Missing Ancestors: A Case Study
I was told that my grandfather Buck Cotton was part Cherokee indian, and that the family had to deal with the elderly vagaries of a "Grandma Cotton" when he was young, and that she was the source of the Indian heritage. Indeed, my impression was that she was an Indian. My grandmother Noreen, who had been married to Buck Cotton, denied that he was half-Indian, or even quarter-Indian, but acknowledged that he did have Indian ancestry. I was also told that the family "came to Illinois from Virginia" and that the Cotton who came had arrived with his Indian wife. All of this was rather vague, since Buck Cotton had been divorced from Noreen when my mother was young, and had died when my mother was only 13. Furthermore, I left home when I was 20, so obviously had not been real attentive to what little my mother had told me, and my mother also died rather young, about 7 years after I had gone out on my own, and long before I had any particular interest in learning family history. While my grandmother Noreen lived long enough for me to get interested in family history, she had no interest in telling me much, especially about her first husband. So tracking down my Cotton family heritage has been quite a challenge: I have very little to go on, and unlike the Chism side of my family they evidently did not settle down in one particular place for any length of time.
I did know that James Edwin "Buck" Cotton was born in 1898, but I have no date for his father's birth or the birthplace of either one. However I do know that William Cotton was married to Elizabeth Spring, or possibly Springs, who was born in 1877. Assuming William was older than Elizabeth he would probably have been born between 1870 and 1877, and his father likely was born around 1850. The original Cherokee land holdings did include part of Virginia:
But the area occupied shrank all thru the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Cherokee were finally deported to Oklahoma in 1838. By that time Cherokee land had been reduced to a small amount, principally in Georgia. For a brief history of the Cherokee land loss, see http://cherokeeremoval.org/HISTORY.htm. For a selection of vintage maps showing Cherokee holdings, see http://www.tngenweb.org/cessions/.
If Buck Cotton's grandfather had married a Cherokee, her ancestors must have somehow missed the relocation. It also seems improbable that the marriage took place in Virginia. Most likely scenario is that the original Cottons came from Virginia and settled in Kentucky or Tennessee, where a Cotton married a Cherokee, then migrated from there to Illinois.
If there was a "Grandma Cotton" who was 70 around 1900, she could have been born around 1830, before the deportation. But she would have been far too young to have married before the tribe was forced to move to Oklahoma. Also, my impression is that the stories about her were from a later date than 1900. No matter how I look at it, the dates don't seem to add up with what I know about the history of the Cherokee. Of course, it is quite possible that the tribe as told to me was simply wrong. Everyone wants to be descended from a Cherokee, one of the great "civilized" tribes, rather than some more obscure and less powerful tribe.
I remember visiting relatives of mother's from her father's side of the family, they lived in Edwardsville, Madison County, Illinois. I have the impression however that they were from a later marriage of William Cotton's widow, and were sort of "half" relatives. I did not remember any of their names. I know Buck Cotton had a younger brother, John, who was my God-father, and that he lived and died in Springfield, and had no children. Buck met and married my Grandmother Noreen in Springfield, which is in Sangamon County, Illinois. Also, his draft registration is in Springfield. He died in Cook County, although the town recorded in the Illinois death certificate index is shown as "La Grande" in Cook County, but there is no such township. There is a "La Grange" however. Perhaps that is where he died.
Also, there was evidently a sister or half-sister of Buck and John, who died without a will, and her estate was divided between the heirs of her siblings, so my brother and I received a sizable portion. I had never heard of this woman until I was notified of my inheritence, this was around 1983. Also, she did not live in Illinois, but on the East Coast. I believe the relatives in Edwardsville were a bit put out by this inheritence from the estate of a woman they evidently knew and my brother and I did not. I concluded there must have been another sibling as well, most likely a half-sibling or maybe two half-siblings, from whom the relatives in Edwardsville were descended, since my brother and I divided a quarter or a third of the estate, which had been divided into equal parts by the number of her siblings. I conclude that if my brother and I received a third, there must have been 3 siblings who left heirs: my grandfather, and two others I did not know. From this I deduce that William Cotton and Elizabeth Springs had the two sons I know about, my grandfather and his brother, and Elizabeth Springs then married Williams and had at least 3 more children, including the great-aunt who died, plus at least 2 more.
In my baby book my mother recorded a gift from a "Grandma Williams"--also the genealogy my mother wrote shows a great-grandmother named "Elizabeth Spring[s] Williams"--which would seem to support the idea that she is the widow of William Cotton, and she remarried someone with the surname of Williams. If she then had children from this second marriage, as I surmise must be the case, then she must have remarried before she was 45. She was born in 1877, so her second marriage must have been before 1922, and William Cotton must have died before that date. If she had at least 3 more children I believe she would have had to have been rather younger than 45, more likely in her 30s when she remarried. Which means William Cotton most likely died sometime before 1912.
There is a death certificate filled for "Elizabeth Marguierite Williams" in the Illinois Death Index:
WILLIAMS ELIZABETH MARGUIERI F/W Y-72 0008086 1950-02-10 SANGAMON 50-02-10
This appears to be William Cotton's wife, since the date corresponds to one I have for the death of Elizabeth Springs. I do remember that one of the relatives I met was named "Peg" which is probably short for "Marguierite" and I would think she had her mother's middle name as her given name. There is also an entry in my baby book, immediately after the entry from "Grandma Williams" for a present from "Aunt Peg and Tom"--I have no idea what Tom's last name was, but I presume he was Aunt Peg's husband, and Aunt Peg was Buck Cotton's half-sister.
Armed with this information I tried using the Mormon's Family Search for any information about Elizabeth Williams, with the maiden name of Springs. And came up empty. While a search on William Cotton, spouse Elizabeth Springs, born between 1865-1875 turned up 27 results, a few in Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois, none of them sounded quite right. The closest was a William E. Cotton, born in Illinois in 1868, living with his parents in Vance, Illinois. His father is listed as "Robbert" Cotton, also born in Illinois, whose parents were born in Kentucky. Probably not right, since the William Cotton I'm looking for has no middle initial, and I suspect the family did not have two generations born in Illinois, and there is no mention of Virginia. So this find does not quite fit with what meagre information I have.
Unfortunately the Illinois Death Certificate index is of no help either. I found my grandfather, and his mother (above). But the index only goes back to 1916, and I suspect William Cotton died before that. There are only two entries from before my cut-off date of 1922, one for a William Cotton in 1920 in Chicago, and the other for a William Edward Cotton in 1918, in Champaign. It is possible this latter is the William E. Cotton, listed as a son of Robert Cotton in the 1880 census.
Doing a Google search on "William Cotton" plus the restrictive extras of Elizabeth and Illinois, I find a family history beginning with John Cotton, then a Ralph Cotton who died in Virginia in 1728. The very last entry in this line is for Robert Cotton, born in Kentucky in 1788 and died about 1824 in Vermillion County, Illinois. His wife is Hannah Howard, and they are reported to have had 7 children. This is likely the same family I found above, who settled and reproduced themselves for several generations in and around Vermillion. The likelihood of any of them finding and marrying a Cherokee bride in Vermillion seems remote.
Searching the Cotton family genealogy forum at Genealogy.com turned up nothing relevant, there is more about the Cotton family who settled in Vermillion County, which shows that at least some of that family headed off to Indiana, Iowa and Kansas, and none were named William. There is also information about a Cotton family in Kentucky, who evidently stayed in Kentucky. There are several William Cottons, none were married to a woman named Elizabeth. And so on. In short, didn't find anything there that appeared to apply to the William Cotton I'm searching for.
At Rootsweb.com I found a letter from a Mrs. Tonner, written in 1903. She records that "I heard that there were five Cotton brothers came from Scotland to this country one branch going to Va." Well, that sounds promising! However, Mrs. Tonner lived in Iowa, and that's the branch of the Cotton family she had been busily tracing. The family originated in Sussex County, Virginia (which is due south of Richmond), and she mentions that several of the Cottons were named William. Also that the Cottons she was interested in went from Virginia to Henry County, Kentucky, and at one time lived in Culpeper County (presumably in Virginia), sometime around 1769, from whence they went to Kentucky and then on to Indiana. Also at Rootsweb there is more information about the Cottons in Vermillion. None of it shed much light or whether or not any of them had anything to do with the William Cotton I'm trying to find, especially as it turns out there is not only a Vermillion County, Illinois, but also a Vermillion, Indiana; and evidently there were Cottons in both places. There were Cottons in several places in Virginia in the 18th century, north, south and east of Richmond. I've seen references to the counties of Loudon, Sussex, Fairfax, and Stafford. Heading west they went to Kentucky, Tennessee, and then to Illinois and Indiana. And subsequently even futher west. Exactly where "my" William Cotton fits into all this, I still am quite ignorant.