All My Ancestors

Randy Seaver must have finished up his Thanksgiving festivities more quickly than I did.  Last night while I still had a houseful of company, and we were enjoying watching the Bedlam that was the Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma football game, Randy was posting:

Saturday Night Fun – Who’s Number 1000?

It’s Saturday night, and I’m sitting here wondering who else is pecking away on his/her keyboard not having any real fun. So, let’s play a little game with our genealogy software:

GOAL: Find out who is Reference Number 1,000 in your genealogy software.

Sounds like an easy task, right? Well, not if you have over 20,000 persons in your database like I do. I worked with Family Tree Maker 16 for almost 30 minutes trying to figure it out this afternoon, and failed. I must be looking for RINs in all the wrong places – the Help file didn’t really help.

So after a trip to the airport this morning to send my brother back to Houston and bidding my eldest son and his girl farewell for their journey back to Tulsa, I am catching up on blog-reading.  I first read Apple’s posts–she’d checked her database for her #1000, and it’s a person who is also in Randy’s database!  What are the chances of that happening?  I guess if you have New England ancestors, it’s not all that rare.  I’m just not one of the lucky ones.

I went to my Master Genealogist database.  It was easy to sort the entire database of about 3500 people into numerical order, scroll down, and find #1000.  I was hoping it wouldn’t turn out to be one of the various Maiden Name Unknown [MNU] females in the collection.  As it happens, it is the grandson of one of my favorite ancestors, Merrimon Landrum’s grandson Merrimon Landrum Cooper.

Merrimon is my second great-grand uncle, and is a name that occurs frequently in my Cooper and Landrum family lines.  Sometimes it’s Merrimon, sometimes it’s Merriman.  And sometimes it has only one “r.”  This Merrimon Landrum Cooper is named for his maternal grandfather, Merrimon Landrum (1784-1826), about whom I have written here and here.  Merrimon L. Cooper is one of four brother, sons of Job Cooper and ELizabeth Landrum Cooper, who perished in the Civil War.  This photo is believed to be him:

My family tradition says this is him–I have seen this photo from another source labeled with his brother Elisha Fitzallen Cooper’s name.

Merrimon and his brothers John B. and Elisha all joined the 18th Texas Cavalry in 1862.  A few months later, they were captured at Arkansas Post and shipped upriver to Camp Douglas near Chicago.  Elisha and Merrimon both died at that camp.  Merrimon left a wife, Telitha Estes Cooper and 3 children:  Julia Ann, Job, and Ellender.  Elisha was not married and my great-great grandfather, John B., left a wife, Mary Mitchell Cooper and 2 children:  George C. and Rebecca Ann, known as Annie.  John B. survived the camp, was paroled only to perish at the Battle of Atlanta.  The fourth brother in this family to die in this awful war was Jose D., who’d joined the 12th Texas Cavalry and died in the Battle of Elk Horn Tavern.

So that’s #1000 in my database.  I ordered his military service record ages ago, but it’s been nice to have access to is through Footnote these days–I also have the pension his wife applied for in Texas.  Thanks to Randy for this trip down memory lane–an appropriate trip right after this generation of family has departed from all our fun this Thanksgiving.

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