Wm Anderson McCoy Genealogy

William Anderson McCoy (1846-1922)

Known as 'Anderson McCoy' or, especially to his family, 'Ance', William Anderson McCoy was a son of William McCoy of the McCoys of Pike County, Kentucky, himself a grandson of "Old William" McCoy of Maryland, a soldier in the Revolutionary War.

Prior to beginning work on the genealogy that includes the person here named William Anderson McCoy, the information available from family sources and the Blair, Nebraska, cemetery dealing with that person consisted of:

* A family tree with an Anderson McCoy said to have been born on December 5, 1844, in Pike County, Kentucky. His parents were given as William McCoy and Mary Burriss McCoy. Siblings were Elizabeth, James, Pleasant, Rachel J.,Carelys (also given as Careless), Robert, Phoeba, Angelina and L. D. McCoy. Anderson McCoy died in 1922 and was buried in the city cemetery of Blair, Nebraska. His tombstone reads, "McCoy - Anderson, 1844-1922". His wife, Mary, with dates of 1852-1931, lies beside him. Anderson, according to this family tree, was the son of William McCoy, who was the son of Samuel McCoy, who was the son of William ("Old William") McCoy, who fought in the Revolutionary War and whose line extends back to Sutherland, Scotland.
* The children of Anderson and Mary were directly known to their granddaughter, my grandmother, and her generation. They were: Texas, Ida, William, Gertrude, Milton, Julia, Sidney and Geneva McCoy. The family began with the marriage of Anderson and Mary, said to have taken place in West Virginia in 1868. Entries by family members in a centennial commemorative book for Roseland, Nebraska (later apparently used for a similar entry in one for Blair,Nebraska) say that Anderson and Mary took their family west to central Nebraska in 1877. Later, they came back east a bit to settle in the Blair area (Washington County).
* The other large bit of factual information comes from the diary or journal of Anderson's wife, Mary, which had been written on scraps of paper she had bundled together carefully. These were transcribed in typewritten form by hergranddaughter, Ruth Reichenbach Delhay, in the 1980s. That document comes to about 400 pages. Naturally, it contains frequent mentions of family members and events. Unfortunately, the only entries naming McCoys are of her children or her husband, who is routinely referred to as "Ance". *That name sometimes led to confusion, such as when a newspaper printed it as "Hans" in the obituary of his daughter Ida.*
* Finally, among some old family photographs that go back at least to 1907, is one of a trio, an elderly man and woman and a younger woman. Handwritten on the picture is "McCoys - Aunt Cecillia, daughter, Uncle Johnson." (see below)

Census Records

Fortunately for most people hunting ancestors in America, census records are now available online from 1930 back, in some cases, to colonial times. Among those records are none for "Ance McCoy" or "Anse McCoy". From the period that would cover Anderson McCoy's childhood, where we might be able to find him together with some of his siblings (1850), there are two entries for such a name. The first of these, Anderson McCoy (black laborer), was born in Mississippi in 1843 and lived there still in 1880 married to Eliza. No luck with that Anderson.

The second Anderson McCoy found in the correct time period in the US Census records of 1850 is a 3-year-old boy living with his parents, Wm (39, farmer) and Mary (30), in Pike County, Kentucky, with sister Elizabeth (12), brother Pleasant (10), brother James H. (9), sister Rachel J. (7), brother Careless (5), brother Robert (1), his grandmother Rachel Burris (78) and Daniel Burris (40, uncle?). It takes a moment or two to see how Careless' name wasinterpreted by later readers as "Careleys" or "Carelys". Just recall a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, in which "in pursuit of happiness" looks to modern eyes as "in purfuit of happinefs" because of the style of the day for writing "s" in two ways.

So, yes, this is the correct Anderson McCoy, even though his birth year would have been 1846 rather than 1844. [Assuming his birthday is correct as December 5, and knowing that the 1850 Pike County US Census was taken on September 6, 1850, he would have been born in 1846 in order to be 3 years old.]

Things become more interesting in the 1860 census of the same location. Here we find Wm (48), Mary (39) with their children: Pleasant (20), James H. (18), Rachel J. (17), Achillas (15), Wm A (13), Robin (11), Phoeba (7), Angeline(4), L. D. (3) and nameless male (1 month).

Elizabeth is gone from the family; according to the Roseland Centennial book, she has married (pay attention) Ephrin (actually Ephraim) Hatfield. [Does that last name have a familiar ring? Hatfield? Hatfield - McCoy...?] Her absencemakes sense. Pleasant, James and Rachel have advanced by 10 years. And now we discover that the "Careless" of 1850 is actually Achillas. Anderson turns out to be "Wm A". Robert has become Robin. And we have some additions. L. D. wewill later discover to be Lorenzo Dow. And then there is the "nameless male".

To find out who this was, we need to remember Johnson McCoy, whose picture is among the family heirlooms. Johnson McCoy's death certificate (January 10, 1944), gives his father as William McCoy of Pike County KY, his mother as MaryBurriss and his own place of birth and death as Turkey Creek, Kentucky (in Pike County). His age as given on the certificate is 88. If correct (doubtful), that would make his birth year 1856, and he would have been 4 years old forthe 1860 census. The only child of Wm and Mary anywhere close to that age in the census is L. D. My guess is that whoever gave the age as 88 had miscalculated. In any case, I consider the questions of the nameless male child of1860 and the relevance of a Johnson McCoy missing from the census to be solved and, along with them, the correct name and confirmed origin of William Anderson McCoy. In fact, it is Johnson McCoy who verifies our Anderson McCoy ashaving come from that particular family in Pike County, for, although we have a picture of Johnson among the family treasures, he was not listed by name on the census forms. It's his connection to Anderson that comes closest to proving that the list of his siblings wasn't simply lifted from a census form by a latter day family member.

Wm Anderson McCoy's relationship to the "Feuding McCoys

According to an extensive listing of the descendants of "Old William" McCoy available on the web, Wm Anderson and Randolph ("Ol' Ran'l") McCoy of the infamous feud were first cousins once removed by this lineage:

William McCoy ("Old William") -> Samuel McCoy -> William McCoy -> Wm Anderson McCoy
William McCoy ("Old William") -> Daniel McCoy -> Randolph McCoy

It was Randolph and his sons who became involved in the feud that was joined with the Hatfields. One interesting item from this relationship is to note the name of the senior Hatfield, William Anderson Hatfield, aka "Devil Anse".According to several family members, including my late grandmother (Wm A's granddaughter), Anderson McCoy always said he was from the family of the feuding McCoys, but perhaps he got his name from the Hatfields. After all, Anderson's eldest sister, Elizabeth McCoy, married Ephraim Hatfield.

The story of the feud is well told on the site listing Old William's descendants.

Birth to the Civil War

If the existing and readily-available family trees are accurate, William Anderson McCoy was born the fourth son of the fourth son (William) of the fourth son (Samuel) of another William McCoy ("Old William"), who fought in the Virginia Continental Line during the Revolutionary War. Old William may have lived in Maryland, although some sources say he lived on ground that would eventually become part of the battlefield of Antietam (Bull Run). And, if the calculations above are correct, Wm A was born on the 5th of December in 1846 to William and Mary Burress McCoy somewhere in Pike County, Kentucky. His 39-year-old father was a farmer with real estate valued at $400, who had beenborn in Kentucky, while his 30-year-old mother had come from Virginia; both are listed in the 1850 census as illiterate, but their children were acquainted with schooling. Living with the family were two of the Burress in-laws, Wm A's grandmother Rachel and an uncle (apparently) Daniel. Aside from census entries in 1850 and 1860 showing that 3-year-old "Anderson McCoy" became 13-year-old "Wm A McCoy", nothing else is known of him so far until 1861. In the1860 census, William's and Mary's fortunes have risen to $700 in real estate and $350 in personal assets. The Burress relatives are gone, and the family may have moved between 1850 and 1860, since the neighbors' names are different.

The Civil War

Wm A McCoy's possible participation in the Civil War as a 15-year-old is suggested by enlistment records that show a William A McCoy joining up with the 60th Virginia Infantry at Gauley Bridge in Greenbrier County, Virginia (soon to be West Virginia) on July 17, 1861. This is the same location where Wm A's future father-in-law, John Jordan Hoylman, had joined the same regiment just two weeks earlier. It may be significant (or not) that no other McCoys were enlisted in that Regiment at that location, since it might suggest Wm A was on his own or living away from his parents' Kentucky home at the time. Also supporting this William A as being 'our' Wm Anderson is the lack of another discoverable record for such a person in the Confederate Army and this notation ("-1-") in Anderson McCoy's 1910 US Census in the column headed "Whether a Survivor of the Union or Confederate Army or Navy". The Confederate records list William A McCoy as absent without leave as of December 10, 1861, in Greenbrier, Virginia. (Greenbrier County was home to the Hoylmans.)

Anderson's older brothers, Pleasant McCoy and James H McCoy, both Confederates, were captured in 1863 along with their cousin, Randolph McCoy (of the later feud fame) and imprisoned at the notorious Camp Douglas in Chicago. Pleasant died there in the same year. James probably also died there; nothing further of him can be found. Randolph, of course, lived to be released and to fight another day...against the Hatfields.]

In fact, the family unit of parents William and Mary with the other children (including Wm A) is found intact after the war across the river in West Virginia in the 1870 census. William seems to have died in 1880, again in Pike County, Kentucky after a move back from West Virginia.

The 1870 census finds the family halfway between Pike and Boyd counties but on the West Virginia side of the river and under the mislabeled name of “McClay” in Wayne County. Anderson is with his parents and siblings and is “working on farm”. Yet he has a 1-year-old child (Texas Derensy) back in Trap Hill WV. Did he know about that fact? Can we believe the later assertion that he and Mary Hoylman married in 1868? Doubtful. This makes it much more likely that the 1872 documented marriage of ‘Andrew’ McCoy and Mary E Hoylman in Lawrence County KY is their true marriage date. In fact, the handwritten entry for that marriage can as easily be read as Anderson McCoy as Andrew.

Mary died a widow in Boyd County, Kentucky, in 1913. A photographic portrait almost certainly of her circa 1905 exists.

Marriage and Move West

The 1910 US Census states that Anderson and Mary McCoy had been married for 41 years, which would put their wedding somewhere between April 15 of 1868 and the same date in 1869. Their first child, daughter Texas Derency McCoy, wasborn on March 29, 1869. But here things become a bit confusing. First is the question of whether the wedding (and, maybe, the subsequent birth of Texas) occurred in West Virginia, home to the Hoylman family) or in what was left of old Virginia. Later census records give both as the birthplace of Texas McCoy. Second is the fact that the 1870 US Census shows Mary still in the home of her father, John J Hoylman, although now listed as Mary M rather than Mary E(Mary Eugene). And in that household is a 1-year-old named Derrensy P (or Derrensy T), a male. Nowhere to be found is any McCoy.

The Roseland, Nebraska Centennial book's entry for the McCoy family say that Anderson (as he was then known) and Mary McCoy moved there from West Virginia in 1877. This fits with the 1880 US Census from the Silver Lake District ofAdams County, Nebraska (just south of Roseland), in which their son Willie, age 4, is said to have been born in Virginia, while daughter Gertrude, age 1, had been born in Nebraska. Here they farmed and raised their children (Texas 8, Ida 6, Willie 4, Gertrude 1 and John 3 months) in a neighborhood full of Hoylman relatives, including father-in-law John J. Willie would not survive childhood, and John would assume a different name. A colorful description of what life was like for them (from a Hoylman perspective) is told by Mary's brother Byron in recollections told to a local Nebraska newspaper in 1950.

Land records from Adams County, Nebraska, include a deed record from January, 1892, of the sale of the McCoy farm for $1,000, and this must have been the point at which the family traveled back east to settle along the Missouri River in Washington County, Nebraska, in the slowly dying former county seat of De Soto, where Mary's sister, Cora, was thriving. That sale occurred just a few months after the death of Mary's father, John Jordan Hoylman. Remembering the information about his probable service in the Confederate Army, it's interesting to note that Anderson McCoy's name does not appear in the 1890 special census of veterans (of the Union). Most of the 1890 US Census was destroyed in a fire in Washington DC. Yet, confounding this assumption are records from Adams County of attendance in their schools of the McCoy children until 1893, so there must have been an overlap period between the sale ofthe farm and their move to Washington County in eastern Nebraska. In these intervening years, it looks as though the family lost Willie around age 5 or 6, since he is shown attending school only in 1880 in contrast to his siblings.Brother John, born in 1880, never appears in the school roster and turns out to be the son generally known as Milton. The McCoy children attended school at Adams County District #10, which was built on their grandfather's (John Jordan Hoylman) land.

Anderson and Mary's family eventually included:
• Texas, born in 1869 in West Virginia, attended school 1878, 1885-1886
• Ida born in 1874 in West Virginia, attended school 1878, 1884-1890
• Willie born in 1876 in West Virginia, attended school 1880
• Gertrude born in 1878 in Nebraska, attended school 1884-1893
• (John) Milton born in 1879 in Nebraska, attended school 1885-1893 (Named John in his first census but Milton thereafter)
• Julia born in 1883 in Nebraska, attended school 1887-1893
• Sidney born in 1886 in Nebraska, attended school 1892-1893
• Geneva born in 1889 in Nebraska
Note that these records are only from the family's time in Adama County and do no include the years in Washington County.

Another McCoy child at District #10 school was Theresa, who attended in 1880, but, as she is never listed on census records, it's unknown whether she was a child of Anderson and Mary. [I have no records from later schools that the children may have attended in Washington County.]

Anderson and Mary are next found in census records in Washington County, Nebraska, where they must have moved in 1893 or 1894. They settled near Mary's sister, Cora (Coralena Moffatt Hoylman) Bouvier, in De Soto, which was a slowly dying failed county seat that had given way to the town of Blair where the railroad came across the Missouri River from Iowa.

The 1890 census was destroyed in a fire in Washington, D.C.

The 1900 census shows Mary with daughter Geneva living with newly-married daughter Julia (and Fred) Reichenbach. Texas is still in central Nebraska, where she has become Mrs. James Vance. Daughter Ida has had a daughter, Hazel Dunn,by one marriage, has divorced and is now married to Linnaeus ("Lennie") Justice. Gertrude ("Gertie") is married to Charles Stricklett and has two children; brother Sidney is with them. Milton is a boarder at the home of Wm and Alice Howe for whom he frequently worked. Nowhere to be found (so far) is Anderson McCoy, although his daughter Julia's recollections 50 years later place him with his wife Mary in the family log cabin along De Soto Lake. This partial dissolution of the family appears to be the fall-out of Anderson's loss of the farm in Adams County, which may have been the result of a "misadventure" on the part of Anderson. As becomes clear from Mary's journal, she works in the homes of several neighbors cleaning, cooking, etc. She is, also, a midwife, although this is stated only obliquely in her own writing.

The 1910 census has Mary and Anderson back together again, still in De Soto among their own children near Mary's sister, Cora. 1901 had seen one of the tragedies in their lives, the death of their son Milton as described by one of the local newspapers:

"Milton McCoy was accidentally killed at the lake last Monday as follows: Landing from a boat, he pulled his cocked gun toward him when it was discharged, the load going through his chest near the left nipple. He told Earl Miles toget water, but when the lad came back, he was dead. Coroner Pierce and Sheriff Mncke decided an inquest was not necessary. The body was taken to the home of Mrs. Cora Bouvier and there was a sad scene when his mother came. He was asteady young man 23 years of age. His life had been insured in the W. O. W. Lodge of Ft. Calhoun, also he had an accident policy of $1,000. It is said both policies had lapsed. The burial was from Blair Baptist church on Wednesday,and the sermon was by Rev. Tingley.

Mary's journal, which is remarkable for its lack of personal comment, makes quietly clear her lingering grief over the death of this child. Milton is included a group picture taken around Memorial Day 1898 of the "De Soto Junior Brotherhood". Her journal also makes it clear that she and Anderson lived apart for much of the rest of their lives. She continued working for neighbors until she went with daughter Geneva and her husband, Morris (Moritz) Reichenbach, to live in Lincoln, Nebraska, where Morris had been made superintendent of the state fair grounds. Anderson remained, usually with one or another of the children, in Washington County. But Mary would frequently return for visits. It was there, in 1922, that they saw another of their children die. That was Ida Justice, who most probably succumbed to an intestinal obstruction several months after an operation, judging by the description of her progress in Mary's journal.

William Anderson McCoy himself died later in 1922, on September 15, at the home of his daughter, Julia, and her husband, Fred Reichenbach. Mary was at his side and later recorded it in her journal:

15th It was cloudy and windy but not so cold as it has been. Ance is no better. The Dr. come to see him and says he can't last very long for he is so weak. It sprinkled rain a little about ten o'clock. Ance fell into a deep sleep about ten 30 and never woke but passed away at 5 30 in the evening. We were there alone Julia and I and Mae and Grace and Inez all alone.

16th It was cloudy but didn't rain any. Julia Fred and I and Leo all went to Blair and selected a casket for the old gentleman and we got a nice one and he was laid away nice to wait for the rest of us.

17th Sunday It looked very much like rain but it held off. We prepared dinner for all that come but there wasnt many come for dinner. The pallbearers had all had dinner. We left the house at 1 30 and got to Blair and 2 20 thefuneral was preached and he was laid to rest at about 4 o'clock.

He was 76 years old.