How I Broke Down My Garrison Brick Wall

I decided to post this because I recently had someone contact me on Ancestry.com (Member Connect), asking me if I'd explain conflicting information about my Garrison ancestors. Here's what I replied to her:

"

You won't find my great-great grandmother Frances Adeline correctly listed as the child of Valentine & Sarah Dowell Garrison in any source. In fact, I'm the first person to make this connection, and it happened just this spring. I found her obituary, which listed the names of her surviving sisters and where they were living in 1901. That was my starting point. So I started searching for the sisters, and finally found them as the children of Valentine & Sarah. BUT: instead of listing a Frances Adeline, they all listed a daughter named Sidney Adeline, but noted that she was "sometimes referred to as Frances". To make things more confusing, Sidney was listed as being married to Samuel R. Cox. I knew for a fact that my gggrandma Frances Adeline was married to Robert M. Cox.

The next step that put it together for me was when I found the marriage information for Frances Adeline Garrison and Robert M. Cox, in Adair County, Kentucky on 19 May 1838. On the same page, it showed that Sidney Ann Garrison married Samuel R. Cox in Adair County, Kentucky on 25 Nov 1839.

Finally, I searched all of the US Federal Censuses for Samuel & Sidney Ann, and found them each decade. At first, they lived near Robert & Frances Adeline in Kentucky; later, both couples moved to Illinois (different counties). I felt like I'd put together enough evidence to make a case that there were 2 sisters, not one named Sidney Adeline called Frances sometimes."