Updates to Corder Family Timeline

This is a link to an Excel spreadsheet of my working timeline for this family. The file includes tabs for unidentified individual records and limited entries for lines or individuals known to be unrelated to ours (to help distinguish from our own entries). This is an ongoing work in progress. Please feel free to download this file or share the link, but I request that you not share or re-post the actual Excel file since it is updated frequently. Please subscribe to this blog to be notified of updates.

Corder Family Timeline.xls

Could Susannah (or her first husband) have been a Harvey?

Those of you who have been following the Corder Family DNA project will know that we had a genetic mismatch between two sons of Susannah [maiden name unknown] Corder, wife of Edward Corder II. Eldest son Benjamin Corder's Y-DNA signature does not match the Y-DNA signatures of younger sons Elijah Corder Sr. and Stephen Corder. This has lead us to conclude that Susannah already had one or more children when she married Edward Corder II sometime in the 1760's. It is possible that Susannah had a prior marriage, as she apparently also had one or more daughters believed to be older than Benjamin.

On January 19, 1797 Elizabeth Corder (daughter of Susannah, although she may or may not have been the biological child of Edward) married Thomas Cassidy in Burke's Garden, Tazewell County, VA (formerly Montgomery County, VA). Thomas and Elizabeth Corder Cassidy had six children before she died in about 1815. They were: Hiram b. ca 1799, Benjamin b. October 18, 1800; Elizabeth b. ca 1806; Thomas b. ca 1812; Harve b. ca 1814; and Margaret b. ca 1815.

It looks like Elizabeth named one child for her brother Benjamin. She named a younger son Harve (Harvey). Benjamin's family line uses the name Harvey frequently through the subsequent generations. Notice that Elizabeth does not name any of her children Edward, nor does she name any of her sons after her younger brothers. From what I've seen, the lines of Edward's biological sons do not use the names Benjamin or Harvey (although they do use Stephen, Edward, John [a brother to Edward II], Elijah, and Elinor [possibly the name of Edward II's mother] frequently).

Based on these naming patterns, I wonder if it makes sense to theorize that Elizabeth and Benjamin were full siblings through their mother Mary Susannah's (or Susannah Mary) first marriage, and that either Susannah's maiden name was Harvey (although if so, you would think that the name would have been passed through the younger Corder lines as well), or more likely, their biological father was named Harvey (first or last name)?

Corders in the McKay Family Genealogy Index

I spent an hour in the new (and greatly improved) Samuels Public Library in Front Royal today and started making my way through the shelves of their Local History Room. I'm looking for the Corders of old Frederick County, VA. Not a lot of luck so far, except for a couple of entries in the McKay Family Genealogy Index.

There was a reference to Edward Cordit (Corder) on page 680 of the index referring to Frederick County Order Book 1:316, an entry dated 2 April 1745 when he (among others) petitioned for a road from the Court House to Gregory's Ford. Not too sure where Gregory's Ford is. I've Googled it and I'm not getting any satisfactory results. I assume it's somewhere along the Shenandoah or the Opequon. Edward was later tasked with maintenance on the resulting road.

Another entry on page 826 concerns John Corder, believed to be the second son of Edward Corder Sr. of Greenway Court. John married into the Quaker Branson family (she was disowned for marrying out of unity) and he and his wife Elizabeth Branson Corder inherited land in Frederick County from her father, John Branson. On August 5, 1772 John and Elizabeth Branson Corder sold their parcel of land to Andrew McKay. (In 1762 John Branson sold acreage to Andrew McKay; in 1767 Thomas Branson sold land to Jacob McKay; in May 1768 John Branson sold another parcel to Andrew McKay. Looks like when the Bransons wanted to liquidate land, the McKays were the go-to guys.)

The third entry concerned a Mary Corder who had married a A. R. Y. Compton. After digging around a bit, I concluded that Mary was the daughter of Alexander Corder and Elizabeth Arnold of Culpeper County, VA. These Corders are descendants of the Fauquier County group as far as I can tell.