Her powers of recollection, even at 94, never fail a crosscheck against public records, and she's largely responsible for the preservation of black history in Corpus Christi, he said. Many of the city's earliest black families have moved away - except Pleasant's. After researching Pleasant's family, Sayger believes that Cornelius Cox was Willie Cox's father. Genealogists often demand three sources to substantiate an ancestry claim. Yet there is not a single written source documenting Willie Cox's paternity.
Genealogy is sanitized history.
With these liaisons of masters and children, they have to put a lot of stock in family oral tradition. In his younger years, he befriended many elderly blacks like Pleasant, who talked about slavery and the Old South. The descendant of slave and slave owner talked for an hour. They mined their shared love of family history and speculated about Cornelius Cox's relationship to his slaves. They discovered they both liked to bowl and play bridge.