Mary Ellen Cook has been Found

Back in December I posted on my 2nd great-grandmother, Mary Ellen COOK. She's been one of my brick walls since I started genealogy.

To sum up that post, it turned out that she wasn't Mary Ellen COOK after all. She was Mary Ellen WEAVER, who grew up living with a family named COOK.

After that, I sent away to New York State for a copy of her death certificate, and lo and behold, they sent it to me after only 3 months! Way faster than the last time I tried ordering something from them. Now I'm encouraged to order more stuff!

Anyway, her death certificate arrived last week and it was all I could hope for - it listed her parents names and where they were born. Joy! The informant was Mary's son Wesley who she had lived with for many years (her husband John MIX had passed away in 1906.

So here is the information I wanted all these years on Mary's parents:



"FINNEY" is a brand new surname to me, sounds Irish! I searched around to see if there was anything easily found on Almira and Thomas on ancestry and the internet and there isn't that I can see (yet). Both Mary and her mom Almira are listed as being born in Cooperstown, NY.

And Poughkeepsie as a birthplace for Thomas! That's also a new county for me, all this time I've been limited to a few counties in the Finger Lakes region of New York - now I have some interest way over in Dutchess county in southeastern NY (near the Hudson river).

There's a bit of confusion surround her birth year. The death certificate lists "Feb 19th, 1839" as her birth date. The age is listed out as "85 Years, 11 Months, 24 Days". I had had "1840" as the birth year from her gravestone. I figured the gravestone would be the one that had a typo but wasn't sure.


So I went to the super awesome WolframAlpha search engine site that does math and stuff for me and entered "feb 19 1839 - jan 13 1925". The death date is right off her death certificate as well.


So somebody was wrong somewhere. I have to admit, I would have messed up figuring out years/months/days for people as well. Whenever I do math I seem to lose interest somewhere in the middle and start thinking about flowers or sparkly things.

hmm...sparkly...


...things...


...things that sparkle...










I'm sorry, I've lost track of what I was writing about! :-)

Oh yeah, so I don't know for sure if Mary was born in 1839 or 1840. For now, I'm going to leave 1839 in my records with a notation about the chance of it being 1840.

And so with all that, I no longer have a Mary Ellen COOK brickwall! Now it's time for some new research on my new surnames!

Finding Mary Ellen Cook

My 2nd great-grandmother on my Mom's side is one of my brick walls. When I first started doing genealogy, my grandmother told me that her Dad's parents were John MIX and Mary Ellen COOK.

So all these years, I had this Mary Ellen COOK, but it was only from that verbal conversation with my grandmother. The name "Mary Cook" occurred much to frequently in the census records for me to be able to narrow down who her family might be.

Eventually, I got a hold of the death certificate of my great-grandfather, William Homer MIX. In the mother field, the name surprisingly read: Mary WEAVER.



The informant was my grand-uncle Floyd MIX, who was William's eldest child. Hmm! I would have thought that William's eldest would know who his own grandparents were, right? But then again, my grandmother (and her mom) were always pretty much always right when it came to the names they remembered and wrote down.

So I started searching through the census records, trying to find a Mary WEAVER who fit my profile and guess what I found? Yep, here is a Mary WEAVER who in 1850 just so happens to be living with a family named COOK in Dryden, Tompkins County, NY! OMG!



That means that my grand-Uncle and my grandmother could both be right! Unfortunately, she is 9 years old, so I couldn't try to narrow down her family in the 1840 census.

My next confirmation of her name came from the Civil War Pension file for her husband, John Mix. She signed her name several times as "Mary E.". Also, in most of the census records where she was Mary MIX, she provided her name as "Mary E.". And finally, her tombstone lists "Mary E." as well. So it is likely that the "Ellen" my grandmother gave me is correct, but it's not proved 100% yet.


And last, but definitely not least, in my visit to the Broome County Historical Society in New York recently, in their Name Index (a.k.a. the Woodward File), I came across this transcription from the newspaper Union Center News:

Mrs. Mix
her father, Mr. Weaver of Wisc. age 83
came to visit - no one met train - he wandered
around for 36 hrs - fell into culvert. He
had lived Wisc - 40 yrs!

The line breaks and punctuation is from the transcription. No date was listed on the card for the newspaper article, but the transcriber wrote: "prob '87 - '88". The original clipping was noted as being in the Woodward Scrapbook which resides in the town of Maine in Broome County, so I didn't get to see the original for myself.

So! This means her father had been in Wisconsin for decades - that would certainly explain why the 9 year old Mary was living with the COOK family in 1850.

Looks like I found the real name of my 2nd great-grandmother: Mary E. WEAVER. Her family is still a mystery, but I'm one small step closer!