The Elusive Conner Family - Part I

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Repost of August 4, 2011 from prior site

Are you hitting brick wall after brick wall when researching the Conner Family? How about dead-end web searches? Non-responsive forum queries?  Well so have I, which is why I have started blogging about my Conner research.

You see, I've been researching the Conner family going on 25+ years and walked so many twisted paths and twirled in so many circles till I am dizzy. I have looked through so many documents that people have given me that did not have sources cited and could not be verified.

Cousin Clifford Conner shared his immense knowledge and collection with me. I am forever indebted to him for his generosity. It has been the most accurate and verifiable.

I've heard of good report that there is a Conner Family Bible in Rutherford County, NC, and the family is very protective of it. I understand wanting to protect a wonderful piece of Conner Family History. If you know them, please let them know that I would really appreciate the opportunity to see this great family history piece.

I have found several spellings of the Conner name - Conner, Connor, Coner, Conor, O'Conner, O’Connor. For the sake of clarity, I am using one spelling à Conner.

My interest in the Conner family was inspired by my mother, Eunice Faye Davis and her siblings - Lawrence, Eugene, Katherine and Beatrice. Even though I never knew Lawrence, it seems as if I did from the stories told me by my mother and her siblings. I have confirmed my family back four generations to Jackson Conner.  In the Bill's Creek Township of Rutherford County, NC of the 1850 census in the household numbered 1462....  Jackson is the father of Joseph Washington Conner.

Joseph listed as a 7 year-old and Jackson Conner is listed as a 30 year-old, which would indicate that he was born about 1820.

This is where all the questions start…

• Is Jackson in the 1850 census….Jackson Isaac? Jack?
• Who is Jackson's father?
• Are the Rutherford County, NC Conner's connected to the Conner's who migrated to Ohio and Texas.
• What year did the Conner's migrate to America?
• What ship brought them across the ocean?
• Which dock did they step upon when arriving in America?
• What brought them to America - religious freedom? Famine?
• Were they transported across on convict ships?

I have reviewed my collection of documentation many times. Read and re-read, read it again, then over and over when a note hand written and lopsided on the page caught my eye.

Written on the page of Clifford Conner's research was the following sentence, "Uncle Edgar Conner said that his father - Joseph Washington Conner - was a 1st cousin to my grandfather - Felix Crawford, whose mother was Martha (Patty) Conner" - said by General Dalton.

If this is true, that makes Jackson Conner and Martha "Patty" Conner siblings and William Albert Conner, Sr. their father.

Wow! Doesn’t that open up a whole new theory on where Jackson Conner (b. abt. 1820) is from and where the Conner family originated?