Saturday, November 30, 2013

Nancy Ann Whitlow Cannon

Nancy Ann Whitlow...ancestress born on
18 Nov 1747 in Caswell, North Carolina, and she died on 01 Jul 1830 in Knox County, TN.

She was the mother of William Henry Cannon. She was married to John Cannon, in 1776 in North Carolina.

Her granddaughter Cyntha Cannon married Micajah Clack Rogers in Sevierville, TN, and they moved eventually to TEXAS, where 4 or 5 generations later I was born.

Last night I spent 3 hours that I didn't really want to spend straightening out what had been screwed up somehow on Ancestry, making Cyntha Cannon the sister of her father.  ARGH!  She was only listed once, and was on my tree in the right place, but kept coming up with the wrong family...where she actually had been entered twice.  It took forever, because frankly, I don't want to spend all my life correcting Ancestry mistakes.

Anyway, here's what I know about Nancy Ann Whitlow.  

One family tree lists her name as Nancy Wilton, who married John Cannon on Jan 29, 1800 in TN.  I'm going to discount that entire entry, as being another Nancy who married another John Cannon, maybe their son or nephew.  It's way too late in her life for a marriage.












 Due to being born in Nov, she was actually 82 years old at her death.

She is burried in
Steekee Cemetery
Loudon, Loudon County, Tennessee

I saw 10 other family trees with the Cannons, and each has her granddaughter as her daughter.  So maybe someday someone else will straighten them all out.  What a mess.

Anyway, she probably had these children: Charles, Elizabeth, Jane (1770-1860), William Henry (1771-1868), John (1779-1864), Henry (1781-1850), Robert (1781-1854) and Martha Patsy (1784-1862).  I say probably for a reason.  You may notice Henry and Robert both listed as birth year 1781.  Robert was born Sept. 30, and Henry was born July 29.  Not possible folks!

So the mess continues.  Of course a slip of the finger typing can give the year of one of these gentlemen's birth wrong.  And I sure make my share of typos.  But to have so many folks keep on passing on false information about real people seems so disrespectful.

Why do I keep working with this system?  Well because today I found one of those other 10 trees had some parents listed for Nancy Whitlow.  They were Henry Othello Whitlow (1724-1788) and Elizabeth Perkins (1724-1798).  To have connected with two more ancestors makes all the headaches worth while.

I'll add this to the meme of Sepia Saturday for this week (HERE).  There are always some interesting reads over there, and some (as well as this one) not on topic for the week.




8 comments:

  1. My grandfather was born in Loudon County, TN in 1886.

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  2. Yes it is frustrating when others put errors up on online trees. But, these are a good hint sometimes for where to start looking - or what to rule out completely.

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  3. I use Ancestry.com all the time and often run into incorrect branches of family trees. The larger the families or the more ancient the generations, then accuracy gets difficult. And of course there is less documentation to double check from the older eras. I'm not convinced that it will be any easier for future generation to research our time. Too much stuff instead of too little.

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  4. You can find some ridiculous mistakes on Ancestry. Somebody has one of my ancestors married to someone over 100 years older than she was.

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  5. Hi everyone...thanks for your comments! Kristin, we might have ancestors who played together on the playground in TN, at least. I'm glad to do research on Ancestry, and re-research. It's so much easier than the tomes of books that we used to have to wade through!

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  6. I've had mostly good luck on Ancestry...but have learned to always find a second (or third) source!

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  7. Ancestry is great for access to the primary sources. It's the public 'family trees' that are a problem - there's an awful lot of bad research going on out there.

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  8. I know this post is 7 years old but I just came upon it. Have you found any more information on Nancy Ann Whitlow Cannon and Henry Othello Whitlow? Nancy Ann is my 5th great grandmother and I have not been able to link her to Henry.

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