Margaret Watson Cooke's Research on Aaron Bonnell & Ann Brotherton Descendants

My great-aunt Margaret Watson Cooke corresponded with Bonnell descendants all over the country. In 1963 she gave my family the last version of her compilations. Somehow I ended up with many earlier versions, many with handwritten notes and corrections (she typed everything herself).

In comparing the work on my direct line I found the final version did not include two of my great-grandmother's siblings who had died as children. I had direct knowledge that Aunt Margaret knew all about them–they're discussed in the book Margaret's mother wrote and that Margaret treasured.

A careful comparison of the versions showed that in the fifth version she had dropped every individual who died as a child. In some cases she also deleted people who'd died as unmarried young adults. I'm guessing she did it to reduce the typing workload. Maybe one of you knows why since some of your relatives may have corresponded with her.

For my own purposes I retyped her work, including every individual she'd identified regardless of their age at death. The only person, other than me, who saw this was Charlie Bunnell. Somehow that seems selfish, so I put it on Archive.org, where I put the books my grandparents wrote about their families.

If you are interested in looking at it, you can find it Margaret Watson Cooke's Compiled Descendants of Aaron Bonnell and Ann Brotherton.