52 Ancestors 2025: Multiple — A Tale of Two Journeys

 

The prompt “multiple” can have many meanings, but this week I decided to explore one set of twins in my family. On my paternal side, my 4th-great-grandmother Marie Durie (or Duryea) Cossart gave birth to twins, Hendrick (Henry) and David, on March 25, 1778. They were born into the Dutch/Huguenot Conewago Colony of Adams County, Pennsylvania.

Their early life was tumultuous. They were only about a year old when their family—and other members of the colony—migrated to Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia) before making the long journey to Kentucky via the Wilderness Road. The early settlers endured great hardship, as many—including the twins’ father, Pieter Cossart, and several uncles—were killed by Native Americans during frontier conflicts associated with the Revolutionary War. With Pieter’s death in 1781, the twins and their siblings were raised by their mother and likely by members of her extended Durie family, who had also migrated to Kentucky. Unfortunately, records from those early Kentucky pioneers are sparse, but the bonds among the Conewago colonists remained strong.

So how did the twins fare as adults? Did they stay in Kentucky or move on again? Both eventually settled in neighboring states—Ohio and Indiana—though by different routes. Hendrick, who later went by Henry, married Mary Nailor in Indiana and later moved to Warren County, Ohio, where he became a successful farmer. According to family lore, his mother spent her final days with him and is said to be buried in Dodds Cemetery in Warren County. Notably, many other Conewago descendants also settled there.

David’s path was more winding. Unlike Henry, he remained in Kentucky longer and married within the colony—his second cousin, Mary (Polly) Banta. The Bantas were among the leading families of the Kentucky Low Dutch Colony, and Polly’s uncles were founders of the Pleasant Hill Shaker Village. Henry and Mary had six children who survived to adulthood, while David and Polly had two: Jacob Duryea Cassatt and Mary Banta Cassatt. Interestingly, both children carried middle names from their grandmothers, and like their cousins, they later adopted the “Cassatt” spelling of the family name.

After Mary Banta Cassatt’s birth in 1818, David and his family left Kentucky for Indiana, eventually settling in Wabash County around 1834, where they were among the first settlers. He worked in the canal-building trade, as did his future son-in-law, John Matlock. By 1850, David was living with the Matlocks following the deaths of Polly and his second wife, Sarah Johnson. Like his twin brother, David had a grandson who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Sadly, Thomas Jefferson Matlock died of typhoid while in service. David himself passed away in 1854 at the age of 76, surviving his twin brother by just one year.

David’s surviving son, Jacob Duryea Cassatt, became a prominent citizen of Wabash County. He served in the Indiana State Legislature and held other public offices but endured several personal losses. His first wife, Louisa Jane Roberts, died in 1846 at the age of 31, leaving him with three young children, one of whom died the following year. His second wife, Emma Jane Townsend, died in 1850 at just 19, apparently from complications of childbirth. Their surviving daughter, Mary, was living in Iowa in 1860 with Thomas and Mary Townsend—likely her grandparents. Jacob spent his later years in Wabash County with his third wife, Elizabeth Barker Jones, a widow who brought one child into the marriage. Together, they had three more children, including their youngest, Mary Banta Cassatt.

The twins’ lives reflected the broader American story—surviving the arduous migration along the Wilderness Road, enduring the dangers of frontier life during the Revolution, and helping settle the growing Midwest after independence. Their paths shared much in common: farming, migration, and long life. Yet there were differences. Henry left many descendants carrying the Cossairt or Cassatt name (including me), while David’s line, having fewer children and more daughters, did not preserve the surname. Still, his legacy and genes endure through the many generations that followed.

As an aside, another “multiple” could refer to the many times the name David was used in the Cossart/Cossairt/Cassatt lineage, but that’s tale for another day.

Photo

By FloNight (Sydney Poore) and Russell Poore - self-made by Russell and Sydney Poore, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2806881

52 Ancestors 2025: Challenging - Mary Nailor

My challenging ancestor is my 3rd-great-grandmother, Mary Nailor Cossairt. In 1814, she married my paternal-line ancestor, Hendricks (Henry) Cossairt (or Cossart) in Franklin County, Indiana. They eventually settled in Warren County, Ohio, where Mary gave birth to about six children. She died on July 15, 1843, and one source lists her birth year as 1782.

What’s the significance? What’s the challenge? Until her marriage, the Huguenot Cossart family had remained within their blended French, Walloon, and Dutch colonies, starting with the founding of New Amsterdam. They kept together through migrations from New Amsterdam to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. Pioneer life in Kentucky during the American Revolution was difficult (another challenge), and parts of the family moved north to Ohio. There, they began marrying settlers whose families had emigrated from England, and it’s less clear where these English families originated.

Mary does not appear as herself in any of the early censuses, so where should I look? How could I make something of the scant data? I turned to ChatGPT, feeding it all the information I had—her name, marriage, and death—and let it generate probabilities, leads, and directions. I was able to input information about her first- and last-born children, along with checkboxes from the pre-1850 census records. ChatGPT also prompted me to check later census records (such as the 1880 census) for her children’s details, specifically for their mother’s birthplace.

I discovered another Nailor in the same county in Indiana where Mary was married, as well as another in Warren County, Ohio.

Thanks to ChatGPT, I was able to flesh out more details: Mary Nailor was born around 1792 in Maryland and migrated west before 1814, possibly through Kentucky. She married Henry Cossairt on December 12, 1814, in Franklin County, Indiana, and the young family settled in Warren County, Ohio, where Henry bought a substantial farm in 1821. Mary had six children and died in 1843, around the age of 51. One possible brother, John, about two years older than Mary, lived in Franklin County, Indiana.

The value of ChatGPT lies in its ability to analyze multiple bits of disparate data—such as the early census age/sex checkboxes—and generate plausible conclusions (or dismiss implausible ones) while pointing me in the right direction.