The recent thread on both COX-L and PIERCE-L about Claudius Cox of Greene County, Tennessee had a loose end that I wanted to clean up. As a quick review, Claudius was the son of Aaron Cox and Experience (Spriddy) Wells. Experience (Spriddy) Wells m.(1) Thomas Mitchell, m.(2) Aaron Cox, and m.(3) James E. Pierce. Claudius Cox was enumerated as Claudius Mitchell in the 1850 and 1860 censuses while living with his mother Experience (Spriddy) Wells and his step-father James E. Pierce, despite the fact that his father was Aaron Cox rather than Thomas Mitchell. He was enumerated as Claudius Cox in the 1870 and 1880 censuses while living as an adult with his wife. The loose end had to do with the 1870 Greene County, Tennessee census entry for James Pierce. James' wife was listed as Elizabeth in 1870 rather than as Experience. It is still an open question as to whether this was an enumerator's error (putting down Elizabeth when he should have put down Experience), or whether James E. Pierce married again between 1860 and 1870 to a woman whose given name was Elizabeth. I cited a Greene County marriage on 13 Aug 1865 between James Pierce and Elizabeth Cruraty as a possible clue to this puzzle. I still don't know if this James Pierce was James E. Pierce himself, James W. Pierce who was the son of James E. Pierce, or some other James Pierce. James E. Pierce and James W. Pierce are the only two James Pierces that I know of in Greene County, Tennessee in this time frame, so it seems likely that it was one or the other. This is still an open question. But the loose end that I wanted to address was the surname Cruraty. This surname for Elizabeth comes from the transcription of the Greene County marriage book on the LDS Web site (IGI Batch M519292). I thought Cruraty looked funny, and one of you sent me a private E-mail suggesting that it was probably really Crumley. I checked in the library in a book called Marriage Records, Greene County by Sandra Klucken. Sandra'a transcription has the marriage as James Pierce to Elizabeth Crumley. I also checked the microfilm for the actual marriage book. The handwriting is very sloppy, but it clearly appears to me as that it says James Pierce to Elizabeth Crumly. I tried very hard to see an -ley ending on the surname, but all I saw was an -ly ending. I have to say that I am very astounded and impressed that someone is a good enough transcriber to see Cruraty and to be able to figure out that the LDS transcriber mistook Crumley or Crumly for Cruraty. The bad news is that I checked the 1860 Greene County census looking for Elizabeth Crumly and Elizabeth Crumley. There were several there, but none of them really jumped out at me as an obvious candidate to be the one who married James Pierce. Of course, I still don't know which James Pierce married Elizabeth Crumly in 1865. If it was James E. Pierce, then I know Elizabeth's approximate birth date from the 1870 census entry for James E. Pierce. If it was James W. Pierce, then I really know nothing about Elizabeth's age because I cannot find an 1870 census entry for James W. Pierce. Jerry Bryan _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.