioned to me that there was a long oral history in their part of the family that Curd Cox was a participant at Kings Mountain. Although this could be very difficult to prove to a ‘disinterested 3rd party’ without any documented evidence, my feeling is that this set of cousins has every right to their views on the subject. This seems especially so since the various authors on the Kings Mountain battle even agree that many of the participants are not on any official lists. It would be interesting to test this idea by seeing if any genealogical society would agree.

Here are some other website links that might be of interest:

National Genealogical Society - Research Standards and Guidelines (http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/)