Stonebraker- Cooper families
This family information is dedicated to my sister, Rita Howard, and to my Cooper cousins from Mississippi. We had many memorable summer experiences growing up.
This site contains some of the information I've collected since the 1980s about my parents' families. My interest in our family's history began with two sources: my paternal grandmother, Octa McKelvey Stonebraker and my maternal aunt, Elizabeth Cooper Prichard.
Octa McKelvey Stonebraker lived in Belmont County, Ohio and showed me a hand drawn tree of the Hoge family which both intrigued and puzzled me. I had no idea how I was related to the Hoges. My grandmother wasn't completely sure herself, but told me the drawing was part of our family. During many weekend visits to the Village of Belmont, our family would pile in Papaw's (Everett D Stonebraker, grandfather) car on Sundays and drive around the scenic Appalachian foothills of Belmont County, listening to who lived here or which distant relative now lived out of the area. It was all very confusing trying to sort out who these people were and how I was related to many of them.
My aunt, Elizabeth Cooper Prichard, of Inverness, Mississippi, was an avid genealogist and spent much of the 1950s and 1960s traveling and collecting information about the family histories of the Coopers and Prichards. She would tell anyone who would listen stories about our ancestors.
The original goal in collecting this family history was to trace my ancestors back to their original immigration to the United States, not realizing how much of a challenge that would be. Most immigrants came to North America before an independent United States of America was declared in 1776 with the most recent immigrant coming in 1817. Most of this research is of direct ancestors and not of collateral lines.
I have quite a bit of additional information that I will add when time permits. Anyone who has an interest in or information about our families is invited to contribute photos, stories, document images, recordings, links or any other information to my email address below. All contributions are appreciated, especially where primary sources are cited.