James Cole & Coles Creek: Family Tradition Meets the Records
Was Coles Creek named after my ancestor James Cole? That is the story handed down in my family, but as a genealogist and family historian, I want to get the facts straight, and that meant locating sources and documenting my findings and conclusions.
Coles Creek is a natural waterway in present-day Adams and Jefferson Counties, Mississippi. Family tradition, Camilla T. Denys's Cole Foot Prints, and several online family trees associate the creek's name with James Cole (1732-1794), husband of Mary Rentfro(e). These accounts disagree, however, about when James and his family arrived in the area. Suggested dates range from 1772 to 1778. James and Mary's children included James Cole (Jr.) and Solomon Cole. It is an interesting twist in my own family tree; I descend from both sons.
Cole's Creek or Boyd's Creek?
First, I checked Wikipedia about the history of Coles Creek, which said it was first called Boyd's Creek in the 1770s and later called Cole's Creek or Coles Creek. It referenced an article in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ) in 1997 (no volume or page number). So I went online to check all articles from 1997 to see whether I could find the exact wording used for this information. The article described Timothy Dwight, Esq.'s search for land in the Province of West Florida [British territory, later Mississippi] in December 1776, for land in two places, one adjoining a grant and "the other by the Creek called Cole's Creek or Boyd's Creek near the Branches union."[1] That differs from the wording in the Wikipedia article and clarifies a specific time and date. By December 1776, both names were used, and the document does not state which came first.
When did James Cole arrive?
Second, when did James Cole and his family first settle in the area? An image attached to James Cole, Jr.'s WikiTree profile is identified as a land grant dated 20 March 1778.[2] Although this establishes when the formal grant was completed, James could have been living in the province considerably earlier. I still needed to find the source for the 1772 date.
I turned to the minutes of the governor and council of British West Florida, now available through the University of Florida Digital Collections. On 6 November 1776, the council read James Cole's petition. According to the minutes, James stated he arrived in the province in March 1772 and took steps to obtain land before the Crown's restraining order arrived in October 1773. His household consisted of himself, his wife, nine children, and two nieces whom he had raised.[3] James requested land "situated on North Fork of Boyd's Creek below Henry Humphreys including an improvement bought of Luke Lorie." Although this petition does not prove that James Cole immediately settled on Boyd's Creek, it does show that he arrived in March 1772 and, by November 1776, was requesting land on the north fork of this creek.
This evidence makes the family tradition plausible. James Cole and his large family were associated with Boyd's Creek before the end of 1776, when "Coles Creek" was already being used as an alternative name. However, I have not found a record explicitly stating that the creek was named for James Cole, or that Boyd's Creek was necessarily its first name. I can only state that we now have a clearer understanding of how Cole's Creek may have acquired the name it still carries today.
- Rachal Mills Lennon, CGRS, "Loyalist Refugee Petitions in British West Florida, 1776-77," National Genealogical Society Quarterly (June 1997): 129-139, specifically page 133; archived online, National Genealogical Society (https://www.ngsgenealogy.org/ngsq/ngsq_archives : accessed 23 August 2026).↩︎
- “20 Mar 1778 Spanish West Florida Land Grant,” digital image, uploaded 1 April 2018 by Lisa Franklin, attached to "James Cole Jr.," WikiTree profile Cole-1419, WikiTree (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cole-1419 : accessed 22 August 2026); original document source and repository not identified. Despite the image's WikiTree title, West Florida was under British administration in March 1778.↩︎
- West Florida Council, “Minutes of the Governor in Council,” 6 November 1776, p. 415 (written), p. 211 (stamped), petition of James Cole; digital images, University of Florida Digital Collections, (https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA00078623/00059: accessed 22 August 2026); referencing West Florida Province Governor Peter Chester (1770-1781).↩︎
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