How big is this list anyway? My quick intro: I'm Lonnie Chrisman, sr software engineer in San Jose, CA, BSEE from US Berkeley, Ph.D. in computer science & artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon Univ in Pittsburgh. Grew up since about age 6 in Silicon Valley. Have three daughters, Brianna 4.5yrs, Whitney 3yrs and Ashley 11 days. Done genealogy research pretty seriously for 8 or 9 years. My 5th great grandparents were Joseph and Mary Cox, same ancestors shared by Randy Moss. As Randy mentions, some claim that Mary, the wife of Joseph, may have been a Surgener. This claim is also the basis for my interest in this group. The claim that she is a Surgener has propagated fairly widely and if often repeated. My first interest is just in uncovering the origin of the conjecture that she might have been a Surgener. Although I've encountered this claim several times, I have yet to encounter any person or any written source who can identify why the Surgener conjecture was ever proposed in the first place. The fact that it has been widely propagated does not make it any more credible. Did somebody at one time encounter some antique document somewhere that suggested a connection between the Surginer family and Joseph Cox's wife? If so, let's start by figuring out what that document was. I would consider this a major find. This may be optimistic. My bet is that at some point, some researcher noted that Joseph and Mary Cox lived near William Surginer (perhaps in NC), the noted that they both moved to nearby locations elsewhere (parhaps in Kentucky) at approximately the same time. Seeing this, they may have suggested to a fellow researcher that perhaps Mary is somehow connected to the Surginers. That researcher repeated this once to some family member, that so-and-so thinks Mary could possibly have been a Surginer, and the cat was out of the bag. From there the conjecture is repeated over and over, but the origin of the conjecture does not follow it. I've seen exactly this scenario happen a couple times already on other lines being researched. If this is the nature of the claim, that is okay as long as we can identify its origin and attach the correct degree of credibility to it. For me, this first step of learning why the Surginer conjecture was originally proposed will be a major milestone on this particular line of research. Anyway, I lay this out as a starting point to just help us focus our efforts. We know there is also a competing conjecture .. that she was a Pope, perhaps a daughter of Pilgrim Pope. Ruby was able to outline for me the origin of that theory, and in fact was able to go a step further and give me a list of facts (documents, etc) that were highly relevant towards that theory (the documents provide substantial evidence that the Pope conjecture is probably not true). For me, that was a fantastic advance and has got my attention focused on this branch of my ancestry and being one that is ripe for a breakthrough. I'm excited to see the same happen with the Surginer conjecture (ie, the same understanding reached as to the origin of the conjecture). Thanks, Lonnie Chrisman [email protected]