This and That

The wind began to blow yesterday afternoon around 2 o'clock, and it's still blowing.  The National Weather Service station here says we'll have sustained winds of 25 to 40 mph all day, with gusts of 45 to 75 mph.  We still have snow and ice from the two snowfalls (more than 10 days ago) in our parking lot, and snow is clearly visible on the Flatirons and Front Range.  And in the last few days, the high temperatures have been in the 50s and 60s.  So it seems incredible to also read that we are under a Red Flag warning for extremely high danger of fire...  Current temperature says 34 degrees, humidity is 23%, and the wind is blowing at 25 mph.  It's a day that weather means I'll stay inside....
 
   Almost finished with Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen.  I had to look up the story about Ed Watson and Belle Starr to see what was "really" what.  Ed was a sharecropper on Indian lands he leased from Belle Starr.  At a dance, she refused to take the floor with Ed.  He had been drinking and was angered by her refusal, according to witnesses.  She was found dead the next day.  Ed Watson was arrested, but, as there was only circumstantial evidence against him he was tried and acquitted.  He left, returning to Florida soon after his acquittal.

  I think that the 45th President is not sleeping well...  It seems that Special Investigator Robert Mueller's team is getting closer to naming him as a defendant each day...

  Had my taxes done by AARP-IRS volunteers at the Boulder Senior Center on Thursday.  I don't owe anything to either the federal or state government, but I'm not getting back either.  Since my birthday is in June, I'll have to wait for another 2 years before I can apply to the City and County, and get my food tax refund.  Last year they paid back $62; this year it's $83...  Since I need a crown for a dead tooth, and it's going to cost $700, it would've been nice to get a little bit of cash back!

  Still working away on my family tree, and my room-mate, Beatrice's.  I'm lucky that there are so many church and tax records for most of my family.  I have to admit that I've divided my family tree into three parts, not four.  That's due to the scarcity of Swedish records for my mother's paternal side.  I have over 4,000 entries for my father's paternal Nocks family; and I have over 2,000 for his maternal Lancaster/Mobley/Washburn side.  I have about 1,500 for my mother's family, in entirety...
   For Beatrice, I started with her parents names, her maternal grandmother, and her paternal grandfather's names.  As they are African American, and the families were slaves on plantations in Louisiana, I am very happy to have found more than 1,100 hundred relatives so far.  Her second-great-grandfather was the son of the plantation owner, and I have been able to trace the owner's family back to the late 1500s in Europe.  But we're still stuck at her grandfather Bell - we don't know his parents' names, and I've found 12 different Henry Bells that were born around the same time and near the right place....  I'll continue to look, and hope to have a break-through.

 

My Ancestor, Thomas Nock, 1617 - 1666

Yesterday, just for the heck of it, I decided to see if any information had appeared on the man who is the "end" of of my father's male ancestry.  Tracing my Dad back, father to father, I end up with Thomas Nock, who was born in 1617 in England and died in 1666 in Dover, New Hampshire.  The church has the recording of his birth date, as he told his wife (Rebecca Tibbetts) and the minister recorded his death date.
    This is what I  know of Thomas Nock, from multiple years of research:  he was born in England according to his wife.  He married his wife, Rebecca Tibbetts, in Dover.  Thomas had an established home in Dover in 1652, and was recognized as a free man.  Thomas and Rebecca's first child was born in 1654; as she was born about July 1636, it is posited that they were married in 1652 or 1653 in Dover.  They had five documented children, and the last, Henry, was born four months after his father's death in October 1666.  Thomas and Rebecca's second son, Sylvanus, married Elizabeth Emery, and their third child, daughter Rebecca, married William Willey.  (Less than two years after the death of Thomas Nock, his widow, Rebecca, married Philip Benmore.)
   I searched  long and hard to find out about the the surname "Nock" in England.  Both the Tibbetts and the Emery families, who married into the family, have stated that the name is from the old "atten Oakes" name, meaning the family originally lived near oak trees.  In England, that name has been changed by time to several variations - Knock, Knocke, Noake, Noakes, Nock, Nocks.  But there is another possibility - old English also contains the word "nock" which means a small round hill; and a person with that last name would have lived near such a hill.
   There were, and are, a lot of Nock and Nocks families in Shropshire, England.  There are small pockets of families with the same names in almost every area of England; there are some in Scotland (not  spelled Knox); and there are some in Wales, Ireland, and Northern Ireland.  Both the Emery and the Tibbetts families have declared that the Thomas Nock family is from Shropshire - but there is no solid proof that has yet been discovered.
   The whole reason I'm writing this particular blog is due to a visit to Rootsweb, a part of Ancestry.com.  Anyone can fill out a family tree and send it in, and get it posted there.  That is one of the reasons I've been recently writing a lot about checking sources, research and facts.   I looked up Thomas Nock, to see if anyone had any factual information that might have turned up regarding his parentage and place of birth.
   I really laughed out loud, and startled Rosie, the elderly dog I'm currently caring for...  First were the listings that said that "my" Thomas Nock was born in 1654 (that was actually his first son, Thomas, with Rebecca Tibbetts) and that the son had married the mother (said Rebecca Tibbetts), and had died in 1666, having had 5 children with his mother).   I know that it's confusing when first sons are always named the same - but...  really!
    And then I saw a new listing that said that "my" Thomas Nock was the son of Thomas Knox and Jayne Marie Cristy of Shropshire, England.  I began to investigate that, and it immediately fell apart.  Jayne Marie Cristy was the wife of Harold Thomas Knox, Jr (1932 - 1987); and Jayne herself was born in Illinois in 1931 and passed away in 2003.  How someone decided that Jayne was born in Romney Marsh in England in 1609, and was the mother of a man born in 1617 is a thing that has me scratching my head in puzzlement...
     The family surname was Nock when Thomas arrived in colonial America; in several generations, the "s" was added, and became Nocks.  Then we had the large wave of Scots immigrants in the northeast, and the learned people who could write decided the name was Scots and changed the spelling to Knox.  Some of my grandfather's aunts and uncles spelled the name Knox, some spelled it Nock, and Great-grandpa James Loren spelled his last name Nocks....  A part of the family came from England with the surname Waterhouse; after eight generations in Maine, they became Watrous....
   Check your facts, if you are doing genealogy!!!  Just flat out copying can lead to huge mistakes.
 

A Tribute to Theoda Smith Nocks

Aunt Theoda passed away yesterday evening. I do not think that a family member was there with her in her last hours, because her daughter did not let anyone in the family know that her Mother had stopped eating ten days ago, and that the daughter had approved of water given only orally. Now, please don't read this the wrong way. I'm certain that's what Aunt Theoda would have wanted, in the end. But it would have been nice if her daughter had told other family members that her Mother was not long for the world. Aunt Theoda has been in the hospital, followed by a nursing home since falling and breaking her hip more than five years ago. After her hip replacement, she would not do her physical therapy; after 9 months in the rehab facility, she began showing signs of Alzheimer's. For the last three years, Aunt Theoda has not recognized anyone within the family when they visited. Elenor, Aunt Theoda's only surviving child, called and informed my cousin Sarah of her Grandmother's death with very little feeling. Sarah, who had grown up seeing her Grandparents every weekend, if not every day, was stunned by the death, as Elenor had not told anyone that Aunt Theoda was failing. Sarah and her sister Pam would have been there in a heart-beat to sit with their Grandmother; to talk to her, share memories, read to her, and discuss family times together even if she could not respond. Instead, Aunt Theoda died alone.
Aunt Theoda was one of those who grew up during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl years; she and her family were of old farmer stock, and, like the Nocks family, the Smith family made do with what they had when they had it. They worked hard, they played hard, and they loved deeply. Aunt Theoda married Uncle El while she was in high school, but managed to finish her senior year, while Uncle El worked on a neighbor's farm. While Uncle El served in the Navy, Aunt Theoda worked their own farm and raised their kids, two sons and a daughter. Uncle El was a good farmer, and preferred to use the horse and plow on a field, rather than a tractor. Aunt Theoda raised prize-winning rabbits, domestic fowl, and usually won the baking contests at the local fairs. She was brought up to believe in community service, and, up until her fall and broken hip, she drove other locals without transportation to and from doctor and hospital appointments, even if it kept her out and about all day. Uncle El passed away quite suddenly, from a heart attack, like my Dad, his brother. Aunt Theoda spent three months recovering from the loss of her love, and set out once more, doing kindnesses for her community.
Theoda Smith Nocks will be greatly missed by all who knew her.